12AngryMen #11 (alternativesoundtrack #3)
(John Lee Hooker - Little Wheel)
not long to go now as the ‘guiltys’ fall like dominoes. each piece of evidence is being scutinized and eventually found to be unworthy.
the music is courtesy of Bluesman supreme, the pioneering John Lee Hooker whose first recording, (Boogie Chillen’) was in 1948. This one, from 1957, is one from his days spent at Vivian Carter and James Bracken’s Vee Jay Label.
12AngryMen #10 (alternativesoundtrack #3)
(Original Broadway Cast - Gee Officer Krupke)
second slice from the Original Broadway production of West Side Story and what else could it be other than this one. themusicologist only knows this song from watching the film as a youngblood growing up in the 70’s and 80’s but this cut is the only one that I can still see in my minds eye. an excellent piece of social commentary about what was a growing concern for America in the second half of the 50’s, Juvenile Delinquents.
The dilemma seems to have been a question of how to make money out of teenagers without too much cost to society. As first America, (and then the world), was manouvered away from a ‘needs’ and into into a ‘desires’ culture this proved impossible.
Emotions are a dangerous playground and a ‘got to have it at any cost’ mentality was never going to be conducive to a harmonious society. Some of the problems we now face are related to this move into desires in part because emotional responses are not rational so if one desires something they are more likely to be irrational in the pursuit of it. leading, in a ever increasing number of cases, to a ‘by any means necessary’ approach to the aquisition of such things.
12AngryMen #9 (alternativesoundtrack #3)
(Jimmy Smith & Lou Donaldson - Summertime)
so the count is now 9 to 3 in favour of the guilty’s. The evidence is being torn to shreds piece by piece and what started as an open and shut case is turning into a battle of subjectivite opinion vs objective facts.
the two performances that, for me, are outstanding are Henry Fonda and Lee J Cobb. The others are good but these two are special. both are featured on this piece of dialogue.
the song which comes courtesy of organist supreme Jimmy Smith and Blue Note stable mate, Saxophone legend Lou Donaldson is a haunting 1957 rendition of the George Gershwin classic Summertime, (penned for the Opera Porgy & Bess). A song that has been covered more times than I’ve had hot dinners, rumour has it that Gershwin adapted it from a Ukranian lullaby ‘Oy Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon’, (A Dream Passes By The Windows), which he heard in 1926.
