Word: les
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...Iridium, a basement jazz club across from Lincoln Center in Manhattan, Les Paul sidles up a narrow aisle between tables. He is smaller, more gnomish, but still recognizably the wizard of Waukesha, the garage mechanic's son who revolutionized the way music was played and recorded. And since he turned 86 just two days before, and is looking forward to celebrating his birthday with some famous friends, Paul has a special glow. He sits on a stool surrounded by a few admiring musicians and starts playing 'Over the Rainbow' on one of his famous guitars...
...Apple Blossom White" (a French tune by Louiguy and Jacques Larue). A slew of instrumental hits traded in wanderlust: "Lisbon Antigua" (by Raul Portela, Jose Galhardo and Amaduedo Vale, recorded by Nelson Riddle), "The Poor People of Paris" (Marguerite Monnot's "La Goualante De Pauvre Jean," covered by Les Baxter), "Never on Sunday (Manos Hadjidakis), "Petite Fleur" (composed by expatriate jazz lion Sidney Bechet and Fernand Bonifay, and a 1959 hit for Chris Barber...
...Most listeners, though, didn't know that the countrified "The Three Bells" ("Les trois cloches" by Jean Villard) or the Paul Anka "All of a Sudden My Heart Sings" (by Jean-Marie Blanvillain and Laurent Henri Herpin) or "Mack the Knife" (which had five versions in the Top 20 from 1956 to 1959, including Bobby Darin's #1) had come to Tin Pan Alley through Ellis Island. This was music they heard, liked and bought. I also doubt that the decade's record producers were trying to broaden the masses' musical palette; they probably figured that, since catchy tunes were...
...That said, the network's highest-profile drama is about a professor going through a midlife crisis. "The Education of Max Bickford" stars Richard Dreyfuss - who, if he's at midlife, will make it to 106 - and Marcia Gay Harden. That, says CBS television president Les Moonves, may make it the first TV program to star two Oscar winners. We haven't scoured the history books on that claim, but we gather that this means "The Geena Davis Show" was just Joe Pesci away from being a television classic...
...Broadway theater, the new millennium has started on a note of musical diminuendo. With the demise of "Cats," the soon-to-be-missing "Miss Saigon" and the lack of any new hits from Andrew Lloyd Webber or the "Les Miz" team in years, the era of the Brit-generated mega-musical seems all but over. Happily, straight plays seem to be filling the gap. Demanding dramas like Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" have become unlikely Broadway hits, while the Manhattan Theatre Club, an off-Broadway stalwart, successfully transferred two strong works, "Proof" and "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife...