"It sure was greatness" -- Jazz At The Philharmonic, San Francisco, 1951-1952

An ad for Jazz At The Philharmonic
in the Berkeley, California Daily Gazette,
14 November 1951

Last fall I had the chance to look through some paper ephemera collected by some extended family members. Two of the items were of particular interest to me: programs and ticket stubs from impresario Norman Granz' famous Jazz At The Philharmonic Concerts series. When they were young, two family members went to the JATP concerts in San Francisco in 1951 and 1952. 

Someone else now owns these programs, but I took photographs of some of the pages in an old scrapbook to share here.

Eleventh tour program cover

"We went with Dan & Joyce. I wore my new gray suit. It sure was 'greatness.' Afterwards pizza!" the young concertgoer wrote in her scrapbook underneath the 1951 concert program.

San Francisco Civic Auditorium

What must it have been like to have been young and in love with one another and with music, on a chilly November 1951 evening at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium? The four teenagers must have known they were witnessing greatness, as far as the music was concerned: Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Gene Krupa, Lester Young, Illinois Jacquet, Flip Phillips, Roy Eldridge, Bill Harris, Ray Brown, and Hank Jones performed. 

What the young music lovers probably observed, but might not have really grasped at the time, was the nature of the concert series itself. With integrated bands and audiences, Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts (from 1944 to 1957) were part of  the slow demise of legalized segregation in the United States. 

Impresario Norman Granz (1918-2001)

Today Norman Granz is remembered as a hard-nosed visionary leader in the fight for equal pay for Black artists, and for his refusal to stage concerts for segregated audiences. It sure was greatness, indeed. 

The young couple returned, with other friends, for the 1952 concert.

An ad for the 12th season of JATP in the Richmond,
California Independent, 14 November 1952. 

The 1952 JATP lineup featured Ella Fitzgerald, Flip Phillips, Lester Young, Buddy Rich, Charlie Shavers, Roy Eldridge, Ray Brown, Barney Kessel, Hank Jones, the Gene Krupa, Willie Smith, and Oscar Peterson. This time, someone went backstage to get autographs from some of the performers. 

Twelfth tour program cover

Norman Granz

Ella Fitzgerald

Lester Young

Charlie Shavers 

Oscar Peterson

Barney Kessel

Flip Phillips 

Lester Young

Illinois Jacquet 

Bill Harris

Ray Brown 

Gene Krupa

Roy Eldridge

Buddy Rich

Hank Jones

Forunately, there are recordings of several JATP concerts. You can find a selection of them on YouTube. Here's an example, from the 11th season:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_i_uH7ud8E

The website JazzFuel has a good summary of JATP:

https://jazzfuel.com/jazz-at-the-philharmonic/

Here's the Library of Congress' entry for JATP:

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/JazzAtThePhilharmonic.pdf

The Radio Swiss Jazz website has a concise biography of Norman Granz: 

https://www.radioswissjazz.ch/en/music-database/musician/245010f183cfa72e3961257406a74e24bab2e/biography?app=true

Norman Granz' obituary in the Los Angeles Times took up almost an entire page.

Reposting: Words of Wisdom, circa 1880 ( #faithpast)

Here's another in my series that seeks to draw inspiration for these difficult times from the writings and memories of people of faith who are no longer with us. I'm calling the series "Faith Past." 

This post originally appeared in 2014.       #faithpast

Words of Wisdom

At a recent estate sale, I bought a box containing a lot of 1950s Christmas cards.  In with all the images of Santas, puppies, kittens and trees, I found a single page of lined paper that was obviously a lot older than the cards.

The very top of the page had been cut off, but you can still read the lines below.

Someone -- someone with very good penmanship -- had copied (or composed?) poems.

I tried looking the poems up online.  Apparently at least some of them are not original to this author; all the citations I found, date them at least to the 1880s.  I found one other hand-written document on similar lined paper from the same estate, dated September 1, 1880, so my guess is that this sheet of poetry is about the same age.

Here are the poems:

There is not a grand, inspiring thought,
There is not a truth by wisdom taught,
There is not a feeling pure, and high
That may not be read in a mother's eye.

There are teachings of earth and sky and air
The heavens, the glory of God declare
But louder than voice, beneath, above
He is heard to speak through a mother's love.

We may write our names in albums
We may trace them on the sand,
We may chisel them in marble
With a firm and skillful hand. 
But, my friend, there is an album
Full of leaves of snowy white
Where no name is ever tarnished
But forever pure and bright.
In the book of Life, "God's Album"
May your name be traced with care,
And may you, my dearest friend,
Write your name forever there.

...And remember when you're tired and weary
And long to be at home,
That God in all his goodness
Knows what is best for you and me;
And who on earth do heavy crosses bear,
In heaven all bright with beauty
The brightest crown shall wear.

Choose not your friends from outward show,
The feather floats, but the pearl lies low.

Life is a sea, where storms must rise;
'Tis folly talks of cloudless skies;
He who contracts his swelling sail
Eludes the fury of the gale.

Friendship, like an evergreen
Will brave the inclement blast,
And still retain the bloom of spring
When summer days are past;
And though the wintry sky may lower,
And dim the cheerful day,
She still perceives a vital power,
Unconscious of decay.

Reposting: Abide With Me ( #faithpast)

During difficult times, it can be helpful to look back and see how people of faith, who came before us, handled challenges in their own lives. I'm going to start a new series on The Estate Sale Chronicles called "Faith Past" to share some of their stories. I'll start with this post I wrote in 2014.  (For ease of sharing on social media, I will use the hashtag #faithpast .)

Abide With Me

At the end of some estate sales, the sellers will tell the buyers to "fill up a box or a bag" with items and give them a low, fixed price on the lot, usually five or ten dollars.  That's how I ended up with this little book last weekend.  Several members of this family had been involved in serving other people through their churches.

"Abide With Me" is a classic Christian hymn.  The lyrics were written in 1847 by Scottish Anglican Henry Lyte, who died of tuberculosis three weeks after he penned the words.  The publishers, Cupples & Leon, printed this illustrated version of the lyrics in about 1900.  They were known for producing nice-looking books at a reasonable price.  They also produced similar small volumes based on other favorite hymns, including "Lead Kindly Light,"  Psalm 23, "Rock of Ages" and others. 

In "Abide With Me," no credit is given to the artist(s) who did the artwork and the gilt calligraphy. It's too bad, because the work is also inspiring.

Here are Lyte's original words; the singer is speaking to God.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?

 I triumph still, if Thou abide with me. 

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

When he wrote "Abide With Me," Henry Lyte must have known that his time on earth was coming to a close.  He was looking ahead to the time when the light would shine through the gloom.

Here's a link to the chorus of King's College, Cambridge, England, singing Lyte's words to the tune written by William H. Monk in 1861.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deJDkU6qiGE

You can listen to a basic rendition of the score, and read the other verses of the hymn, on the Cyberhymnal website:  http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/b/abidewme.htm

Margie and Norma's Amazing Christmas Cat Scrapbook

Margie and Norma were sisters, born in the 1930s. They lived in Southern California.  From what I could gather when I went to the sale of items from their estate back in August 2015, it looked like neither sister married and they lived together in the family home all their lives. Norma became a school teacher and later a school administrator. It appears that Margie had some sort of chronic health condition, and she passed away before her sister.

Margie and Norma had collected things. One entire bedroom of the house was dedicated to their cat collection.  I bought several Hagen-Renaker Designers' Workshop cats to rehome with another collector.

Hagen-Renaker "Madame Fluff" Persian, first issued Fall 1954

Hagen-Renaker "Moonbeam" Persian kitten, first issued Fall 1958

Hagen-Renaker lying Persian cat, first issued Fall 1957

Long tables arranged along one wall of another bedroom at the estate sale held Margie and Norma's scrapbooks. One or both of the sisters must have spent years carefully saving newspaper clippings, magazine articles, photographs, postcards, greeting cards, and other paper ephemera, trimming them with embroidery scissors, then skillfully arranging them in the dozens of large scrapbooks filled with sheet after sheet of heavy beige paper. 

Based on when the paper items were printed and the dates written on them from the 1950s and 1960s, the sisters must have collected most of these when they were adults, even though many of the greeting cards were ones you would have given a child.  

Some of the scrapbooks were falling apart. I examined the greeting cards inside and saw many, so many, "Get Well" cards addressed to Margie, sent by family and friends over a period of years.

The scrapbook that really spoke to me was the one dedicated to greeting cards, gift wrap, postcards, and pictures of cats, all around the theme of Christmas. These items dated from about 1900 to the mid-1960s. It tells me that, long before the Internet was taken over by cat videos, images of cute felines were a force in the celebration of the holiday.  We can see various sub-themes on the scrapbook pages: kittens with Christmas trees, kittens with (or in) hats, kittens "helping" their humans, and so on. 

Most of the kittens and cats in the scrapbook are not just cute -- they're also busy being part of the festivities.  I believe some of the cards and gift wrap were produced by Norcross and Hallmark. Norma, Margie, or both sisters must have been skilled craftswomen with a good sense of design, because every item on every page in the scrapbook has been carefully arranged, often by theme. 

There were also a few loose cards not pasted in the scrapbook.

Norma gave one of the cards to Margie in 1962.

What you leave behind after you're gone from this life, tells others what you valued. Even scraps of paper, carefully saved and painstakingly, artfully arranged, speak of love and a shared playful sense of humor. The sisters valued each other, and Norma saved the scrapbook with the Christmas cat cards she and others had sent to Margie, for the rest of her life. 

This is Margie and Norma's Christmas Cat Scrapbook. It's huge. And you probably are not going to be able to choose a favorite holiday feline, because there are so many! 

White Christmas kittens on pink backgrounds. 

Kittens and hats.

Kittens and stripes.

Kittens and stockings.

Kittens, ice, and snow.

Some mid-century modern Christmas cat designs. 

Kittens and Santa Claus.

White kittens on a blue background.

Kittens with angels.

Kittens with ornaments.

1960s Christmas kitten postcards.

Some real treasures: early twentieth century Christmas cat postcards.

Black kittens.

Kittens on piano keys.

The End.

And in the words of the old carol:

Love and joy come to you,
And a Merry Christmas too,
And God bless you, and send you a happy new year,
And God send you a happy new year.