[Trombone-l] (no subject)

[Stan Brager]

Jay;

The problem with many obituaries is with the writer who either doesn't do
the research required to produce a good obituary or that they just don't
have the time. A friend who used to write for a newspaper told me once that
on some papers the obit duty is given to a relative newcomer to the
business. Other papers prepare obituaries of noteworthy individuals in
advance and add to them as new information becomes available while others
begin the writing process as soon as an aged notable becomes ill.

On the other hand, one is limited in space and has to make a decision about
what to keep and what to omit.

It's a tough job anyway you want to slice it.

Stan

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Samuel Keyser" <keyser at MIT.EDU>
To: "List Trombone" <TROMBONE-L at server5.samford.edu>
Cc: "Samuel Keyser" <keyser at MIT.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 12:38 PM
Subject: [Trombone-l] (no subject)


> There have been a number of comments on the list about lapses in
> Maynard Ferguson's various obituaries.  Some have left out the fact
> that his mother was a violinist, for example, or failed to mention
> his super bone work. Or stories about how, as a young man, when he
> first went to work for a big band, I think it may have been Count
> Basie's, he went through the book in one long afternoon and from then
> on played the charts as if he had written them himself.
>
> I think this is a general failing of obituaries about great
> musicians.  I remember when Billy May died in 2004, I was appalled by
> the obit that appeared in the Boston Globe.  Here was one of the
> greatest big band arrangers of the 20th century and the obituary was
> perfunctory, comparing him to Nelson Riddle, for example, and talking
> about his work with Frank Sinatra without any sense of the
> extraoordinarily original things he had done himself, like his
> arrangements of the classics or, most startling of all, his
> arrangements of Bugle Calls.  Making something exciting out of taps,
> now that takes talent.  Wanting to do it in the first place, takes
> vision and humor.
>
> Anyway, I wonder if flat obituaries are the way they are because they
> are not generally written by musicians.  If you haven't walked in
> those shoes, it must be very hard to have anything more than a
> "factual" sense of what has been lost.
>
> Jay
>
>
>
>