Passages

[Lemmy Caution]

Fats Domino didn't make that many appearances in the last few decades.
Once I corralled a few friends to see Fats circa 1985, when he was making a rare club appearance in NYC. For some reason I called the club before leaving only to find out the show had been cancelled. Fortunately NY was brimming with old soul and jazz and R&B acts in that decade, and we caught Big Jay McNeeley that night instead. But I've always been disappointed I never saw Fats Domino in person.

A great singer and piano player.
Not sure if it's true, but there's an old story that during his 50's popularity, Domino was scheduled for a tour of Australia. But he was so hot in the US, they wanted him to continue recording and performing stateside. So purportedly they sent a young Allen Toussaint to Australia pretending to be Fats Domino and performing all his hits. Figuring no one Down Under knew what the Fat Man actually looked like. Possibly apocryphal, but I always liked the notion.

[calculus entrophy]

Possibly apocryphal, but I always liked the notion.

Not to go too far off topic, but its not the only time that had been tried.

[Swift]

Andy Warhol did a similar thing, sending a lookalike actor in his place on a lecture tour in the 60s.

[Lemmy Caution]

Checked the Allen Toussaint wiki page which notes that Toussaint laid down the piano track on a 1957 Fats Domino release, I Want You to Know, while the Fat Man was busy touring. And when free, Fats added his vocal track. I thought Toussaint had done that for up to 3 Fats Domino tunes, but in any case that's likely where the idea of sending Toussaint to Oz as Fats came from, or where the story originated from.

"When Fats was having all those hits in a row, he kept it very simple," says Allen Toussaint, also one of the great New Orleans pia­nists. "He would start a pattern right from the beginning and it would last throughout the song, so if you liked the first two bars, you would like everything. He never fixed what wasn't broken. Another thing he discovered was moving his triplets below middle C. Before Fats, people played triplets in the upper register, and it was a timid kind of sound. When Fats played triplets in the lower register, there was nothing timid about it. No way."

[calculus entrophy]

Bunny Sigler

[GaryC]

Rosemary Leach

[GaryC]

George Young

[Fred Holywell]

Harry Stradling Jr.

[Roger Ryan]

Actor Kim Joo-hyuka in an auto accident.

[Dr Amicus]

Paddy Russell - TV Director, an assistant to Rudolph Cartier on 1984 and Quatermass, and later the first female director on Doctor Who. Among the stories she directed were 'Invasion Of The Dinosaurs', the earliest story I can remember watching, and the 'The Pyramids Of Mars', one of the all time classics and a fan favourite.

[lacritfan]

Brad Bufanda

[fdm]

Muhal Richard Abrams

[Dr Amicus]

Dudley Simpson - Prolific composer on Doctor Who and many other TV series and one-offs, including Blakes 7, The Ascent of Man and several BBC Shakespeares.

[Sloper]

Easy as it is to make fun of those shows' production values, Simpson's work was often stunning. I recently watched some old episodes of Blake's 7 and Doctor Who with my wife (she wanted to know how I spent my childhood), and was genuinely impressed by a lot of the music Simpson wrote. Some of those cues have been replaying in my head, with great regularity, for over 25 years.

[hearthesilence]

Former MLB pitcher Roy Halladay

[bearcuborg]

When asked for his choice of intro music as a Phillie, Roy told the team that it didn’t matter, he wouldn’t notice it anyway.

One of the coolest stories ever...it tells you how locked in to his job he was.

[pet42]

Karin Dor

[flyonthewall2983]

Paul Buckmaster

[domino harvey]

John Hillerman. RIP Rodney

[bearcuborg]

Love his roles in Paper Moon...

[Polybius]

And the laurel and hearty handshake from Blazing Saddles.

[Caligula]

John Hillerman. RIP Rodney

He was just great as Higgins in Magnum PI

[Professor Wagstaff]

Screenwriter Robert Getchell, back in October

[Michael Kerpan]

David Pendleton, the tremendous programmer for the Harvard Film Archive (and a very nice person): https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(Way too young, a mere youth compared to me).

[Randall Maysin]

Screenwriter Robert Getchell, back in October

Rest in peace. It's amazing how the most talented people in Hollywood--(not to mention the ones who have the most artistic integrity!!!), the screenwriters, can often go their whole lives writing brilliant things, and die totally unknown to the general public and never having, or almost never having, their visions brought faithfully or unadulteratedly to the screen. And they're top industry insiders and often very rich.

A perhaps tasteless question for the forum: I've always wondered if it would be possible for an unconnected layperson like me to access some of the original screenplays I've heard about over the years being so much better than the film that ultimately gets made. Especially Earl Mac Rauch's for Scorsese's awful New York, New York, or Carole Eastman's for The Fortune, or even some of the ones that Altman allegedly ruined, especially for The Company and Popeye. Any info would be really appreciated, thanks!