Comparisions

Go to youtube and write "Tuxedo Junction" and click on the first on the list; you get the wonderful Glenn Millar Orchestra playing what I think is his finest piece, "Tuxedo Junction" with its deep purple colour of an opening by trombones and a magical tune that follows played by saxophones - wonderful.
But it's not the version by the Glenn Millar orchestra when he was alive. You can get that version on youtube too; it's a beautiful version but quite different in rhythm and without a lot of the solo improvisers. Which is the best? The original of course. Well, I'm not so sure. I like the new version better.
There's an article in this week's Spectator by James Walton in which he draws comparisions between the programmes on TV in the sixties and seventies with those on now and concludes with "mightn't the terrible truth be that these days we get the television we deserve - and probably even want".
One fact is pre-emminent in his article and that is that the Americans make better drama now than we do - "Mad Men", "The Wire", "The Sopranos" for example compared with, say, "Lark Rise at Candelford".
The name that crops up most in the article is Clive James, probably the most influential of TV critics in the 70's. I remember saying to one of a group of Cardiff based singers and players who wrote their own very clever material and were exceptionally good musicians: "How are you doing these days? Successful d'you think?" He said: "We are waiting for the verdict from Clive James."
Yes, he was tremendously influencial but I don't think his judgements were always sound. I recall him giving a good review of "How Green was my Valley". I thought the serial pretty awful and wrote to him comparing it to John Ford's film. He wrote back to say he was obviously not as enamoured of Ford as I was.
I was once in conversation with a BBC producer about some work I had submitted and he said he had worked for Rudolf Cartier who never went into close-up in his TV plays for at least 20 minutes. I said, without thinking, "John Ford's film 'How Green was my Valley' starts with a shot in close-up of two hands and a man saying 'Time to leave the land of my fathers' ".
End of my career as a playwright with that producer.