Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
Max Steiner – Casablanca suite
An evening pause: From the 1942 film Casablanca, still one of the greatest movies ever made.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Helen Mirren – On The Good Ship Lollipop
Jefferson Starship – Jane
Cyd Charisse, John Brascia, & Sammy Davis Jr. – Frankie & Johnny
An evening pause: From the 1956 film, Meet Me in Las Vegas. The dancing is great, but I really think Sammy Davis makes the piece with his singing.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
WFAA – The mystery of the stolen de Kooning painting worth $165M
An evening pause: There are some mysteries that will always remain unsolved. And this one is one of the strangest.
Hat tip Cotour.
Patricia Neway – Climb Every Mountain
An evening pause: The Rodgers and Hammenstein song from The Sound of Music, performed live on the Ed Sullivan Show, 1959.
Makes an interesting contrast with yesterday’s pause.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
The Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil
MIT – Quicker than a Wink
An evening pause: This 1940 short film won an Academy Award for best one-reel short. It provides a nice and witty demonstration of the first technology that allowed very high speed slow motion movies to be made.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Glen Campbell – Galveston
Family Tree Nuts – Annie Moore, Ellis Island’s first immigrant
Happy Childhood Dance Ensemble – Kalinka
Jude Kofie – Rock The Casbah
An eveing pause: More young talent. This is different in that he improvises his own piano version based on only hearing a portion of the original.
Hat tip Cotour.
The Graystones & J8KE – Baker Street
An evening pause: Hat tip Mike Nelson, who adds, “by a group of kids that make me jealous as I never had ANY musical aptitude whatever.”
Ethel Merman – Anything Goes
Jay Leno’s Garage – Randy Grubb’s Decopods
Dolly Parton, Stella Parton, & Cassie Parton – Break My Mind
Billy Gibbons, Kingfish Ingram, & Orianthi – La Grange
An evening pause: Performed live 2025, and beautifully directed by Gibbons as well.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Annie Lennox – There Must Be An Angel
Elmer Bernstein – To Kill A Mockingbird Suite
An evening pause: Performed live 2014 by the Beethoven Academy Orchestra with Sara Andon on the flute.
Some movies are made special because of their score, and I think this applies to the 1962 film, To Kill a Mockingbird. It is a superb work of art, but it rises above many comparable films due to the music that Elmer Bernstein wrote for it. His suite only gives a hint of its effectiveness, in the movie.
Johnny Cash & June Carter – Jackson
Abraham Lincoln – a tragic and heroic life
An evening pause: To celebrate the birthday today one of America’s greatest man, a short biography.
The video below does a really fine job in a very short time. Lincoln’s life was filled with heart-breaking tragedy, far more than most Americans today realize. Yet the man endured, so that he ended up changing his nation so that it finally honored fully its founding documents. As he said so eloquently in 1863:
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Tom Goes Nomad – How Victorians Built This Lighthouse at Sea
An evening pause: Built fast and cheaply, despite real cutting edge engineering challenges, at the turn of the 19th century.
Hat tip Cotour.
Peter Gabriel – In Your Eyes
Cyd Charisse & Ricardo Montalban – Bar dance
DW News – Mining the world’s most precious marble
Stephen Sondheim – Someone in a Tree
An evening pause: For my birthday, a repost of a 2010 evening pause of one of my favorite Broadway songs, from Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures, which I only recently learned was his favorite song as well.
It tells the story of a significant moment in history, the moment when Japan’s leaders signed their first international treaty in 1852 with the United States, but from the point of view of outside witnesses. Its point is profound, that history is not just made by the leaders who sign the deals, but by every individual who makes up the whole of human society.
It’s the fragment, not the day
It’s the pebble, not the stream
It’s the ripple, not the sea
That is happening.
Not the building but the beam
Not the garden but the stone
Only cups of tea
And history
And someone in a tree.
Uncovered Past – Traditional charcoal making
An evening pause: It always amazes me the level of engineering sophistication that one finds in all human endeavor, even from centuries past.
Hat tip Cotour.
Judy Garland -Trolley Song
An evening pause: From the 1944 film, Meet me in St. Louis. I posted this in July 2010 as one of the very first evening pauses. As I wrote then, “The last line of the song says it all, about life and love.”
Hat tip to Judd Clark, who suggested it, which convinced me it was time to post it again.