Wonderful post. I'm a big fan of Satie, and have several recordings of Parade. I think Cocteau suggested the sound effects, gunfire, a typewriter, which Satie felt were superfluous but went along with it. I like the sound effects personally. Varese was inspired to use sirens and ship's bells in Amerique by Parade's use of them, and in turn inspired Antheil to use siren and airplane propeller in the score of Ballet Mecanique. I think the use of the typewriter as percussion in Parade likely inspired its use on China My China on Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, where I believe Robert Wyatt is playing it.
Some other tangents which come to mind. Cocteau later used a young singer to play the witch, Aglaonice, in the second part of his Orphic Trilogy, Juliette Greco. She was part of the post war Parisian Jazz scene centered in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, whose unofficial mayor was novelist, playwright, Jazz critic, trumpeter, singer, songwriter, etc., Boris Vian. Vian was a member of the Collége de !Pataphysique, an organization of writers formed to pay homage to Alfred Jarry's pseudo-science, which also included Jacques Prévert, Raymond Queneau, himself an early member of Breton's Surrealist Group, and various others. Jarry having been one of the pre-cursor surrealist saints named by Breton as inspirations.
Jean-Paul Sartre was not a member of the Collége, but did hang around the Saint-Germain-des-Pres scene along with Simone de Beauvoir. Much of the material on Greco's early recordings were composed by Josef Kosma with lyrics by Prévert, Robert Desnos, another former surrealist, and surprisingly, Queneau and Sartre, who each penned a lyric for her. I don't think she was the first to record the Kosma / Prévert Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves), and Yves Montand's recording is better known, but she first recorded it the same year he did and I like hers better.
In 1949, I think, Vian brought Miles Davis to Paris. He'd previously organized sojourns by Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Erroll Garner and others. He introduced Davis to Greco and later to Louis Malle, thus the score to Elevator to the Gallows. Greco and Davis had a torrid affair, and she wanted to marry him, but he felt he couldn't subject her to Jim Crow America. The miscegenation laws had actually been repealed in California in 1949, I knew an elderly woman who was in one of the first inter-racial couples to marry that year, but were still on the books in many places even 17 years later when the Supreme Court rendered them moot with their ruling in Loving v. Virginia.
Boris Vian wrote and recorded Le Déserteur, an anti-Algerian War song banned in France in the '50s. In Thomas Pynchon's novel, V, the "whole sick crew" are taught a song by a young woman who learned it from a French Paratrooper on leave from the Algerian War in Malta. Pynchon doesn't name the song, but quotes one of the verses in French, and it's from Le Déserteur. Also in V, there's a character named McClintock Sphere, a thinly disguised Ornette Coleman. He's introduced playing at the V Note, blowing "a hand carved ivory alto saxophone with a 4½ reed".
And finally Robert Wyatt's song, Old Europe, on his 2003 album, Cuckooland, is about the romance of Greco and Davis.
Fascinating post. I am a huge Satie fan. I have all of his solo piano works & listen to them frequently. I guess I need to check out his larger works. Parade sounds intriguing. Emporia, KS to Paris. That's quite the journey.
Wonderful post. I'm a big fan of Satie, and have several recordings of Parade. I think Cocteau suggested the sound effects, gunfire, a typewriter, which Satie felt were superfluous but went along with it. I like the sound effects personally. Varese was inspired to use sirens and ship's bells in Amerique by Parade's use of them, and in turn inspired Antheil to use siren and airplane propeller in the score of Ballet Mecanique. I think the use of the typewriter as percussion in Parade likely inspired its use on China My China on Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, where I believe Robert Wyatt is playing it.
Some other tangents which come to mind. Cocteau later used a young singer to play the witch, Aglaonice, in the second part of his Orphic Trilogy, Juliette Greco. She was part of the post war Parisian Jazz scene centered in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, whose unofficial mayor was novelist, playwright, Jazz critic, trumpeter, singer, songwriter, etc., Boris Vian. Vian was a member of the Collége de !Pataphysique, an organization of writers formed to pay homage to Alfred Jarry's pseudo-science, which also included Jacques Prévert, Raymond Queneau, himself an early member of Breton's Surrealist Group, and various others. Jarry having been one of the pre-cursor surrealist saints named by Breton as inspirations.
Jean-Paul Sartre was not a member of the Collége, but did hang around the Saint-Germain-des-Pres scene along with Simone de Beauvoir. Much of the material on Greco's early recordings were composed by Josef Kosma with lyrics by Prévert, Robert Desnos, another former surrealist, and surprisingly, Queneau and Sartre, who each penned a lyric for her. I don't think she was the first to record the Kosma / Prévert Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves), and Yves Montand's recording is better known, but she first recorded it the same year he did and I like hers better.
In 1949, I think, Vian brought Miles Davis to Paris. He'd previously organized sojourns by Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Erroll Garner and others. He introduced Davis to Greco and later to Louis Malle, thus the score to Elevator to the Gallows. Greco and Davis had a torrid affair, and she wanted to marry him, but he felt he couldn't subject her to Jim Crow America. The miscegenation laws had actually been repealed in California in 1949, I knew an elderly woman who was in one of the first inter-racial couples to marry that year, but were still on the books in many places even 17 years later when the Supreme Court rendered them moot with their ruling in Loving v. Virginia.
Boris Vian wrote and recorded Le Déserteur, an anti-Algerian War song banned in France in the '50s. In Thomas Pynchon's novel, V, the "whole sick crew" are taught a song by a young woman who learned it from a French Paratrooper on leave from the Algerian War in Malta. Pynchon doesn't name the song, but quotes one of the verses in French, and it's from Le Déserteur. Also in V, there's a character named McClintock Sphere, a thinly disguised Ornette Coleman. He's introduced playing at the V Note, blowing "a hand carved ivory alto saxophone with a 4½ reed".
And finally Robert Wyatt's song, Old Europe, on his 2003 album, Cuckooland, is about the romance of Greco and Davis.
Thanks for all the fascinating insights, Lenny!
Fascinating post. I am a huge Satie fan. I have all of his solo piano works & listen to them frequently. I guess I need to check out his larger works. Parade sounds intriguing. Emporia, KS to Paris. That's quite the journey.
I think that Le Booeuf sur le Toit is much more inspired by Afro-Brazilian music than by jazz.