CDA x 5: Blyth, Burrows, Clayton-Thomas, Dunn, Large
- ladiesvoices
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Ann Blyth (age 98) was a major Hollywood star in the 40s. She's best known and was nominated for an Oscar for playing Joan Crawford's horrible daughter in Mildred Pierce. Here she is in my favorite scene from that movie:
James Burrows (age 85) was a major figure in television. I read two mind-boggling statistics in his New York Times obit: he directed 75 pilot episodes that became series. And he directed 240 of the 275 episodes of Cheers. Other shows that he created: Taxi, Friends, Will and Grace, Friends.
Here he is on Jimmy Kimmel:
David Clayton-Thomas (age 84) was the lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears. One of the most distinctive voices in rock - - powerful and gritty but unlike some other dudes singing in similar bands, he was able to convey tenderness and vulnerability.
My brother Howard saw Blood, Sweat & Tears at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, WI in 1979! He sent me these two clips of Clayton-Thomas and the band. First, here they are doing "Spinning Wheel:"
And what would we do without The Midnight Special? Here they are doing "You've Made Me So Very Happy." That's a peculiar way to put it in a rock lyric, don't you think? Isn't it more direct to say You Make Me So Very Happy? I digress.
Mignon Dunn (age 98) was an American singer, a major singer at the Met. I love her performance as the wicked Ortrud in a radio broadcast of Lohengrin and she was chosen to play Klytaemnestra in the TV broadcast of Elektra in Birgit Nilsson's triumphant return. No small potatoes.
I fell in love with her in the first opera I went crazy for Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All. UW-Madison Opera had done it the year before I arrived and there was a tape lying around the offices, a recording with Dunn playing Susan B. Anthony. She was tremendous.
Here she is delivering the goods in the "Liber scriptus" from the Verdi Requiem:
Brian Large (age 89) directed over 70 broadcasts of the Met Opera. His sensibility had a huge impact on how I and countless other people literally viewed opera in the hinterlands. His first Met broadcast was The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Here's my beloved Teresa Stratas the lead hooker, singing the divine "Alabama Song." Be sure to check out her divine high A at 2:30:
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