Tag Archives: 1950s

Café Mouffe Encore: Annie Ross on “Playboy’s Penthouse”

Jon Hendricks’s 90th birthday tribute made me insatiable to hear more from Annie Ross, especially a 1959 clip of “Twisted” from Hugh Hefner’s Playboy’s Penthouse TV show. Continue reading






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Café Mouffe: The Vocal Pyrotechnics of Jon Hendricks

Scat singing started as an improvisation by Louis Armstrong in the 1920s . Jon Hendricks took it to the level of pyrotechnic virtuosity in the 1950s by crafting words to fit soaring instrumental solos. Hendricks turns 90 today, and NPR paid him tribute.






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Café Mouffe Remembers Rock ‘n’ Roll Lyricist Jerry Leiber

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote so many classic rock ‘n’ roll songs that it’s hard to know where to begin. As tributes have flowed after Leiber’s death on Aug. 22 at age 78, I’ve heard songs that I never knew were theirs. Topping that list is “Kansas City,” their first hit. The clip presented here was recorded by Fats Domino in 1956, but the tune goes back to 1949. There are more than 100 different covers of it.






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Remembering Elliott Erwitt’s “Provence 1955”

Elliott Erwitt, the Magnum photographer who composed this iconic image of French country life in 1955, was honored recently with an Infinity Lifetime Achievement Award and retrospective show at the International Center of Photography in New York. The photo, titled “Provence 1955,” was commissioned by the French government’s tourism office. It’s surely paid decades of dividends for beret-makers and bread-bakers the world over.






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Doing the “Duck and Cover” at Café Mouffe

From a distance of 50 years, I like to remember my childhood as a carefree time filled with daydreams of Brigitte Bardot and Leave It To Beaver. Truthfully, though, it was suffused with paranoia and existential despair. Only later did I learn to relax with help of Dr. Charles Mingus and the power of prayer. Oh Lord Don’t Let them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me.






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