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COLLECTION<br />

702/463-0966<br />

The paintings shown here are by Crystal’s Dad, the award<br />

winning artist Victor Czerkas, the only known private student of<br />

the great Russian impressionist, Nicolai Fechin. Want more info?<br />

We’d be delighted to arrange a private showing...<br />

16 February 20<strong>18</strong><br />

Hey New Yorker’s,<br />

Remember the Algonquin?<br />

Since it opened in 1902, the Algonquin<br />

Hotel has been one of New York’s most<br />

Crystal Czerkas- famous hotels. During the 1920’s and<br />

Sarbacker ‘30’s, the theater district Hotel was regularly<br />

graced by literary icons like Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber at<br />

its infamous Round Table. And over the decades the Hotel has<br />

featured a supper club which launched many musical careers<br />

including that of current superstar Harry Connick, Jr.<br />

The loyalty of the Hotel’s famous guests was largely due to<br />

the management, which strove to create home-like comfort for<br />

its guests with no radical changes. When carpeting needed replacing,<br />

original designs were recreated and installed overnight<br />

so Hotel guests wouldn’t see any difference. The Hotel’s staff<br />

relied on subtle accents and color highlights to enhance their<br />

public rooms. For most of the year, lobby sofas were upholstered<br />

in elegant red velvet. Then in summer, light blue slip<br />

covers were used to create a cooler ambiance.<br />

You can use the Algonquin<br />

technique to bring the seasons<br />

into your home. Select bold<br />

accents in primary colors like<br />

red, purple, and gold for winter<br />

months, and then as our Vegas<br />

temperatures begin to rise,<br />

change your accent pillows<br />

and area rugs to soft blues or<br />

assorted pastels.<br />

I like to bring out<br />

my Dad’s still life<br />

watercolors in the<br />

Spring and choose<br />

colors from them<br />

to highlight our living<br />

room. Hanging<br />

a few impressionistic<br />

florals is a great<br />

way to welcome a new season and you can use them as a color<br />

pallet for selecting simple accessories. Plus, inexpensive floral<br />

giclees can offer the same punch as original watercolors.<br />

For more information, call Ray at<br />

Harry James<br />

By: Yvonne Cloutier / Musical Moments<br />

His father was a director and featured<br />

trumpeter in the Mighty Haag Circus. His<br />

mother, a trapeze artist. His full name was Harry<br />

Haag James, getting his middle name from this circus.<br />

Harry was born in 1916, in a show-business hotel. The family moved<br />

with the circus to Beaumont Texas. At 5, he learned the trumpet from a<br />

book (one page at a time) preceded by playing drums at 4.<br />

At 15, after winning a State high school trumpet competition, he<br />

auditioned for Lawrence Welk. (Welk liked his playing, but wanted a<br />

musician who could play more instruments than drums and trumpet.)<br />

Harry James was “discovered” by Benny Goodman’s brother, Irving.<br />

James was playing with the same band, Ben Pollack’s, Benny Goodman<br />

started with.<br />

James as a Goodman band member, “played a hot, exciting trumpet<br />

on such tunes as Sing, Sing, Sing, and One O’Clock Jump.” His<br />

success came when he included romantic songs depicting World War<br />

II times and the separations it caused.<br />

You Made Me Love You was his first hit - a trumpet version of Judy<br />

Garland’s. In 1939, after two years with Goodman, Mr. James left and<br />

started his own band.<br />

An interesting anecdote: While his new band was playing in New<br />

York, he heard a radio vocalist with a band in New Jersey. The singer,<br />

actually the master of ceremonies, was Frank Sinatra. James hired<br />

him.<br />

After 8 months, Sinatra, needing money because his wife was<br />

pregnant, and with the band not doing well, left. James replaced him<br />

with Dick Haymes<br />

Ciribiribin, an Italian folk song, became Harry James theme song,<br />

after he did a memorable jazz arrangement of it.<br />

Other hits were: I Cried for You, I Don’t Want to Walk Without<br />

You. His famous jazz pieces for trumpet were: Concerto for Trumpet<br />

and Flight of the Bumblebee. He appeared on radio and TV. At one<br />

time, he was so popular that Columbia Records couldn’t keep up with<br />

his record demand.<br />

In 1943, Harry married his second wife, Betty Grable, the movie star<br />

whose pin-up pictures adorned every G.I. barracks. They divorced in<br />

1965.<br />

In the late 40s, the big band era was fading, but James continued to<br />

keep his band together, settling in<br />

Las Vegas, where he then played<br />

much of the time.<br />

He was married three times<br />

and had 5 children. Harry James<br />

remained popular for 40 plus<br />

years, dying in 1983 at age 67.<br />

Yvonne Cloutier, a former teacher/principal, with a music<br />

background, specializes in ragtime piano. She reports about<br />

music on SCA-TV.com/Anthem Alive! You can contact her at www.<br />

mytimeisragtime.com.

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