"Becoming Ella Fitzgerald" by Judith Tick (2023)

Impeccably researched but ultimately a bit dry, the latest biographer of beloved "Fitz" falls in the same trap as Nadine Cohodas in her biography of Dinah Washington - namely, lacking info about the subject's personal life, the authoress focuses on every single documented concert performance and studio recording. So after a few chapters it starts to get a bit repetitive, because there is simply nothing much to tell about Fitzgerald herself, except yet another concert, another tour, another studio recording. Because Ella was (pardon the pun) elusive, we can admire her, we can love her but we can not pinpoint anything specific about her outside of the concert stage. There might be a possibility that the great lady genuinely had no private life, since she was always working - you never read about Fitzgerald enjoying some relaxed vacation or such, until the very end when Diabetes forced her into a wheelchair and she was simply not physically capable of touring anymore.  

I was initially a bit alarmed already in the foreword, because Judith Tick had a currently fashionable way of expressing herself as being not lucky but "privileged" for having access to archives - you know, the type who is always on some spiritual quest, "learning" and "changing the narrative". Thankfully she did not turned the book into anything but biography of a musician, even though she occasionally tries valiantly to describe her subject as activist, where Fitzgerald was by all accounts everything but. Personally I did not find it boring but I can understand that some readers might find it a bit exhausting.

Curiously, Thick completely ignores what might have been genuinely interesting part of the story - Fitzgerald's teenage years spent in New York's reformatory school with other juvenile delinquents where she was allegedly frequently beaten and punished - Thick just breezes over this and never elaborates how this might have scarred and psychologically  shaped the singer always known for her quiet disposition. (According to the documents, teenage Fitzgerald escaped the institution.) 

A gift from me to me, with love

As a birthday gift from me to me, I decided to bite the bullet and bought myself something that I wanted for a very, very long time - a real record player so I can still play my old vinyl collection. Even better, I found something online - a nostalgic replica of an old fashioned radio with record player on top (under the roof) with added CD and cassette player so nothing has to stay in dusty boxes anymore and I can indulge in cherishing my old collection. 

In my childhood, we had something very similar in the kitchen - it was an old fashioned radio and once you open the top, there was a record player there. I had discovered music via this old, crappy record player and played my singles non stop (the ones I got for the seventh birthday), later built a cute little vinyl collection that unfortunately got lost, along with many other things. Now as i opened some old boxes, I see some old LPs and was thinking "I might as well find some record player, since I still have records". And not just records, I also own cassettes and CDs because I am coming from another time when listeners were actually buying music in order to listen to it - there were no streaming services online, where is enough if you only know the title of the song - no sir, in my time you had to walk to a record store and browse with dusty fingers until you find something that appeals to you. 

Spotify had changed all of this and now we listen our music differently. I have almost completely stopped listening to the radio but I still enjoy Podcasts. So now when I have a brand new record player, I decided not just to dust off my old vinyl collection but to treat myself with occasional browsing in a second hand shops, which are very popular here.  In fact, I browsed today - and for the first time I was happy because I could actually purchase something. There were some self-imposed rules:

- nothing that is already available on Spotify (what would be the point)

- only the records that were never released on CD

- nothing too expensive (its only nostalgic hobby, after all)

- maximum € 10 at once

- records must be in passable condition 

- if possible, try to build the same collection I once had (that would be neat)

And immediately I am faced with the fact that my LP collection is hopelessly old-fashioned and uncool. But this is who I am. And my uncoolness is the deliberate part of my personality, since I always followed my own path and declined to follow the herd. This means that my collection will be mostly 1960s and 1970s oldies and this is perfectly fine by me, since it makes me happy. I did listen to my CDs from time to time, but now is the first time that I listened my old cassette tapes since 2004. That was exactly 20 years ago! The sound - must admit - is not the same as on some first class stereo system but to be honest, its perfectly fine for my little study room and the idea is simply to enjoy my old collection, not to impress anybody. + I am going deaf anyway + I don't need super clean sound for my collection of 1920s blues. There is a Blue tooth option so eventually I might figure it out, so far I tried to connect it to my Iphone and got spotify playing on the record player instead the other way around ha ha, well it takes some time. Happy Birthday to me!

"The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu" by Sax Rohmer (1913)

For a simple change of pace, I decided to try something else completely and turned my attention to a 100 year old pulp novel, originally published in magazines chapter by chapter as serialisation in magazines like "Colliers" and this explains why the novel feels like perpetual high-adrenaline adventure chase, since each chapter ends with a cliffhanger. It was a huge sensation of its time and inspired sequels and movie versions, but I'm afraid it did not age very well. 

Sax Rohmer (real name Arthur Henry Ward) perhaps wanted to write something similar to Sherlock Holmes novels, a story with two heroes who are both fighting the evil. In this case we have Sir Denis Nayland Smith (a sort of well-wheeled government agent who inspires instant respect from everyone he meets) and his accidental helper, Dr Petrie who actually tells the story from his perspective. Nayland has just returned from Burma - all tanned and worried about a certain dangerous individual who is danger for the whole white race (!) and here is where things go funny. I cannot possibly imagine how was it a 100 years ago, but in a present time this sounds fairly ludicrous - back than, it served the purpose of creating "us against them" perspective, where good guys fight an obvious enemy who must be different, as to easily distinguish it from "our boys". It would actually work better if Rohmer created an antagonist who can easily hide in a crowd, instead of making every single Asian character instantly suspicious - but who am I to say, Rohmer became wealthy and successful with these novels and it just doesn't make sense to judge a 100 year old novel by our current standards.

It starts fairly well and the game of cat & mouse reminded me strangely on French detective novel "Fantomas" (written more or less at the same time as this one) but at certain point it became repetitive - chapter after chapter, our guys follow Asian characters into a dangerous, dimly lit places and opium dens, just to narrowly escape sure death by poison, etc, etc. Each time mad genius of Dr. Fu Manchu almost gets them, but than something (or somebody) helps them so we continue to more chapters of exactly same premises. There is an obligatory young beauty who for no apparent reason falls in love with Dr Petrie and she usually helps when everything seems lost. Towards the end I even got a little bored, it might be that certain old novels (like this one, or "The Phantom of the Opera" from the same time) are just too old.