Archives for February 27, 2006

As I prepare for a follow-up visit to my cardiologist tomorrow, I find in my mailbox this message from a reader:

Cheer up! There’s an obituary in today’s Los Angeles Times for a woman who died of congestive heart failure–at the age of 115!

Born on September 13, 1890 in Mississippi; married for 72 (!) years
(1922-1994); never hospitalized in her life until she was 106
(gallstones); could still read the newspaper and sign her name at 114;
survived by her 96-year-old son.

Let’s see: Hilary Hahn will be 27 this year. So, if you live to be 115,
you could review a concert of hers in 2071–when she’s 91!

(Of course, there’s several “ifs” included in that last sentence.)

Er, there sure are. And of course I’m anxious to hear what the doctor says–how could I not be? Nevertheless, I’m feeling pretty optimistic, not least because I’ve now lost thirty-one pounds since congestive heart failure sent me to the hospital a little more than two months ago, and have also changed my life in countless other beneficial ways.

All of which reminds me that I never cease to be amazed by the long list of important people born well over a century ago who lived long enough to have their voices recorded for posterity. (Yes, I know where I’m going with this–wait for it.) A few of these recordings have been released on CD in recent years, and these are three of the best collections currently in print:

– About a Hundred Years: A History of Sound Recording (Symposium) contains spoken-word and musical recordings by Sarah Bernhardt, Johannes Brahms, Winston Churchill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Edison, Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Joachim, Scott Joplin, Lenin, John Philip Sousa, and Leo Tolstoy, plus a battlefield recording of a World War I gas bombardment made in 1918.

– Poetry Speaks: Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath (Sourcebooks, three CDs and an accompanying book) contains recordings by forty-two poets, including Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, and W.B. Yeats.

– In Their Own Voices: The U.S. Presidential Elections of 1908 and 1912 (Marston Records, two CDs) contains recordings by William Jennings Bryan, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.

Alas, precious few record companies have thought it worth their while to transfer historic spoken-word recordings to CD–which is where the Web comes in. The BBC, for instance, has a page on its Web site containing links to interviews from its vast archives to which anyone can listen via streaming audio. The selection is spotty, even erratic, but it does include a handful of celebrated figures of the relatively distant past, including Yeats, Gandhi, Le Corbusier, No

Here’s the playlist of iPodded tunes to which I worked out on Saturday:

– Billy Joel, “Big Shot”

– The Beatles, “Birthday”

– Rosanne Cash, “Black Cadillac” (an excellent do-this-or-die choice for lazy heart patients)

– The Violent Femmes, “Blister in the Sun” (which I first heard on the soundtrack of Grosse Pointe Blank)

– Una Mae Carlisle, “Blitzkrieg Baby” (with Lester Young on tenor saxophone)

– Fats Waller, “Blue, Turning Grey Over You” (the 12-inch 78 version)

– Count Basie, “Blues in Hoss’ Flat”

– The Benny Goodman Sextet, “Boy Meets Goy” (with Charlie Christian on guitar)

– Swing Out Sister, “Breakout”

– The Rolling Stones, “Brown Sugar”

– Pat Metheny, “Bright Size Life” (with Jaco Pastorius on bass)

– Henry “Red” Allen and Pee Wee Russell, “Bugle Call Rag” (this is one of the celebrated Billy Banks Rhythmakers 78s that Philip Larkin loved so much)

– Elvis Presley, “Burning Love” (a song I’d forgotten all about until I heard it on the soundtrack of Lilo and Stitch)

Incidentally, I saw the following caption on one of the overhead TV sets in the gym midway through my workout:

DON KNOTS [sic] DIES LAST NIGHT OF POOR HEALTH

Hey, it happens.

…click here.

“My secretary has been very good in reading to me out of working hours, more serious matters finished. We began yesterday Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves which makes me roar. That chap is master of a light rather original slang that makes life joyous when all the carbonic acid gas seems to have fizzled out of it. Few benefactors can be compared with him.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., letter to Lewis Einstein (Feb. 8, 1931)