blog postings serving as notes for book
If this were a Joan Crawford movie she’d have given him the damn gold cigarette case by now.
Portrait of John Wilson by Sasha Gusov
For their show at the 2011 BBC Proms, called Hooray for Hollywood, John and The JWO begin here with an overall satisfying medley of tunes from the picture—inconveniently called the “Hooray for Hollywood” overture—tunes selected, arranged and orchestrated by my self-satisfied darling himself. Starting with John’s cribbing from Ray Heindorf’s execrable arrangement (that hard downbeat!) of the Gershwin brothers’ 1919 “Swanee” (Jolson turning in his grave), it does get better: “Lullaby of Broadway” by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, very nifty and swingy; Rudy Friml and Herb Stothart’s 1924 “Indian Love Call”, a lot more lyrical and moving (he included the birds and the waterfall!) than you remember it (especially when leader Andrew Haveron takes the soulful melody); Jerry Kern and Yip Harburg’s glorious 1944 “Can’t Help Singing” (written for Deanna Durbin); Kern and Ira Gershwin’s 1944 “Long Ago and Far Away” (Howard McGill on tenor sax and Matthew Regan on piano—I’ve never heard it played any lovelier): Frank Loesser’s 1950 “Guys and Dolls” done in Big Swing style; then, in a weird leap, “Chim-Chim-Cheree” by the Sherman brothers, 1963 (for which our John cribs 2 bars from Shostakovich’s Jazz Waltz No 2); and ending with “Hooray for Hollywood” from 1937 by Richard Whiting (who wrote “On the Good Ship Lollipop”) and Johnny Mercer.
Hooray for Hollywood Where you're terrific if you're even good Where anyone at all from Shirley Temple to Aimee Semple is equally understood Go out and try your luck you might be Donald Duck Hooray for Hollywood
Dates are of composition, not the date of the movie. Because it contains John’s own actually-pretty-good arrangement it’s one of my favorite numbers of The JWO (although I would’ve swapped the timpani for a little chord coloring at the beginning of the “Swanee” melody). He seems to have nailed down the Andre Previn sound in his strings, which is okay by me. Plus extra points @7:40, where my self-satisfied darling shimmies like a brazen hussy yet again.
Here’s French hornist/podcast interviewer Sarah Willis’s 2016 interview with John and key members of his own eponymous orchestra where his technique in bringing out “The Hollywood Sound” is discussed. Discussion of his string technique with Sarah and JWO’s first violinist starts at 5:40.
From August, 2018. Cantara, former ASCAP solfeggist and 70s porn actress turned memoirist, has fallen hopelessly in love with a man at the other end of the world, an English, middle-ranking orchestra conductor—who plays, on the side, Golden Age of Hollywood music and The Great American Songbook—by the name of John Wilson.
Not because he’s a fellow creator (he doesn’t create, but reconstructs, orchestrates and arranges the music of others)—not because of his looks (he’s peaky, scrawny, blinky; his gray-green eyes lack luster; he’s got a facial tic, pores like craters, lousy posture, enormous feet, the limbs of a stick insect and the hands of a hod carrier; his nose is an equilateral triangle; his famous cleft chin, supposedly his best feature, always looks slightly askew; his ultra-short mousy hair can’t conceal the fact he’s already going gray; he sweats like a stevedore on the podium; and for the past few years he’s taken to wearing geek glasses)—and certainly not for his intellect (his fatuous pronouncement about the needlessness of lyrics in The Great American Songbook makes me want to smack the back of his head like the whippersnapper he is and send him home with a note).
So what is it about him?* I’ve only been aware of his existence since 30 April and in love with him since 4 May, 2018; since then my feelings have been an insane mixture of tenderness, gratitude, annoyance, and lust. The tenderness I understand: I’ve spent enough time in Hollywood to understand the position he’s in… As far as gratitude, here’s his concert version of “The Trolley Song” using the original 1944 orchestration(!)— thank you thank you thank you, John. Even the raging lust I get.
But whenever John gets himself in the way of the music it drives me nuts. It’s crystal clear to me the times he does this because I’m in love with him, dammit, and because he’s a musician I pay attention to the music. Truth to tell, the only times John really gets himself in the way are when he’s conducting his own hand-picked group which is dedicated mostly to music from Golden Hollywood & The Great American Songbook, and cannily named The John Wilson Orchestra.
Listen to John’s new orchestra the SINFONIA OF LONDON here
Whether he gets himself in the way indeliberately or on purpose I cannot entirely tell, but I’m starting to. With a little patience he isn’t that hard to read, my bonny John Wilson. After countless times listening to his recordings and broadcasts; pouring over his interviews; watching him conduct (in video clips, mainly from the annual BBC Proms); watching him conduct other orchestras besides his own (ditto); and, most important, learning to separate the showman from the musician, I’m starting to understand his type of intelligence and his musical capability, which is actually pretty sizeable. His ear (the way he hears things, not his purported perfect pitch) is intriguing and his industriousness is admirable. I am definitely not buying into the PR excess—he is not “a superstar”, “a guru”, “charismatic”, “legendary”, “a conducting icon” or, God help us, as proclaimed by the BBC, “the nation’s favorite” (!!!). But his musicianship at times is kiiind of brilliant.
* Update 10 August 2019: I’ve just read up on what it is about him, and now I’ve got science to back me up. It’s John’s fault.
Anyroad, like a good Dr Watson I have compiled a list:
Listen to John’s new orchestra the SINFONIA OF LONDON here
JOHN WILSON – HIS LIMITS (Updated September 2021)
Knowledge of/affinity for/talent with:
All the rest is just Cantara trying to sort out where bonny John fits into her inner life. Which as it turns out is in every nook, every cranny…
Cleansing my aural memory of John Wilson’s recording of Legrand’s “Chanson de Maxence” (in English clumsily rendered as “You Must Believe in Spring” or some such) in his awful 2000 album, Orchestral Jazz, with Anne Sofie van Otter‘s 2010 version (Brad Mehldau, pianist). Bonny John conducts his eponymous orchestra in an arrangement by Richard Rodney Bennett, who had absolutely no feel for this song. With such a strong melody (reminiscent of Fauré) and strong lyrics, all it needs is a strong emotive singer and a backup piano. I note with some distress that John himself did some other arrangements in this album, particularly for “Miss Otis Regrets”. With no lyrics! What the hell good is such a hilarious song without the words???
Je l'ai cherchée partout j'ai fait le tour du monde De Venise à Java de Manille à Angkor De Jeanne à Victoria de Vénus en Joconde Je ne l'ai pas trouvée et je la cherche encore Je ne connais rien de lui et pourtant je le vois J'ai inventé son nom j'ai entendu sa voix J'ai dessiné son corps et j'ai peint son visage Son portrait et l'amour ne font plus qu'une image
John and The JWO are okay, but just okay. I suppose when he was 28 my bonny’s loftiest ambition was to be the next Sidney Torch.
John dear,
Above this 2023 NYT news shot of my shining, desired one: The entire 2022 BBC Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall, John and his Sinfonia of London performing British Classics: Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Huw Watkins – Flute Concerto; Arnold Bax – Tintagel; William Walton – Partita for Orchestra; Edward Elgar – Enigma Variations Oh John, you and Elgar together again…
On three out of your last five birthdays, awful things happened in my country that couldn’t be ignored (the worst happening on your 48th in my own old neighborhood) so I’m sorry I didn’t have anything amusing to post after your 47th. Because you share the same day of birth as my father (you were born the year he died) I had thought what I’d be doing is alternating birthday congrats to you with memories of my dad, like this one…
Well, that didn’t work out. Things and events are crowding so fast…and I can’t catch up to the connection—association—context of it all fast enough…
But there is one thing I want you to remember through all this global mishegoss: I’m still in love with you as much as I ever have been. In fact the more I learn about you, the more it makes me love you. Even through your clunkers, John, John / Glorious John.
If you were my boyfriend and you had a struggling rock group, there’d be posters on every lamppost in San Francisco. But you (and your people) must have figured that out by now.
Steiner’s suite (written score here) is clearly patched together from various melodies in the film Casablanca, including the Nazi drinking song “Die Wacht am Rhein” (Schneckenburger/Wilhelm, 1853); “La Marseillaise” (de Lisle, 1792); and, of course, “As Time Goes By” (Herman Hupfeld, 1931). And is that a little of Steiner’s own King Kong? The Warner Bros Pictures music theme at the beginning is entirely Steiner’s composition. (Most of the) orchestration by Steiner’s frequent collaborator, Murray Cutter.
I feel a raging, yearning, unchaste tenderness for my beloved John Wilson when he conducts schmaltzy pieces like this, which sort of makes up, as I say, for the times his fatuous pronouncements exasperate me. Above John: Steiner’s Casablanca Suite.
Click here to see John in action with The JWO in 2013.
"I'll Be Dead Before You Break My Heart" 