Word: glissando
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When Jackie Cain, the girl singer, had released her last colorless bubble, and Charlie Ventura's band had slid over its last glissando and flattened its last fifth, the audience applauded politely. No one screamed; no one bounced; no one fell in a fit; no one left. The carefully disorganized music began again, the performers staring blankly at the audience, the audience staring blankly back. Bop was a very serious business-just as serious as swing used...
...Orchestra, Fritz Reiner conducting; Columbia, 10 sides). A wag once tried to describe this fustian piece: "It is he, the Hero, and he has been drinking again. He is in E flat, and his cuffs are soiled by numerous dissonances . . . Four plain-clothes detectives come in on a sharp glissando, and, seizing the Hero, throw over his head a dark-tasting chord . . ." Performance: good. Suite from Der Rosenkavalier (Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting; Columbia, 6 sides). Some of the pleasantest music Richard Strauss ever wrote, pleasingly played. Recordings: good...
...Once in a hotel in Birmingham, he told a Negro maid that his dummy keyboard (for limbering up between concerts) was a holy piano whose music could be heard only by the pure and sinless. Then he ran off a long, soundless glissando. When he looked up, the maid had disappeared...