Whadda Catastastroph!
URELY Jimmy Durante’s retord "The Lost Chord" deserves a paragraph to itself. It must at any rate be one of the most popular items in the request sessions nowadays, and few who listen, however infrequently, can have missed it altogether. I have heard of only one malcontent who voiced the opinion that this was a rotten record, and he was one of those pseudo-cultured people who can’t bear to hear "good music" held up to ridicule. Neither can I. I cordially detest those hideous attempts at "hotting up" the classi¢s (as though a Liszt Rhapsody can be made more exciting by being altered in rhythm and scored for a jazz band!) and _ those equally painful renderings of good melodies in popular guise (the appalling "Chasing Rainbows," "Deep is the Night," and "Till the End of Time"); on the other hand, any jazz arranger could do anything he liked to ‘The Lost Chord" and it wouldn’t move me an inch, so little does the original appeal. to me. Jimmy Durante, however, doesn’t use anything of the original except the title and a vague suggestion of the opening words, "Seated one day at my pi-anner," etc. The record is a gem, and I challenge anyone to prove that it bears any but a coincidental resemblance to any work Bie Sullivan. Jimmy Durante
has really found the lost chord, so far as I am concerned-more power to his raucously rasping vocal chords!
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 498, 7 January 1949, Page 13
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241Whadda Catastastroph! New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 498, 7 January 1949, Page 13
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