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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.