09 Jul 2011
by arlenecorwin
in 2011, a sense of the ridiculous, circling round nature, circling round vanities, defiant doggerel
Circling Round The Arctic
Too many hours in the Swedish sun:
A raisin bun. Not funny!
Freckled, mole-y, melanom-y
Vitiligo,
Pigment’s foe.
Tan and lovely for a summer;
White in winter.
That’s the ‘bummer’!
Living near an arctic circle
Makes a work of keeping tan.
Collagen
Says “Eat more C”!
“Get more D3”!
The country
Is a Nordic one:
Long summer days close to the sun;
A combination
Made in space
That destines wrinkled legs to face.
With ultra-violet by osmosis,
Winter osteoporosis,
Sweden is anomalous,
Ridiculous,
For no one wants to leave it.
Circling Round The Arctic 7.9.2011
A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Circling Round Nature; Defiant Doggerel;
Circling Round Vanities;
Arlene Corwin
30 May 2011
by arlenecorwin
in 2011, defiant doggerel, the processes II
Challenging As a Way of Being
Accepting challenge as a path,
A way of being,
Challenge is a way
Of seeing
What to do and not to do;
What we are and what we’re not;
What to leave inside of us,
And what we ought
To put aside.
℘
Personally,
I don’t like it -
Confrontational, disputative:
A fashion word, a word in fashion,
And I wish
They’d halt its use.
So be it.
Challenge is Obama’s word
And everybody else’s too.
I like Obama – not the herd.
As stimulant to intellect
It is
Okay. I guess.
And so, although
It has no ring,
Accepting challenge as a path,
An invitation, way of being,
I can write this poem.
Challenging As A Way Of Being 5.29.2011
Defiant Doggerel; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin
16 May 2010
by arlenecorwin
in 2010, a sense of the ridiculous, defiant doggerel, Uncategorized
Tags: nature of faith
Faith Is Night
It sounds trite:
Overused.
Faith is night,
And traveling in the night
Needs balls – and resignation.
Then again,
On thinking twice,
I’ve often noticed nice
Things happen –
And then faith is light.
© Faith Is Night 5.15.2010 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; To The Child Mystic; Defiant Doggerel; Arlene Corwin
15 Dec 2009
by arlenecorwin
in 1949, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1969, 1984, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, a sense of the ridiculous, arlene corwin's biography, autobiography, biography, birth death & in between, birthday book, cat book, circling round baths, circling round computers, circling round energy, circling round eros, circling round nature, circling round reality, circling round time, circling round vanities, circling round woman, circling round wrinkles, circling round yoga, coffee book, defiant doggerel, definitely didactic, doggerel, God book, I Is Always You is We, I Was Thinking..., lessons to be learned, life, love relationships, love relationships; circling round eros, lyric, mother book, nature of & in reality, numbers, on the way to the post, our times our culture, pure nakedness, recipes, revelations big & small, small stories book, special people special occasions, swedish book, the processes creative thinking meditative, to the child mystic, Uncategorized, vaguely about music, war book
Arlene Corwin’s Poetry
Just another WordPress.com weblog
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Arlene Corwin’s Open-Ended Biography
(10.3.2007 updated 10.24.2007 updated 1.3.2008; updated December 15, 2009, October 2010 )
Arlene Corwin (born Arlene Faith Nover) is an American jazz singer and pianist, poet, teacher and practitioner of Yoga. Born November 8, 1934 in the Williamsburg Maternity Hospital, Brooklyn, New York. She has two children. Jonathan Eric Corwin (born July 24. 1956 and) Jennifer Nover Council (born February 2, 1964). Mother Margy Lillian (born Brown). Father Albert S. Nover. Both were hairdressers, owning a beauty salon together. Everyone was musical on both sides of the family. Mother sang, could play some piano. Father was a gifted sculptor and wood carver, played a little harmonica and mandolin. The family is Jewish.
Early Life
Started studying piano age 8. Studied voice at the famous 1650 Broadway with ‘coach’ Matty Levine. Did a little recording at aged 10 in Nola Studios. (The record has since disappeared) At 12 she started studying harp with Meyer Rosen (Julliard and NBC Orchestra) and the occasional piano lesson with an NBC pianist who taught her how to read chord changes, seeing at once that she was not interested in learning classical piano.
As a child she had already sung at weddings, bar mitzvahs and for the USO, raising bonds for the war effort. At 13, having a boyfriend who played the saxophone and who listened to Symphony Sid, jazz disc jockey whose late night show originated from Birdland, she awakened to jazz, listening to the late night show “under my blanket”. “A turning point”, she says. (Well before “Lullaby of Birdland” was put to words Arlene had written a lyric of her own – a lyric she still sings today) At 14,she was playing for a dancing school once a week. Then she got an accidental job (“slipping in on a banana peel when the singer got sick”) in a Brooklyn nightclub singing with a group. “Mom and dad chaperoned, of course”.1950s
She began to sing regularly when again, out of the blue, an agent rang offering a job for a hundred dollars a week to play at the Mayflower Hotel in Manhattan. It was a restaurant owned by Bob Olin, a former light heavyweight world champion. “I was so naïve I played the whole evening without ever taking a break. Who knew about breaks? Why they kept me I’ve no idea.” But they did and the steady salary of $100.00 a week (which she gave directly to her mother, any other choice never occurring to her) and the experience of having to make a varied program led to her singing to the piano, and eventually to playing to the singing. At this time she was still in high school as attending the prestigious High School of Music & Art as a harpist.She graduated from Music & Art getting a scholarship to Hofstra College as a music major.
Then in 1952, while still at Hofstra College (now university), she was playing on the weekends in a Hempstead, Long Island nightclub-restaurant when Slim Gaillard, who’d come to see Jack Teagarden (also working there) began to take notice of her. He started showing up regularly. There he met Arlene’s mother Margy, and the two eventually opened a jazz nightclub, the first to cater to blacks and whites. It was called The Turf and it, like Birdland had its own radio show, for which Arlene wrote the theme song “The Slim Gaillard Show”. Now she was standing as well as sitting, getting a chance to sit in and sing as often as she chose. The die was cast. It was jazz, cool jazz.
Early Influences
In 1954, on the day she ought to have been attending her college graduation, she married Bob Corwin, a 21-year-old jazz pianist with the Don Elliot Quartet. Because Bob toured, Arlene began her new stage of education: listening to Don’s group while they played on the same bill as the jazz greats of the 50’s. There was Helen Merrill at George Wein’s Storyville in Boston, Terry Gibbs and Illinois Jacquet in Detroit, Bill Evans, Cy Coleman, Bernard Peiffer, Tal Farlowe,Johnny Smith John Mehagan and Billy Taylor (who had also performed at the Turf) at the sophisticated Composer owned by jazz lover and connoiseur Willie Short in Manhattan. ” It was also a chance to see and listen to other singers of the day. New York was marvelous in those days. I saw Peggy Lee at Basin Street, became friends with Blossom Dearie at Trudy’s in the village, Oscar Peterson, Marian McPartland at the Hickory House, Sheila Jordan, Morgana King. It was THE university for me. I was introduced to and mentored by Tony Fruscella, the tragic, unsung genius of the trumpet, ‘who I took on my gigs, but to whom I was actually the apprentice’ – and through Tony to Morgana King and Beverly Getz, the talented [and equally tragic] wife of Stan Getz. I feel blessed to have experienced jazz at that time. The guys would gossip about who played ‘behind’ or ‘ahead’ of the beat, bass lines, good changes, bad changes. No Music & Art or Hofstra did that. I learned almost the whole of what is now called The American Songbook. And I, I was sounding like Sarah Vaughn with a little voice.”
Hanging Around Manhattan; Not This, Not That…
Living in New York, and looking for a niche she spent time, as other musicians did, at the Musicians Union Local 802 or Charlie’s Tavern where jobs could show up. In this way, there were weeks and weekends away with big bands: Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra under the leadership of Warren Covington, Claude Thornhill and Larry Sonn.
“When you hang around New York all kinds of opportunities show up”. And so, she got a leading role in a B film called “Jukebox Racket’, wrote the score for another B film called, at the time “She Should Have Stayed In Bed”, later to be called ‘1,000 Shapes Of A Female: see IDMB (the company, called Exploit Films was owned by Errol Flynn “tall, big in every way, veins on his face, but exuding old world charm” He was quite, quite overwhelming.”
Then there was a bit part in John Cassavetes “Shadows”, followed by the lead in what has become a cult ‘beat’ musical called “The Nervous Set” by Fran and Jay Landesman where she introduced the now-standards “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most and “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men”, both subsequently recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey and numberless major artists. She studied acting with Joshua Shelley. “It was a time to find out who and what I was. “I was definitely not an actress. I was too introverted and none of those clothes fit” she says.
More Influences and more Not This, Not That…
In 1959 she met Johnny Burke (Burke & Van Heusen) who took her under his wing, taking her to Hollywood to demonstrate his show “Donnybrook” for Rosalind Russell and husband, producer Frederick Brisson “It was a glitzy time. I stayed at Bob Hope’s house in Palm Springs, met Frank Sinatra and his then fiancee Juliet Prowse, Jerry Lewis, Marlene Deitrich, had my own suite in Las Vegas , traveled first class, but was so introverted I always kept to myself, never saying much, definitely not participating in any of these scenes. Those clothes didn’t fit either.”
All the while she returned to the intimacy of New York supper clubs. They were the bottom line, singing and playing.
It was during the supper club period, she met Al Weissman who became her manager. She was signed to the Joe Glazer Agency and began to tour with her own trio. “Wherever I went they’d say, “You know, there’s just been a girl here who sounds like you. Her name was Barbra something. I suppose we had Brooklyn Jewishness in common. ” (She too was signed with Glazer.)
Although published by Frank Publishing (owned by composer Frank Loesser) years later she asked for the songs back because “nothing happened.” “It was a period of promise, a period I was not equipped to fulfill”.
1960s-1970s
In 1962 it was back to Hollywood with Al Weissman and high hopes. “I had some jobs, but never in my genre.” Back to New York. A little jaunt of songwriting with singer Dick Haymes. A short marriage of four months to Richard Robin Palmer.
Greece, Lebanon, Greece, Oxford – Yoga & Jazz
In 1966, by way of Paris, Greece (where she and husband Jim Council were neighbors with Leonard Cohen and Marianne) and Lebanon, “where I actually managed to do some television, singing jazz”, she settled in Oxford, England for the next 18 years, teaching yoga,(“lectured and demonstrated in what must have been a hundred Women’s Insitutes, posed for one of the very first health magazines called Health & Fitness, wrote articles on nutrition, had a weekly radio spot on a little radio show for BBB Oxford actually doing Yoga on radio while describing each pose with a microphone up my nose, did a tape on meditation – it was a lot of Yoga”) and singing and playing, being voted Best Jazz Singer in the Midlands 1972, appearing at Ronnie Scott’s three times. She did 3 television shows; a late night BBC jazz show called “In The Cool Of The Evening”, radio for BBC overseas, was invited over to Amsterdam to do Dutch radio, sang at universities around England, (“one night opposite Pink Floyd, “who were just starting out, I suppose”), the American air bases.
She appeared several times at The Stables in Wavendon (run by John Dankworth – now Sir John Dankworth – and Cleo Laine -now Dame Cleo Laine – while at the same time giving weekly yoga lessons to a group there, (which included Dame Cleo – “a wonderful
yogin”). The Wavendon All-Music Plan, later known simply as WAP “was the most stimulating and original enterprise I’ve ever encountered, pairing all kinds of musical genre. I even played on the same bill as Vladimir Ashkenazy.”
Starting in 1969 and all during the 70’s fate gave a push to the yoga side of things and Arlene was teaching yoga classes in doctor’s offices for hyper-tense, cardiac and overweight men. teaching regularly at conferences for IBM. She gave demonstrations, lectured all over for the Women’s Institute, posed and wrote for Health and Fitness Magazine (summer issue 1982) a book called The New Manual Of Yoga by Karen Ross (1973) wrote articles on nutrition, made a cassette called This Is Meditation. It was a full double life with Yoga taking half the time and singing the other half.
1980s to now.
In 1983 she once again ran into Slim Gaillard – this time in London. He asked her to appear on a television show he was producing that was to star himself, Kai Winding and Wayne Shorter. It was the last appearance she ever made in England.In 1984, finding Sweden fertile ground for singer/pianists, and meeting and falling in love with Kent Anderson, she moved to Sweden where she lives until today, performing, and writing regularly for “Live With Good Intentions” an online magazine.
Still growing, still changing
The latest news – 2009 and 25 years later, aged 75: a cd of her own songs for Imogen Records produced by George Reece, a concert of Johnny Mercer to commemorate his 100th birthday, poetry grown to 2000 poems (see Arlene Corwin Poetry).
2009 finds her favorite project on Google called Arlene Corwin’s Poetry, a project that started in 1949 or about 2,000 poems ago.
2010 landmark: First published book of poetry, “Circling Round Time” comes out in September “To The Child Mystic” the second due to come out in December.
Tags:arlene corwin’s background, biography, life
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28 Sep 2009
by arlenecorwin
in 1995, defiant doggerel, vaguely about music
Jazz Without Whiskey
Jazz without whiskey, jazz without smoke
Would sound to the masses like some kind of joke.
Jazz without whiskey might bring in more folk
But somehow or other, it’s got itself yoked
To bourbon and rye, and the need to get high.
Players of jazz are usually broke,
(There’s just no respect, and neglect is the problem.)
Playing in pokey, cheap holes-in-the-wall
Where the upright’s un-tuned (if there is one at all),
Prices are high, people are drunk,
And most of the listeners think jazz is bunk;
Strange situation this! Something’s gone wrong.
The wonder is that it continues to change – in the song
And the structure – and never goes under.
But whiskey’s okay if the drinker stays calm -
Receptive and quiet while player plays on.
And if there’s applause at the end it’s a balm.
But smoke! There’s an enemy hell bent on slaying
The public, the player. In short, life aborted
By one cigarette times a hundred,
Times three hundred sixty-five unnumbered darts.
The issue is, where does the yearning
Young jazzer finds outlet, sand for the grit
In his oyster that strives for its pearl,
Bosses who care, who have taste and right wit.
(Not the churlish and burly who’ll screw any girl,
Whose aim is the buck sans the need to take part
In the needs of the player to foster his art.)?
Players rise up and open your bidding!
Break off the shackles! Well, whom am I kidding?
I’m timid, and not an example
To take you the distance to getting your due;
But I have ideals; experience too.
Maybe they’d blend to produce the right end
If there were one loner to start a new trend.
It takes balls.
© Jazz Without Whiskey 5.10.1995 Vaguely About Music; Defiant Doggerel; Arlene Corwin
21 Feb 2009
by arlenecorwin
in 2008, defiant doggerel, our times our culture, war book
Tags: 2008, our times our culture, wars
Global Situation
Afghanistan
And all around;
Mass fleeing,
Caused
By wars
Imposed
By us –
There has
To be a downfall,
Short-term windfalls
Notwithstanding.
Really,
How dare we
Indulge in self-deceit,
No self insight
And not expect
The stars to fall
On Alabama?
©Global Situation 2.17.2008
Defiant Doggerel; Our Times, Our Culture; War Book;
Arlene Corwin
15 Feb 2009
by arlenecorwin
in 2009, circling round vanities, circling round woman, circling round wrinkles, defiant doggerel, vaguely about music
But I’m Never Sure
I sang at an old age home today.
Some were there dour, sour, gray.
Some were verbal,
One was gay.
They all were old.
They were all old.
I’ve cancelled my plans for a facelift.
My friend looks great! She’s had one.
I prefer to wait .
I think of words like template;
Would I like my grandchild to become
A surgéon,
Or cut by one?
I’d love to reach a hundred
And to miss the –dre(a)d of aging;
Spend on nuts and plants,
Living off their anti-oxidants,
Admired by a world around
For face that’s smooth with cheek new-found,
Aglow with makeup;
Forty year old face – neck up.
(That’s what it’s all about, n’est ce-pas?)
My husband helps me contemplate:
“Its meaningless to be wrinkle-less”.
Isn’t he clever?
© But I’m Never Sure 1.21.2009
Circling Round Vanities; Circling Round Woman; Circling Round Wrinkles;
Defiant Doggerel; Vaguely About Music;
Arlene Corwin
31 Jan 2009
by arlenecorwin
in 2008, a sense of the ridiculous, defiant doggerel, doggerel, small stories book
Tags: 2008, a sense of the ridiculous, deiant doggerel, small stories book
Detective Poem
Possible I’ll reason through
To something in the genre, to
A form more suitable,
More aptitudinal,
An under-plot
That’s got to do
With After and Before life.
Something’s Missing From the Corpse
, or“Where’s The Life The Was?”
Let’s see:
Face down; mud brown in water;
Strangled, mangled, tangled,
Bangles dangling. In the matter
Of the motive:
Money, lawyers, jealousy,
Contracts of dishonesty:
Lots of lies and lots of clues;
Inevitably Chapter Two:
Numbers, records: threads are sewn.
The unknown turns into the known.
Gun in drawers (the ones she wore)
Stolen money from the lawyers.
(Also, she was screwing one.)
Hence the murder, hence the gun.
Lies, sex, money: Chapter three.
No crime expert, but one sees.
The secretary had to go:
She knew. He knew she knew, and so,
The murderer was CEO.
Killer nabbed,
(There is a person on that slab)
Killer booked.
(I force a look).
Where is the life that used to be?
The real mystery
Unsolved by Dirty Harry, cops,
Something’s missing from the corpse.
Where is it?
© Detective Poem 5.21.2008
A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Defiant Doggerel; Small Stories Book;
Arlene Corwin
30 Jan 2009
by arlenecorwin
in 2008, a sense of the ridiculous, birthday book, circling round vanities, defiant doggerel
Tags: 2008, a sense of the ridiculous, birthday book, defiant doggerel
Birthday Resolution
It’s time:
To take to,
Waken to
The Serious –
To put a stop
To vanity,
The unacceptability
Of superficiality
And bye-bye
Permanently
To vanity
(with big, Big V)
Taking myself
Seriously
(big S big LY).
© Birthday Resolution 10.29.2008
Birthday Book; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Defiant Doggerel;
Circling Round Vanities;
Arlene Corwin
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