A very late comment. I remembered "Peter Gunn" from my childhood, a show I wasn't permitted to watch, perhaps because it came on too late. I watched the show through a few years ago and was quite taken with Lola Albright. I'm not a jazz fan, but I enjoyed pretty much all the music on the show and was disappointed with episodes that had little or none. I'm happy to be reminded of her and to read this poem.
Just some musings, not worth much this morning . . . I recall the scene in _Peter Gunn_ that he says inspired it, though it didn't move me (I don't care for the style of music that much, but that's just preference). The poem is beautiful, though very sad, and I have to admit that I dislike the characterization of ordinary life as "pure dullsville." After all, most of us live ordinary lives . . . Of course, maybe Albright found it that way; he seems to know her biography fairly well. The last lines seem to suggest that when the two minutes of the song are over, you will again stop believing in the music -- but I believe it really is always there -- always _here_, like the star above Mordor, and I'm always being reminded of it, art or no art, though art is a wonderful conduit for it. It does remind me of Luci Shaw's "Caged Bird" -- the bird is denied his natural life out in the wild: he "never finds / the sun-filled / film and fire / of insect wings" or the "fling of winds / and trees" . . . yet "he learns / all summer long / to sing newly, to poem / his stunted / narrowness / in one long, / strong, / ascending, / airborne, sun- / colored wing / of song." That's the music that's always there, if we listen for it at all.
The emailed version of the introduction to "Uncredited" was unclear, seeming to say that the poet was watching the singer later in her life. To remove that ambiguity, I've edited the text to make clear that it's her singing in the TV episode that he references at the end. It's amazing the amout of time Blake Edwards gave to jazz performances in 1958–1961 show "Peter Gunn," including the Henry Mancini theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oysMt8iL9UE
A very late comment. I remembered "Peter Gunn" from my childhood, a show I wasn't permitted to watch, perhaps because it came on too late. I watched the show through a few years ago and was quite taken with Lola Albright. I'm not a jazz fan, but I enjoyed pretty much all the music on the show and was disappointed with episodes that had little or none. I'm happy to be reminded of her and to read this poem.
Just some musings, not worth much this morning . . . I recall the scene in _Peter Gunn_ that he says inspired it, though it didn't move me (I don't care for the style of music that much, but that's just preference). The poem is beautiful, though very sad, and I have to admit that I dislike the characterization of ordinary life as "pure dullsville." After all, most of us live ordinary lives . . . Of course, maybe Albright found it that way; he seems to know her biography fairly well. The last lines seem to suggest that when the two minutes of the song are over, you will again stop believing in the music -- but I believe it really is always there -- always _here_, like the star above Mordor, and I'm always being reminded of it, art or no art, though art is a wonderful conduit for it. It does remind me of Luci Shaw's "Caged Bird" -- the bird is denied his natural life out in the wild: he "never finds / the sun-filled / film and fire / of insect wings" or the "fling of winds / and trees" . . . yet "he learns / all summer long / to sing newly, to poem / his stunted / narrowness / in one long, / strong, / ascending, / airborne, sun- / colored wing / of song." That's the music that's always there, if we listen for it at all.
The emailed version of the introduction to "Uncredited" was unclear, seeming to say that the poet was watching the singer later in her life. To remove that ambiguity, I've edited the text to make clear that it's her singing in the TV episode that he references at the end. It's amazing the amout of time Blake Edwards gave to jazz performances in 1958–1961 show "Peter Gunn," including the Henry Mancini theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oysMt8iL9UE
Blake Edwards did love himself some Henry Mancini . . .
Yeah, the show would have been much more enjoyable if I actually liked jazz . . .!