Agatha Christie’s Poirot - Series 2

Agatha Christie’s Poirot – An Introduction
Agatha Christie’s Poirot – Series 1

1. Peril at End House (first broadcast January 7, 1990): While taking a week’s holiday at the Majestic hotel in a Cornish resort town (St. Loo in the book, St. Looe in the film), Hercule Poirot encounters the beautiful Nick Buckley, owner of the neighboring End House mansion. Ms. Buckley, who is unaware of Poirot’s world-famous abilities, casually mentions several recently close calls with death and the detective has reason to fear for the young lady’s life. As Poirot gets to know the young lady, he discovers a web of deceit that builds upon a round-the-world pilot, a drug-smuggling operation, seemingly opportunistic confidants and a particularly unique family secret. First published in 1932 and adapted as a stage play by Arnold Ridley in 1940, Peril at End House is the very first of Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels to be adapted by Granada into a feature-length film (about 100 minutes). Oddly, the story had never been filmed before – despite its touristy appeal. It is a typically splendid pastiche of Christie and Granada’s high standard for mysterious perfection. Clive Exton’s characteristically marvelous script sticks pretty close to Christie’s main story, taking away a bit of the literary fluff and minimizing the role of several unimportant characters. But, unfortunately, the film opens some plot holes that are more properly explained in the novel, such as the origin of a bullet that buzzes by Nick’s head, the elucidation of the reason for Nick wearing black on the night of the fireworks (though it becomes apparent upon repeated viewings), the true sender (and purpose) of a poisoned box of chocolates and the true nature of the odd Australian couple, the Crofts. Much of the book is translated as-is for the film, with many lines of Christie’s deft dialog left firmly in tact. Both the novel and the film feature Captain Hastings – although he is married on the page, he still has not yet met Bella in the series’ progression; so he is, as he has been up to now in the Granada series, single. But the film also brings Chief Inspector Japp into the story earlier than the book and perfectly introduces Pauline Moran, who is a real spiritualist, as Miss Lemon into the story as the spiritualist who conducts the séance conducted by Hastings, of all people, in the book. The novel references such past Poirot escapades as The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) in Chapters 1 & 5, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916) in Chapter 14, The Clue of the Chocolate Box (1923) in Chapter 15 and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) in Chapter 16 – but since none of these stories had yet been filmed, the film’s plot leaves out all such references. Like the previously-filmed Murder in the Mews, this is another Christie mystery where a significant murder happens during a fireworks display. Polly Walker, who perfectly portrays Nick Buckley, also plays Bess Sedgwick in the 2007 Marple film At Bertram’s Hotel. Carol MacReady, as the Australian Milly Croft, also plays the completely different Miss Johnson in the 2008 Poirot film Cat among the Pigeons (she also appeared in the 1982 television film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy).

2. The Veiled Lady (first broadcast January 14, 1990): Dispirited by the lack of cases that require his attention, Poirot posits that “I regret that I am of such a moral disposition. To work against the law, it would be pleasing, for a change.” Then a heavily veiled lady named Lady Millicent Castle Vaughan asks for Poirot’s assistance in recovering an indiscreet letter being used by the unscrupulous Mr. Lavington to blackmail her. Poirot goes against the law to recover the letter but winds up ensnarling culprits involved in a jewel robbery. First published in the UK in 1923 as The Case of the Veiled Lady, The Veiled Lady was published in the UK as part of Poirot’s Early Cases and in the US as part of Poirot Investigates. The highly implausible, yet exceedingly entertaining story is preserved almost word for word by scripter Clive Exton with several smart additions including a comical scene appropriately recalling Peter Sellers’ turn as Inspector Clouseau as the telephone-repair man in the 1975 film The Return of the Pink Panther and a climactic scene filmed gorgeously in London’s magnificent natural history museum. The beautiful Frances Barber, as Lady Millicent Castle Vaughan, later appeared as Hinchcliff in the 2005 Marple film A Murder Is Announced and as Merlina Rival in the 2009 Poirot film The Clocks. Fiachra Trench, who scored seven Poirot episodes during the second and third seasons and went onto to work on Ren & Stimpy, of all things, provided the enchanting incidental music to The Veiled Lady, the first of his Poirot scores.

3. The Lost Mine (first broadcast on January 21, 1990): A British concern headed by Mr. Pearson wishes to negotiate with Wu Ling, a Chinese merchant, to acquire the rights to the only known record of a lost silver mine. Wu Ling fails to appear at the appointed meeting and is discovered dead several days later. Mr. Pearson consults Poirot on the matter and the journey takes the detective into London’s seamy opium-den netherworld. First published in the UK in 1923, The Lost Mine was published in the UK as part of Poirot’s Early Cases and in the US as part of Poirot Investigates. Christie’s story is recounted to Hastings by Poirot in a most fanciful way, with the reader as baffled by Poirot’s sudden solution to the crime as Hastings is upon hearing it. The film makes Poirot witness to a seemingly unimportant clue that he never gets in the book, helping him to crack the case more logically than the book allows him to. It is a dramatization that is in many ways superior to the original story. The script enhances the story with several dashes of daring do: Poirot and Hastings, for instance, engaged in a mostly symbolic game of Monopoly (despite the fact that the film takes place in 1935 and the British version of the board game was not introduced until 1936); an investment firm’s news-making failure bankrupting many, giving the crime’s perpetrator more of a motive to do what he did; Poirot discovering that his bank account has been horrifically overdrafted; and the rather extended detective work of Chief Inspector Japp (Inspector Mitchell helms the book’s investigation, much to Poirot’s dissatisfaction) and his modern methods of police surveillance. Like Peril at End House, this is also one of Agatha Christie’s hard-to-accept situations where the one who initially consulted the world’s greatest detective about a crime turns out to be discovered by the detective as the crime’s perpetrator. The film also enhances the story with some splendidly colorful actors who really bring a special quality of realistic otherworldliness that the book only hints at. These include Anthony Bate as Pearson (a Lord here), James Saxon as Reggie Dyer, Colin Stinton as investment analyst Charles Lester and, most notably, Hi Ching as the bizarre Chow Feng, proprietor of The Red Eyed Dragon club. Barbara Barnes, who plays Mrs. Lester here, also played Esther Walters in the 1989 Miss Marple film A Caribbean Mystery and Mrs. Leidner in the 2001 Poirot film Murder in Mesopotamia. John Cording also reprises the role of backgrounded police officer Jameson from the previous season’s Murder in the Mews.

4. The Cornish Mystery (first broadcast January 28, 1990): Mrs. Pengelley, a middle-aged lady from Polgarwith, a small market town in Cornwall, comes to consult Poirot out of fear of being poisoned by her husband, a dentist who, she suspects, is having an affair with his “yellow-haired hussy” of an assistant. Even though the lady’s doctor insists her troubles are related to gastritis, Mrs. Pengelley is adamant that she is being poisoned. Poirot agrees to look into the matter and assures Mrs. Pengelley that he will travel to Polgarwith the following day to investigate. But upon his arrival, Poirot discovers Mrs. Pengelley has been killed, the victim of the arsenic poisoning she feared. First published in the UK in 1923, The Cornish Mystery was published in the UK as part of Poirot’s Early Cases and in the US as part of The Under Dog and Other Stories. This story is set up similarly to the Poirot short story How Does Your Garden Grow (1935), but is much more interestingly prompted and, surprisingly, resolved (by Poirot) via the “vox populi,” or, the voice of the people (gossip, rumors, innuendo, etc.). This thin conceit seems more in line with Miss Marple’s village-life métier than Poirot’s citified cynic. But, of course, Miss Christie makes it all sound palpably plausible and the idea is certainly intriguing. Clive Exton, as always, does a superb job bringing this story to life, nicely bringing both Miss Lemon and Inspector Japp into the plot’s machinations. Both David Suchet and Hugh Fraser bring some great comic interplay to the proceedings, particularly during Poirot’s surprising unveiling – with no proof whatsoever – of the guilty party.

5. The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim (first broadcast February 4, 1990): A financier, Mr. Davenheim, disappears from his home shortly before a meeting he has scheduled with Mr. Lowen, a former rival and potential business partner. Shortly thereafter it is discovered that Davenheim’s safe has been robbed and a small fortune including his wife’s jewels is gone. Lowen is suspected in the disappearance and the robbery but nothing can be proved. Inspector Japp bets Poirot that he can’t solve the mystery without leaving his flat. Poirot accepts the wager. First published in the UK in 1923, The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim (also known without the “Mr.” in the title) was published as part of Poirot Investigates and bears some structural similarities to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tale The Man with the Twisted Lip (1891). In this particular story, Agatha Christie clearly defines Poirot as a man of thought (order and method) as opposed to a man of action, something any one of her American contemporaries would go about quite differently. The film, scripted by David Renwick, who wrote the earlier The Lost Mine as well as the following Wasp’s Nest and The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor, throws a good deal of witty humor into the film’s mix and even adds a wholly symbolic magic angle that works quite well in bringing the story to life, despite the preposterous fate of the missing Mr. Davenheim, which is left utterly in tact. Renwick also cleverly cues up Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture to make the robbery somewhat more believable than Christie’s outline presents, but also much more comically enjoyable. The film ratchets up Hastings’ sleuthing abilities by making him Poirot’s intrepid legman – or, rather, Watson to Poirot’s Holmes or even Archie Goodwin (Christie is professed to have quite admired this Rex Stout character) to Poirot’s Nero Wolfe – whereas the story is uncomfortably content to make the Captain, with hardly any appearance in the story whatsoever, a foolish idiot. Patrick Page, as the stage conjurer who makes women disappear, is a real magician and also acted as a magic consultant for the film. Indeed, David Suchet’s Poirot performs several sleights of hand most impressively. Kenneth Colley, as Mr. Davenheim, will be familiar for, among other things, playing Jesus in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). It is interesting to note that “The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim” was adapted as a 30-minute play for an April 1962 broadcast on General Electric Theatre under the title of “Hercule Poirot.” The play, which was the first appearance of Poirot on television, was introduced by Ronald Regan, directed by John Brahm and starred Martin Gabel as Poirot.

6. Double Sin (first broadcast February 11, 1990): During a bus trip, Poirot and Captain Hastings encounter Mary Durrant, a young woman who is acting on behalf of her aunt’s antique shop, to deliver rare miniatures to an American collector. Along the way, the miniatures are revealed to be stolen and, upon alerting the American buyer, it is discovered that he has already made the purchase and the miniatures are well in hand. One of the fellow travelers on the coach tour who had been acting suspiciously is suspected of the heist and the illicit sale of the miniatures. First published in the in 1929 as Road or Rail, Double Sin was later published in the UK as part of Poirot’s Early Cases and in the US as part of Double Sin and Other Stories. Like Agatha Christie’s later Miss Marple novel, Nemesis, Double Sin gets its kicks out of a claustrophobic coach tour. But where the story finds Poirot overworked and needing a holiday to the south, the film finds the detective underworked and dragging Captain Hastings up north. Clive Exton’s script is markedly more fanciful than the original story, giving responsibility for the main investigation, such as it is, to Captain Hastings – Poirot, of course, still solves the case – and having Poirot use Inspector Japp’s “greatest cases” lecture tour as a not-so-apparent excuse to make the trip in the first place. The suspicious-acting man on the bus also gets a trumped-up back story to explain his suspicious actions, which weren’t all that suspicious in the first place. Director Richard Spence, who also directed the series’ next The Adventure of the Cheap Flat and The Adventure of the Western Star, provides some nice settings for the action, particularly along the English countryside and in and around the marvelously stylized art-deco hotel, Midland – which even Hastings finds a peculiar name for a place up North.

7. The Adventure of the Cheap Flat (first broadcast February 18, 1990): While discussing lodgings one evening at a party, a young couple named The Robinsons reveals that in the last few days they have secured a handsome apartment in a fashionable part of town for an astonishingly low rate. Poirot finds the story most curious and, upon investigation, discovers the Robinsons have occupied the apartment for six months and the Mrs. Robinson of the apartment is decidedly different than the Mrs. Robinson of the party. Poirot is intrigued and takes a flat in the same building to investigate further. First published in the UK in 1923 and also as part of Poirot Investigates, The Adventure of the Cheap Flat is, like The Third Floor Flat, one of Christie’s few apartment thrillers, a nice complement to her many manor mysteries. Christie predictably mixes traces of Conan Doyle (The Adventure of the Naval Treaty, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans) with American pulp fiction and exquisitely extends some of her own detective and spy-fiction thinking into the little-mentioned area (at the time) of the Mafia (hinted at in the Sherlock Holmes tales The Adventure of the Dancing Men and The Adventure of the Red Circle) for “a most unusual case” and one, that is entirely compelling and engrossing. Richard Spence superbly directs Russell Murray’s imaginative dramatization, adding many colorful settings and excellent symbolic representations. The production team also perfectly peoples the film with a particularly fine cast of distinctive actors. The film starts grandly with Japp, Hastings and a wincing Poirot attending a screening of the 1935 James Cagney film “G” Men (complete with many shots from the actual film) and goes from there. The book’s American secret service agent, Mr. Burt, becomes an unlikely FBI agent here and is performed by the splendid American character actor William Hootkins (1948-2005), who plays the ugly American as a low-rent J. Edgar Hoover, mouthing off ridiculous Hooverisms like “there’s no such thing as the Mafia.” Turning the first “Mrs. Robinson” into a chanteuse was something of an inspired touch, with Miss Lemon picking out a rather obscure clue (true?) regarding “Lullaby of Broadway” (from the 1935 film Gold Diggers of 1935). An enchantingly theatrical sequence – reminding this viewer of what the Broadway presentation of Sweet Smell of Success: The Musical (2002) achieved – where Poirot describes the origin of the crime at hand to Hastings is marvelously shot. The well-done night club music heard here is provided by KPM library composer Neil Richardson, who had done the dance-band music for Peril at End House and would do additional dance band/night club music heard in the Poirot films The Affair at the Victory Ball, Yellow Iris, The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman and Murder on the Links. Samantha Bond, as Stella Robinson, appears here five years before her first appearance as Miss Moneypenny in the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films and the handsome John Michie, as John Robinson, is on hand, years before becoming well known in the UK as DI Robbie Ross on ITV’s Taggart.

8. The Kidnapped Prime Minister (first broadcast February 25, 1990): Shortly after a failed assassination attempt, England’s Prime Minister is kidnapped on his way to a peace summit of national import in France. The British government asks Poirot to investigate, confounded that the detective doesn’t follow the most obvious clues. First published in the UK in 1923 and also as part of Poirot Investigates, The Kidnapped Prime Minister is structured and written very much like one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales of semi-political intrigue, with Hastings as the story’s Watson narrator and Poirot as the brilliant sleuth who, of course, figures it all out. The film winds up a bit differently than the story – neither quite as satisfyingly as they might, particularly after a history of conspiracy-themed stories that post date this Agatha Christie story by almost a half century (also, I do not know enough about the World War I history of England, Germany and Ireland, all of which figure into both plots, to say whether any of this tale holds much water). The initial story banks on a never-explained double of the Prime Minister being unrecognizable shortly after the alleged assassination attempt (which makes sense in the pre-TV days of political oversaturation) but, rather unbelievably, finds Poirot initially recognizing one of the cabinet ministers who secures his services from the pictures published in the paper (which, though highly unlikely, suggests that Poirot pays more attention to newspaper photos than the general public and law-enforcement insiders). The film nicely ups the political conspiracy quotient, but still is rather harder than usual to accept at face value. One of the script’s major weaknesses is precisely why the British government would ask a foreign national to recover its country’s most significant political asset, especially during war time. The book gives a rather peculiar reason. But the film just presumes, rather absurdly, that Poirot is Britain’s preeminent and, naturally, most discreet sleuth. It is, after all, fiction. And at the time of Miss Christie’s story, readers would have been a great deal more open to accepting this bizarre, pre-Ludlumesque logic than readers or viewers would today. Also, the Poirot of the book immediately recognizes – as any grade-school student could – that the kidnapping is an inside job. The film takes a little longer to come to this rather obvious conclusion. Most curiously, Clive Exton’s script changes the Premier’s driver’s name from the significant and obvious O’Murphy to the more generic and ultimately more mysterious Egan. Directed by Andrew Grieve, who also directed the previous The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim as well as seven other Poirot films including the well-done feature-length films The ABC Murders, Hickory Dickory Dock, Murder on the Links and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the film is as good as such a weak story can probably be expected to be. David Horovitch, pleasantly cast as the questionable Commander Daniels, will be familiar to many fans of the Miss Marple series as the consistently befuddled Inspector Slack (The Body in the Library, The Murder at the Vicarage, 4:50 From Paddington, They Do It With Mirrors, The Mirror Crack’d) and his ex-wife, Imogene, who has no part at all in the book, is played with a certain fetishistic relish by Lisa Harrow, who will be familiar to sci-fi cult fans of the British/German co-production of Star Maidens.

9. The Adventure of the Western Star (first broadcast March 4, 1990): A famous film actress receives repeated letters that her great diamond, the Western Star, must be returned to its rightful Chinese owner, otherwise it will be taken. She feels threatened and consults Poirot. She is planning with her producer husband, Gregory Rolf, who gave her the diamond as a wedding present, to visit one of England’s showplaces, Yardly Chase, with the intention of making a film there. The place is inhabited by one Lady Yardly, who also owns the Eastern Star, the other half of the Chinese set. Lady Yardly soon reveals similar threatening letters. Both diamonds are then stolen by mysterious Chinese figures. Poirot and Hastings investigate. First published in the UK in 1923 and also as part of Poirot Investigates, The Adventure of the Western Star is a nifty little caper story with some clever little twists. Built upon a solid foundation of lies and literary obfuscation, Christie crafts something of a clever puzzle here. The original story references both The Affair at the Victory Ball (1923, Agatha Christie’s first published short story) as the reason that brings Miss Marvel to Poirot and The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920, Christie’s first published novel) as the impetus that brings Lady Yardly to Poirot’s office. Clive Exton’s particularly colorful dramatization remains remarkably true to the original story, but makes some significant changes and ups the comedy element a bit too. Exton adds a subplot featuring international diamond thief Henrik Van Bracks (Struan Rodger) pursued by Chief Inspector Japp (who also isn’t in the book) and, most audaciously, changes American film star Mary Marvelle – whose fame gives the diamond in her possession its name – to Belgium film star (!) Marie Marvel (portrayed unconvincingly by actress Rosalind Bennett like a female version of Sellers’ Clouseau). Pauline Moran’s Miss Lemon, naturally, replaces the story’s landlady, Mrs. Murchison, and the Hoffberg character becomes a bit more sinister and important to the plot’s machinations. Hugh Fraser’s Hastings, peevishly put out by Poirot in the book, delivers some of his funniest lines in the film series here. Responding to Poirot’s assertion that “Marie Marvel is the greatest film star Belgium has ever produced,” Hastings replies, with perfect timing, “I should think she’s the only film star Belgium’s ever produced.” In grave seriousness, he also delivers steely one-liners like “Ice cold logic, Lady Yardley. The deductive process.” And, with a sigh of superiority, he tells the hapless Belgian detective, “if only you’d listen to me, Poirot.” Struan Rodger, cast as the curious Henrik Van Bracks, can also be heard as the voice of “Ferdinand” in the performance of “The Duchess of Malfi,” presented in the great 1987 Miss Marple film Sleeping Murder.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 3
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 4
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 5
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 6
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 7
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 8
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 9
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 10
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 11
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 12

Munich Machine "Munich Machine"

Munich Machine was the brainchild of prolific composer and disco hitmaker Giorgio Moroder. Comprised mostly of the studio musicians who backed his hit productions for Donna Summer (the group also appears under this name on the singer’s A Love Trilogy and Four Seasons of Love albums) and those under his own name, Munich Machine is everything you would expect – and more - from the man who held the patent on the mid 70s techno dance music that came to be defined as Eurodisco.

Like Gamble & Huff’s MFSB and Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra (and to a lesser degree, K.C.’s Sunshine Band and Motown “groupings” like the Magic Disco Machine), Munich Machine allowed Moroder to show off more of his musical and instrumental leanings.

There were vocals to keep it all commercially appealing, but Munich Machine pushed those grooving German instrumentalists more toward the front of the microphone. Many of them, including Harold Faltermeyer (“Axel F,” of course, from Beverley Hills Cop, Fletch), Pete Bellotte (Elton John, Janet Jackson), Thor Baldersson (Walter Beasley, Keith Sweat) and Keith Forsey (producer of the great Billy Idol, Nina Hagen, The Psychedelic Furs, etc.) went onto make significant names for themselves not too much later on.

Munich Machine released only three albums under its own name between 1977 and 1979, including this, their eponymously-titled debut album. It’s making its very first appearance on CD now, some three and a half decades later(!), courtesy of Gold Legion, a specialist label that dedicates itself to reviving long-lost disco releases from the Universal Music family of labels. Gold Legion has also just issued a Moroder production of Roberta’s Kelly’s Zodiac Lady and promises soon to issue the Machine’s second album, the even more wonderful A Whiter Shade Of Pale (1978).

This album’s single great highlight is the 15 and a half minute dance classic “Get on the Funk Train,” a 12-inch monster that spun at many discos back in the day. Moroder and Bellotte conceive a joyous dance track that takes a few sinewy detours along the way, replete with the obligatory female chorus, sensual strings, horny horns and a whole array of electric keyboards, grooving guitars and four-on-the-floor bass drum time keeping. It confirms what most musicians claim: that you can’t describe music. You’re just supposed to enjoy it.

“Funk Train” recalls for this listener what jazz was created to do, especially back in the 20s in the brothels and the speakeasies – make people dance (maybe one or two other things too). It’s rather hard to accommodate “Funk Train” with any era’s varying definition of jazz. But I suspect that the appearance of music like this helped others in the disco movement look backwards at jazzier music for inspiration (Dr. Buzzard, Boney M., Taco, etc.) and made it easy for any number of real jazz players to fuse their thing with the dance floor. The song’s funkiest highlight comes at the 7:18 mark and lasts through to 10:05 mark.

While “Get on the Funk Train” takes up a full half of the record, it is also the only real original included here, despite Moroder and Bellotte’s participation on the remaining tracks. A string of Moroder/Bellotte hits are offered up as a long medley including “Love To Love You Baby” (a breakneck speed version, the title track to Donna Summer’s hit 1975 album), “Trouble-Maker” (the title track to Roberta Kelly’s 1976 album – which Gold Legion is also preparing to issue on CD), “Try Me, I Know We Can Make It” (from the 1976 Donna Summer album A Love Trilogy), “I Wanna Funk With You Tonite” (originally on Moroder’s 1976 album Knights In White Satin) and “Spring Affair” (from the 1976 Donna Summer album Four Seasons of Love). It all sounds pretty good but “Try Me, I Know We Can Make It” is the medley’s electrifying highlight.

It’s about time for some appreciation of Giorgio Moroder, who went on to even greater heights, including memorable film scores to Midnight Express, American Gigolo, Cat People, Scarface, Top Gun and a reconfigured version of Fritz Lang’s timeless Metropolis - and it’s about time that Munich Machine, while not as popular as some of the big names Moroder went on to finesse (Blondie, Japan, Irene Cara, Janet Jackson, Berlin, etc.), is getting its well-deserved renaissance. This is a highly worthwhile, if brief, chapter in Giorgio Moroder’s always interesting – and grooving – musical career.

Now how about some savvy reissuer chronicling the great Eurodisco group Easy Going and any of the grand disco projects former Goblin Claudio Simonetti was involved in between 1978 and 1984 (Vivien Vee, Kasso and, most especially, Capricorn’s brilliant “I Need Love”)?

Ordeal by Innocence

First published in 1958 in the UK and in 1959 in the US, Ordeal by Innocence is one of Agatha Christie’s finest, most gripping mysteries and one of the few that doesn’t feature the author’s serial sleuths Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. The story presents one of the novelist’s classic – and too-little celebrated – twists on the detective fiction form. In this case, it is the investigation of a crime after the case is closed. To a lesser degree, the story's surprising ending is a nice twist on the form too. The story also presages, to a certain degree, the Italian giallo film by presenting an amateur sleuth who digs deeper into the crime than the professionals assigned to the case ever dared.

Arthur Calgary (Donald Sutherland) gives a ride to a young hitchhiker one night before departing for a sea-faring expedition, which keeps him incommunicado in the Antarctic for two years. Calgary discovers the young man, Jack (Jacko) Argyle, has left an address book with him and upon his return from the expedition two years later, goes to the Argyle household to return it. This is when Calgary discovers that the young man is now dead, having already been tried and found guilty of killing his own mother, Rachel Argyle. Calgary realizes that if he had been able to step forward earlier, he would have provided corroboration for the alibi the young man had claimed all along yet could not get verified at the time. Calgary attempts to re-open the case, against the wishes of the entire dysfunctional Argyle family, convinced that Jacko was an altogether bad lot and all unified in their happiness to be rid of Rachel, as well as the local constabulary, pleased with their own investigation of the crime. Several more Argyles are unfortunately killed along the way before the sad truth is revealed to Calgary about what really happened.

This 1985 cable-television film was a heroic attempt at filming Miss Christie’s novel, but the result is something of a spectacular failure. First and foremost, it comes across as trashmeister producers Golan and Globus of the Cannon Group’s bid to be taken seriously (pop lit? Oh well, it must be a safe bet.).

Throughout, it looks fantastic; in fact, stunning at times. But it often sounds shrill, off beat and mostly wrong headed. The film was directed by Desmond Davis, a former camera operator and director of a lot of British television, who was best known at the time for directing the trashy but star-packed Clash of the Titans (1981). His style seems to be all about making his stars look good. The interactions often seem all wrong, like posed model shoots or something.

But even the stars are mostly miscast here. It’s hard to figure out why Americans Donald Sutherland (who plays Calgary as an American) and Faye Dunaway (who plays Rachel Argyle in black and white flashbacks as the Brit her character is) are here. Both are, however, typically quite good in their rather unbelievable roles. Christopher Plummer, as Leo Argyle, is superb – as always – but the Canadian belies the book’s British paterfamilias by playing him as something of a gun-loving hard ass (he was more of a milquetoast in the book).

The great Sarah Miles (who also appeared distinctively in the 2004 Poirot film The Hollow, to date, her last film appearance) plays the boozy Mary Durant, the great Ian McShane plays the handicapped Philip Durant, Diana Quick (who also appeared in the 2003 Poirot film Sad Cypress) terrifically assays Gwenda Vaughan and the great Annette Crosbie is simply superb as Kirsten Lindstrom.

The film was shot in and around Dartmouth, Devon, England in late 1984 and, for the most part, the setting helps maintain the story’s 1950s setting quite well. Much of Calgary’s investigation takes him around the seaport town, discovering the odd vagaries of the odd and extended Argyle family (note, if you will, how Calgary is a near anagram of Argyle, for whatever the importance of this is worth). The film changes several aspects of the book – most notably, the fact that Jacko is hanged for his crime in the film, but he dies while in prison in the book – but resolves itself pretty much the same way in the end. Sutherland does a magnificent job going through the emotions of his investigation.

There is even something to be said for the fact that his character in the film might have harbored a homosexual longing for Jacko, the source of many people’s lust and hatred. Even the book doesn’t make it clear why Calgary would care so much about Jacko’s already foregone fate. It’s a pointless plot to pursue, but may explain part of why there is so much animosity against this film, which was also remade rather peculiarly and unsatisfactorily as an ITV Miss Marple mystery in 2007.

Director Davis is quite obviously a very visual scenarist, and overlooks some of the holes in the plot and Alexander Stuart’s mostly effective script. The film or its script is unsparing in its use of relentless flashbacks and the director uses black and white photography and voiceovers for the many, many flashback sequences. But while most all of these flashbacks and voiceovers are shared with the viewer via Calgary, the lead protagonist, it is peculiar to note that quite a few are not even his own recollections.

The film’s soundtrack was provided by the great jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck in one of his very few outings as a film scorer. The music is, quite notably, one of those things that most people either really like or really hate. I go both ways about it. The music is great. But it’s all wrong for the film, and often so overbearing as to be annoying.

The producers seemed to be trying to go for a fifties jazz sound, which doesn’t even make sense for the story (the fifties, yes – jazz, no), and Brubeck must have fit their idea of the bill. But Brubeck’s music is neither as time-locked as the story nor as mysterious as the plot’s machinations. Brubeck’s music is performed by the Dave Brubeck Quartet featuring the great man himself on piano, Bill Smith on clarinet, saxophone and recorder, (son) Chris Brubeck on bass and trombone and Randy Jones on drums. The music was recorded in San Francisco between the 1984 album For Iola and the 1985 Reflections.

The main theme, though, is particularly excellent. It accompanies, rather too loudly, a five and a half minute main title sequence that is gorgeously shot by cinematographer Ernest Vincze (Dr. Who, Jeeves and Wooster). Unfortuntaly, as wrong as the music seems to be for the mood of the film, it is a tremendous performance that has not appeared on record, either in its original form or as a cover tune elsewhere.

Brubeck inappropriately reprises the well-known “Blue Rondo a la Turk” (originally from the famed Time Out album, which probably caused the producers to seek the pianist in the first place, and revived similarly on Brubeck's 1986 album Blue Rondo) during Calgary’s interview of alcoholic Mary Durant and later when her husband, Philip, is discovered dead.

While it’s nowhere near perfect, Ordeal by Innocence is as good as it is going to get for this story for the time being and, for the record, is thoroughly enjoyable on a cult level for lovers of Agatha Christie’s wonderfully intoxicating detective fiction and the appreciation of some good, if misplaced, jazz.

Dick Hyman/Mary Mayo "Moon Gas"

This strange and little-known record is one of a series of many strange and little-known records from pianist/organist/harpsichordist/Moogist Dick Hyman (b. 1927) yet probably ranks among the prodigious and imaginative keyboardist’s best – which insufficiently presumes anybody has heard all of the Dick Hyman recordings there are to hear under his name and various pseudonyms.

Moon Gas is just that – an otherworldly gas.

Like so many of his records, it is rather too gimmicky, taking fairly straight-ahead, even old-fashioned material and changing it up with strange keyboards – in this case, the Lowrey organ, the AOC (Automatic Orchestra Control) device and piano – peculiar sound effects and unusual instrumentation, all probably meant to set Hyman apart from the crowd by playing to the hype of aural fanaticism in the record industry at the time. The shame of this is that Dick Hyman is a tremendously gifted pianist and musical thinker who has an uncanny knack for engaging rapt attention no matter what or how he is playing.

Hyman had already begun his long string of probably better-known recordings for the Command/Project 3 labels with his 1960 trio-with-orchestra album Provocative Piano, so Moon Gas must have been some sort of contractual obligation. This 1963 album appears to be the last of some dozen and a half records Hyman made for MGM and the only one, I think, that the pianist ever did under the probable aegis of producer Creed Taylor.

Hyman is partnered here with the ethereal Mary Mayo (1924-1985), a singer of jingles including Coca-Cola’s famous “I’d like to Teach the World to Sing” and many uncredited backgrounds, who easily compares to the Italian film singer Edda Dell’orso for range and curiously transfixing vocal qualities, especially in her wordless work (“Moon Gas,” “Stella By Starlight”).

Accompanying Hyman and Mayo on Moon Gas are Nick Tagg on Lowrey organ, Hammond organ, AOC and piano, Vinnie Bell on “prepared” electric guitar, Joe Benjamin or Milt Hinton on bass and Osie Johnson on drums and Bob Rosengarden on percussion, the theremin-like martinot, oscillator, door buzzer, “etc.”

The originals are, ah, out of this world. The all-too brief title track, like Hyman’s later “The Minotaur,” is something of a cult classic. It’s a darkly funky vamp reveling in the oddity of the group’s outlandish electronics that prefigures what Hyman would do a few years later with a Moog synthesizer for James Brown’s “Give Up Or Turn It Loose.” Moon Gas is worth it for “Moon Gas” alone but there’s more. “Space Reflex” is a groovy update of the Dick Hyman-Leonard Feather composition “Bass Reflex” from the 1956 MGM LP Hi Fi Suite. It’s a basic blues, but Hyman works it well enough to make you consider that space is the place. This is his shining moment as a keyboard strategist on the album.

The bulk of the record finds the keyboard whiz inevitably covering a set of moony and starry standards, mostly in the tradition, but accented with Mayo’s haunting vocals and Hyman’s space age twists. These include “Stella by Starlight,” “Imagination,” “Bye Bye Blues,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” “For All We Know,” “I’m Glad There Is You,” “Star Eyes” and the then-recent hit and soon-to-be standard “Desafinado,” which Mayo sings most beautifully in the original’s Portuguese language.

The standards are particularly rewarding – especially “Stella by Starlight” and “Desafinado” – in revealing Hyman as a remarkable scenarist. It’s no coincidence that he has backed countless singers and scored a number of commercials and films, most notably for Woody Allen. He knows how to set a mood. Mayo, too, works herself into the atmosphere nicely. She blends in so seamlessly that sometimes it’s hard to tell her voice from one of the keyboards. But she is so immediately attractive and striking as a vocalist that it’s really quite surprising she did not become better known during her lifetime.

While the electronic effects here can sometimes come off sounding silly, distracting or just plain out of place, Hyman is on firm footing directing the surprisingly minimalist rhythm section to just stick to good old-fashioned swing. Even the occasional bursts of electronic sound heard throughout remind you that these were the future sounds of yesterday and took musicians, not programmers or editors (Hyman talks with pride in the album’s notes about recording the sounds live rather than splicing them together to achieve the final outcome), to come up with these then unusual sounds.

Moon Gas, issued on Japanese CD by Vroom Sound in 2003 and now as difficult to find as the MGM LP, isn’t necessarily the best place to hear Dick Hyman play – there are zillions of records for that – but it is a terrific way to enjoy how well the multi-keyboardist and musical thinker absolutely masters unusual musical concepts. Aside from that, it’s just plain fun. Too much jazz takes itself too seriously, especially these days, making it a distinct pleasure to go back and enjoy Moon Gas every once in a while.

Plus: Read the incisive JazzWax interview with Dick Hyman here. And be sure to check out Dick Hyman's profile at the great Space Age Pop Music resource and Mary Mayo's daughter, Lorri Hafer, who was part of The Hillside Singers, who sung the huge hit "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing."

George Winston "Love Will Come: The Music of Vince Guaraldi Volume 2"

Pianist George Winston has long professed deep and abiding admiration for composer and pianist Vince Guaraldi (1928-76), best remembered today for his scores to sixteen Peanuts animated television features made between 1965 and 1976. Indeed, George Winston is now pretty much considered the foremost Vince Guaraldi authority, a designation which has done much to enhance his jazz credibility – something which this self-described folk pianist (who also claims The Doors as an influence and recorded a solo piano tribute to the rock group in 2002) probably doesn’t care one jot for. Winston surely has a seminal understanding of Guaraldi that goes deeper than the initial appeal of such great work as “Cast Your Fate To The Wind,” “Linus and Lucy” and “Skating,” which are among Guaraldi’s best and best-known tunes.

The evidence of Guaraldi’s influence has long been in Winston’s work, particularly in the remarkably timeless and essential December (Windham Hill, 1982) and in his own Peanuts score for 1988’s This is America, Charlie Brown – The Birth of the Constitution. But Winston put his money where is mouth is with Linus & Lucy – The Music of Vince Guaraldi (Dancing Cat, 1996), which stands as one of the first tributes to the magical music of Vince Guaraldi. To be fair, there have been a few musical Peanuts tributes, most notably from David Benoit, another Guaraldi acolyte, but Winston’s tribute puts the composer and his work out in front and goes outside of the obligatory Peanuts music, which surely dominates the small compositional galaxy of Vince Guaraldi.

Back for round two with Love Will Come: The Music of Vince Guaraldi Volume 2, George Winston comes up with a surprising 16 additional Guaraldi tunes to consider and expound upon. Here, he digs deep into Guaraldi’s lesser known work, particularly some of the best and instantly recognizable Peanuts music from the specials Guaraldi scored in the 70s. As the disc’s title suggests, it’s overwhelming in its romanticism for the music, the images the music often accompanies, the composer and, even for Guaraldi’s hometown of San Francisco, lovingly pictured on the disc’s front cover.

George Winston provides the music with a gravity Vince Guaraldi’s work certainly deserves and has never really received. It is most apparent on the disc’s highlights. First and foremost, there is the great “Nobody Else.” The original, which balances a moody melancholy with a Latin lilt and was first heard on the 1966 album Vince Guaraldi & Bola Sete Live at El Matador, has a very Peanuts-like feel to it and could as easily have been titled “Charlie Brown” for all the “born loser” moods it conjures. Here, Winston slows it down dramatically, revealing it to be a rather achingly beautiful and remarkably poetic love song. It is surely Winston's finest moment.

Elsewhere, Winston splendidly reconvenes “It Was A Short Summer, Charlie Brown,” the New Orleans swagger of “Air Music” and the awkwardly paced but curiously appealing bayou consideration of “You’re Elected, Charlie Brown.” Perhaps Winston’s wittiest moment of the disc comes on the Professor Longhorn-like take on the familiar “Little Birdie,” which suggests anything but “little” here.

Winston also makes a strong and worthy case here for Vince Guaraldi’s expressive and impressionistic balladry, overshadowed to a large degree at the time by Bill Evans (and the fact that Guaraldi disappeared from records in the late sixties), with lovely performances of “Time For Love” (aka “There’s No Time For Love, Charlie Brown”), “Room At The Bottom” (aka “Like A Mighty Rose”), “Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown,” “Rain, Rain Go Away” and the disc’s title track, which is extended with the interesting “Slow Dance,” a Winston original in the same vein.

While it is truly a labor of love – and a document of some considerable erudition (the disc is particularly worthwhile for the extraordinarily detailed liner notes providing more Guaraldi discographical information and corrections than has been available elsewhere) - Love Will Come is initially difficult to reconcile with Vince Guaraldi’s originals.

One might reasonably expect a more lively representation of the composer’s work, which as clever and complicated as much of his music may be in construction, reveal a childlike playfulness as well as a hopefulness and happiness under his direction. In Winston’s hands, Guaraldi’s music is more ruminative and wistful than light and airy. While Winston’s touch is also a little heavier, sometimes clunkier and distinctly more chordal than Guaraldi’s lightening lilt, the solo pianist is nevertheless respectful, even loving, of Guaraldi’s often engaging compositions without bowing to reverential reproduction.

But, in all fairness, this is George Winston interpreting Vince Guaraldi not replicating Vince Guaraldi and love will come for Love Will Come when it’s heard in just that way.

Note: Barnes & Noble is currently offering an "exclusive" version of Love Will Come that adds the bonus track "Charlie Brown's Baseball Theme" to the disc's 16-song lineup.

Jamie Cullum "Wheels"

Wow. All I can say is, wow.



Wow, moreso.

Agatha Christie’s Poirot - Series 1

Agatha Christie's Poirot - An Introduction

1. The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (first broadcast January 8, 1989): In an affront to his dignity, Poirot agrees to help locate a missing domestic. Hoping at first to relieve his boredom, the detective discovers a far more insidious plot afoot involving deception, robbery and murder. First published in the UK in 1924 and as part of the US collection The Under Dog and Other Stories, this short story was an odd-choice place to begin David Suchet’s brilliantly definitive turn as the great Belgian detective in 1989. As a viewer, we enter Poirot’s world knowing he’s already solved many a crime and will now only accept commissions of great import, even though this is our first glimpse of the great sleuth. It turns out that starting off in a career already in progress was more of a blessing for the series than one could guess. There was no need to define Poirot to his audience. Director Edward Bennett (who also contributed to this series’ Murder in the Mews, The Third Floor Flat, The Incredible Theft, The Dream, The Veiled Lady, The Lost Mine, The Cornish Mystery and both the extraordinarily well-done feature-length films Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and Dumb Witness) and David Suchet brilliantly worked out many of the series’ signature bits in visual motifs, period clothing, art-deco décor, stock phrases and, of course, the famous moustache. The Clive Exton (1930-2007) script features a ripping yarn, with much of Christie’s warm-witted humor left in tact. Exton went on to contribute an additional 25 scripts to the series, and oversaw an additional six episodes as script consultant. Japp, who is mentioned in the story, and Miss Lemon make perfectly logical appearances in the film despite neither having any presence in the book. Poirot is also a little more forthright with Eliza Dunn, the domestic, in the book than Suchet is in the film. It’s hard to say which way of handling the pitiable situation is more heartbreaking. The film just ignores it. This episode, like any shop’s first dollar bill, is a perfectly good reminder for the never-wrong detective to keep his humility throughout the rest of his career and a great way to start a near-perfect series of murder mysteries. It also shows how often disguise in the commission of a crime is a part of the Poirot heritage (Four And Twenty Blackbirds, The Dream, The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge, The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman, Lord Edgware Dies, After The Funeral, etc.) whereas Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes often resorted to disguise more as a method to catch criminals.

2. Murder In The Mews (first broadcast January 15, 1989): Following the loud fireworks display in celebration of Guy Fawkes Night (Bonfire Night) attended by Poirot in the Bardsley Gardens Mews, a woman residing in the Mews is later discovered as the victim of an apparently self-inflicted gun shot wound. Several unanswered questions and a number of clues point to the woman’s death possibly being a murder. The woman’s questionable associates taunt Poirot to consider the possibilities of either suicide or murder. Originally published in the UK in 1937 and as part of the US collection Dead Man’s Mirror, Murder in the Mews is one of Agatha Christie’s many classic deconstructions of the mystery form. This is the first sign of the Poirot TV series’ artiness, with great sets, indelible character actors and sumptuous photography. The visualization of this story also brings out Miss Plenderleith’s apparent lesbian affinities for the dead Mrs. Allen a bit more, perhaps, than Christie’s telling of it and Juliette Mole (Miss Plenderleith), who at the end of the film appears at Poirot’s office saying she was late due to attending Barbara’s funeral (another sign of love not in the book), performs tremendously well in a most impassioned manner. Ms. Mole also appeared several years earlier in the great Miss Marple presentation of 4:50 From Paddington. David Yelland, who plays the upwardly mobile Charles Laverton-West, the detached M.P. who was engaged to the deceased woman, began to appear regularly in the Poirot series as George, Poirot’s butler/valet, beginning with Taken at the Flood (2006) (George is mentioned once in this story, but has no place in the film). The film’s Nicholas Delve as the young boy, Freddie, is priceless. He’s a marvelous actor who did not appear to do much acting after this. While Hastings figures rather largely in the film, he is not at all present in the book. Japp functions as Poirot’s Dr. Watson in the book, as several references to Sherlock Holmes are made during the course of the story. Hastings takes on the inevitable Dr. Watson role in the film, a surprisingly colorful and very good entry in the Poirot series.

3. The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly (first broadcast January 22, 1989): The Waverlys receive several notes indicating that their three-year-old son, Johnny, will be kidnapped unless a sizable ransom is paid. As the notes proceed, the demand for money increases as well. Poirot is asked to investigate. First published in 1924 in the UK and as part of the US collection Three Blind Mice and Other Stories, The Adventure of Johnny Waverly is not Johnny’s adventure at all but rather that of his parents, who share a relationship taxed by certain financial problems. Geoffrey Bateman, as Marcus Waverley, Esq., does a masterful job playing up his character’s snooty “country squire” shtick, while rocking uneasily on a rickety foundation of significant financial loss. The film differs from the book in several ways. In the book, Johnnie’s kidnapping takes place before Poirot is consulted. The film shows Mr. Waverly consulting Poirot before the kidnapping, which is also at odds with the book as it more sensibly reveals the Waverlys jointly consulting Poirot. Inspector Japp, who replaces the book’s Inspector McNeil, also watches a different car go by in the film as Johnnie’s kidnapping takes place. The film’s dénouement is altered a bit, but the complicity is far better resolved by the telecast than Christie’s surprisingly complex conspiracy. Poirot’s moralistic exchange with Marcus Waverly at the end of the book is preserved almost verbatim in the film.

4. Four And Twenty Blackbirds (first broadcast January 29, 1989): One evening while at a restaurant with a friend, Poirot becomes curious about another patron of the restaurant, an old man who is said to have recently altered some very distinct habits. Upon discovering soon thereafter that the man has died an accidental death, Poirot suspects that something is amiss. First published in the UK in 1940 and as part of The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and in the US as part of Three Blind Mice and Other Stories, this is another Agatha Christie story that comes from the nursery rhyme, “Sing A Song of Sixpence” (the eponymous title of a 1929 Agatha Christie short story and the subject of which is also used for the wonderful 1953 Miss Marple novel A Pocket Full of Rye). Here, the title is a bit more of an oblique reference that Poirot ties to a clue which breaks the case for him: the eating of blackberry pie. The US publishers, probably sensing the confusion, re-titled the story much less fancifully as Poirot and the Regular Customer (similar to the titles used for Monk episodes). The film, written by Russell Murray (who also did The Adventure of the Cheap Flat) and directed by Renny Rye, who directed the previous The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly and the following Triangle at Rhodes, Problem at Sea, The King of Clubs, Peril at End House, The Tragedy at Marsden Manor, The Affair at the Victory Ball and The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge, does a fine job of visualizing this especially intellectual case. The book has no sign of Hastings, Japp or Miss Lemon and features nephew George Lorrimer as a doctor, rather than the film’s more sensible theatrical producer. A romantic sub plot that happens years before the actual story takes place is built, most admirably, into the film as well. The indelible Hilary Mason (1917-2006), who was so memorable in any number of parts, including Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) and the terrific Miss Marple adaptation of The Moving Finger (1985), is, as ever, fantastic here as Mrs. Amelia Hill, cook and housekeeper to Anthony Gascoigne. Still, a slight story, done up quite well for the telling of it on film.

5. The Third-Floor Flat (first broadcast February 5, 1989): Two young couples, upon being locked out one evening of one of the girl’s fourth-story flat, determine that the two men of the double pair can use the apartment’s coal lift to gain access to the flat. Upon entering the flat, the two young men discover not only that they have entered the wrong flat on the third floor – neither apparently able to count four floors up from the basement – but that there’s a dead woman who looks to be murdered in the apartment. First published in the UK in 1929 and in the US as part of Three Blind Mice and Other Stories, The Third-Floor Flat is a strange little tale that isn’t nearly as successful as so many other of Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories are. In Christie’s short story, the action takes place at Friars Mansions, where Poirot has inexplicably taken a fifth-floor flat under an assumed name. Writer Michael Baker, who also scripted the series’ episodes The King of Clubs and The Lost Mine, sets the filmed action more properly at Whitehaven Mansions, placing Poirot under his own name in the fifth-floor flat above the girl, Pat’s flat. The filmed version replaces the book’s unnamed inspector with Philip Jackson’s Chief Inspector Japp and includes a well-done sub-plot featuring Hugh Fraser’s Captain Hastings, who bets Poirot he can’t figure out the guilty party of a ridiculous – yet significantly ironic – whodunit play that the story’s characters attend (Poirot and Hastings attend such a play in the 28th chapter of the 1937 novel Dumb Witness). The film does much to enhance Christie’s thin and rather unbelievable story, and only strays with the weird scenes of Pat and Mildred dancing together far too much one afternoon in Pat’s apartment. Poirot’s introduction to the filmed version of this story is also much more plausible than the weird “here I am” presence he presents in the book.

6. Triangle at Rhodes (first broadcast February 12, 1989): During an off-season holiday on the Greek island of Rhodes, Poirot encounters a small group of people where a potential love triangle seems to be forming among the married Douglas Gold and the beautiful and rich Valentine Chantry, who is also married. Poirot senses danger and urges Mrs. Gold to leave the island at once if she values her life. When Valentine Chantry is poisoned to death, Poirot’s worst fears are confirmed. But who really killed Mrs. Chantry – and why? First published in the UK in 1934 and as part of the US book Dead Man’s Mirror and Other Stories, Triangle at Rhodes serves as a blueprint for the remarkably similar Poirot novel, Evil under the Sun (1941). It’s a good story, laced with intrigue and exotic settings and the first in the Granada series to highlight mystery and murder abroad. The film takes full advantage of the exotic location with sumptuous photography of stoned thoroughfares, crowded markets, historic sites and breathtaking vistas. Writer Stephen Wakelam, in his only Poirot script, deletes a useless character (Susan Blake), places Poirot at the end of his holiday (as if he’s about to leave Rhodes) and in one of several nods to the terrific 1982 film version of Evil Under The Sun, introduces something of a spy angle that is not present in the book. Wakelam’s script also significantly changes how Poirot identifies the solution to the crime. In the book, he witnesses a certain event that he is not present for in the film. Again, the filmed story improves substantially upon the written story by making Poirot and his Watson-like sidekick in the film, Pamela Lyall – played by Frances Low, who had appeared in the 1985 Miss Marple film A Pocket Full of Rye and who provides the suggestion of the triangle of the story’s title here that Poirot suggests in the book – detect the nature of the true crime and the origin of the real criminal(s). This episode’s use of the solo Eastern European hammer dulcimer instrument called the cimbalom on the soundtrack adds substantially to the exotic atmosphere throughout and suggests such spy thrillers of yore as The Ipcress File (John Barry) and The Eagle Has Landed. (Lalo Schifrin).

7. Problem At Sea (first broadcast February 19, 1989): While holidaying on a cruise ship sailing the rocky Mediterranean, Poirot encounters a small group of passengers including Miss Ellie Henderson, General Forbes, Colonel and Mrs. Clapperton, Kitty Mooney and Pamela Cregan. During a stopover in Alexandria, Egypt, Mrs. Clapperton is discovered to have been murdered. Was it a stranger who boarded the ship during the layover or one of the ship’s passengers who killed Mrs. Clapperton? First published in the UK in 1935 as Poirot and the Crime in Cabin 66 and originally as part of the US collection called The Regatta Mystery, Problem at Sea is another one of Agatha Christie’s many travel adventures. The film plays down Poirot’s mal de mer, but suggests sea sickness in a number of discomforting scenes. Whether or not it was intentional, the viewer certainly senses that this was indeed a bumpy ride. The filmed story, which is a preface to the far more substantial Poirot novel Death on the Nile (1945), greatly enhances the rather pedestrian and slightly obvious mystery by adding quite a few characters - including a little girl who could be said to have possessed the doll which reveals the story’s dénouement - having Poirot leave the boat, as most passengers did, for an afternoon in Alexandria (which he did not do in the book) and adding a little humor to the story by including Captain Hastings, who is not present in the book, preparing for a clay-pigeon shoot. Even so, the film is resolved pretty much the same way as the book and the filmmakers wisely retained Poirot’s signature statement from the story: “I do not approve of murder.” This is certainly another occasion where the film improves markedly over the original story. But, still, it’s not much of a story. The film’s odd character, Skinner, is played by the quirky Colin Higgins, who also featured in the 1984 Miss Marple film The Body in the Library.

8. The Incredible Theft (first broadcast February 26, 1989): Plans for a top-secret war plane disappear on the evening that a dinner party is held at the plane engineer’s house. In the right hands, the missing plans could fetch the thief an enormous fortune and ruin the man behind the plane. Suspicion falls on one of the dinner guests, who is suspected of working on behalf of the wartime enemy. Poirot investigates. Originally published in 1924 as The Submarine Plans, the story was expanded into the longer-than-usual short story The Incredible Theft in 1937. It was published as part of Dead Man’s Mirror and Other Stories in the US. Taking obvious inspiration from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1893 Sherlock Holmes tale The Naval Treaty, The Incredible Theft is neither incredible nor much of a theft. Like the Conan Doyle tale, it’s not a murder mystery either. Still, it’s a ripping yarn of war-time espionage that has much merit. Many of the changes that were made to the film were done in accord with England’s position during World War II (i.e., mentions of Germany and Japan – neither of which is specifically named or inferred in the book). The film’s script also sheds many of the book’s characters, some odd background and involves Poirot much earlier than Christie’s story. Usually, Agatha Christie’s spy yarns are kind of, well, terribly boring (The Big Four, The Seven Dials Mystery, etc.). This is years, even decades, before Ian Fleming/James Bond’s shaken-not-stirred cocktail clotheshorse and lady’s man became the spy norm for so many and while Miss Christie tapped into the undeniably intriguing elements of interest in espionage, she rarely crafted a compelling spy thriller. This one, like so many others, layers on complexity so confusingly – and, sadly, so unrealistically – that the rather bizarre ending hardly matters. Given the restraints of the author’s original material, which the filmmakers accede to as best as possible, it’s still a fun journey with some great actors coursing along for the ride. John Carson, as Sir George Carrington, would later appear in the 2006 Poirot film After the Funeral (as Richard Abernethie). Phyllida Law, as Lady Carrington, also appeared in the later Poirot film Hallowe’en Party (2010). Ciaran Madden, as Lady Mayfield, had appeared memorably in the 1984 Miss Marple film The Body in the Library, while John Stride, as Tommy Mayfield, had appeared in the 1985 TV film Thirteen at Dinner (with Peter Ustinov as Poirot and David Suchet as Inspector Japp). The delightful Carmen du Sautoy (The Man with the Golden Gun, Absolutely Fabulous, Midsomer Murders) is outstanding as the villainous Mrs. Vanderlyn – who is the right age and, even as a Brit, gets Christie’s oddly refracted take on American dialect right (though she’s a blonde in the book). Hastings, Japp and Miss Lemon make perfectly valid appearances in the film – Hastings’s turn here is particularly light-hearted and humorous – despite none having any presence in the book (Sir George calls Poirot in on the case in the book, but calls Japp in to the film). This episode features Poirot’s tremendously funny retort to one character’s expression that “Froggy thinks she didn’t do it”: “Froggy knows she didn’t do it.”

9. The King of Clubs (first broadcast March 12, 1989): Miss Saintclair discovers Henry Reedburn dead at his villa and rushes to a neighboring house owned by the Oglanders for sanctuary. Miss Saintclair, engaged to be married shortly to a Prince, had gone to Reedburn’s house originally to discuss blackmail. The Prince, wary of any hint of scandal, asks Poirot to look into the affair and a deck of playing cards helps convince the investigator what really happened. First published in 1923 as The Adventure of the King of Clubs, this story was published in the US as part of The Under Dog and Other Stories. Similar in some ways to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes short story, A Scandal in Bohemia (1891), The King of Clubs actually takes some of the gusto out of the machinations and characterizations of Conan Doyle’s tale and drops in elements of certain other Holmes adventures to spice up this rather unbelievable adventure. Like A Scandal in Bohemia, the perpetrators of The King of Clubs also get away with their questionable activities due to the wealth of power they’re supposed to wield in the world. The extraordinarily flimsy and implausible story gets an injection of weird reality in the film by taking place in the world of film. Like one of those episodes of Columbo that takes place on the Hollywood backlot, it’s especially engaging (who doesn’t want to see famous people acting badly?) and an easy way to film an otherwise trashy story (“Hey, it’s a real backlot!”). The film realistically changes “impresario” Harry Reedburn into a 30s-era studio head and famed “dancer” Miss Saintclair into a leading film actress who makes the studio all its money. The fact that Reedburn’s house is next door to the eventually significant Oglander household is unbelievable in the extreme and Miss Saintclair’s fallout and later complicity with the Oglanders is never made clear, either in the book or, more especially, in the film. The film fortunately dispenses with the story-teller’s symbolic device of a fortune teller and adds several other characters (film folk, gypsies, etc.) that have good reason to do away with Harry Reedburn. Most oddly, the “murder,” while unaccountably dismissed by Poirot in the book, is inexplicably called an accident in the film. Captain Hastings is also involved more in the film’s action than in the book and Inspector Japp, who gets to deliver the script’s best line - “Little gray cells are all very nice, Poirot, but it’s dogged as does it” - gets some goofy Lestrade-like appearances in the film, despite his having no presence at all in the book. Amazingly, the police do not factor at all in the book. The film features several outstanding Art Deco sets and some brief and beautiful outdoor scenes that dilute any consternation one could have of the story’s ridiculous nature. And, the acting is – as ever – superb. Avril Elgar, as Mrs. Olgander, also appeared in the 1985 TV film Thirteen at Dinner (with Peter Ustinov as Poirot and David Suchet as Inspector Japp). Sean Pertwee, as Ronnie Oglander (John Jr. in the book), also appeared in the 2006 Marple movie The Moving Finger while Niamb Cusak, as the pretty much awful Valerie Saintclair, appeared in the 2004 Marple film 4:50 From Paddington.

10. The Dream (first broadcast March 19, 1989): Eccentric millionaire Benedict Farley asks Hercule Poirot by letter to meet with him under rather unusual circumstances about a recurring dream he has. In the dream, Farley commits suicide by killing himself with a revolver at a very specific time of the day. Stating he has no good reason to kill himself, the millionaire fears he has been hypnotized by this delusion, that the delusion has infiltrated his dreams and that someone is actually intent upon murdering him. Poirot is baffled. But Farley dismisses his incredulousness, and then Benedict Farley is shortly thereafter discovered to have killed himself exactly as he predicted in his dream. But authorities find out about Farley’s letter to Poirot and think it might be murder after all. First published in 1937 in the UK and included in book The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and, in the US, as part of The Regatta Mystery, The Dream is a neat little story that appears to take then-topical Freudian dream logic to Agatha Christie’s own delectable ends. While Miss Christie uses “the dream” as an excuse for her own murderous means, it is a shame that more of the theatrical imagery that Freud inserted into his theories – and the same literate heavy-handedness that Miss Christie inserted into so many of her own books, particularly the non-Poirot stories (Sleeping Murder, By The Pricking Of My Thumbs, etc.) – is not explored in a little more depth here. Still, it is a short story after all and “the dream,” any dream, is an absolutely perfect set-up for a murderous crime. Clive Exton’s beautifully conceived script embellishes the book most magnificently by setting the action in a bizarrely successful pie manufacturer’s factory/home. Even Edward Bennett’s direction, replete with introductory newsreel footage (which would later be repeated in several other Poirot episodes, including The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb, Murder on the Links – in a very Citizen Kane-styled way - and Murder in Mesopotamia), is especially good, taking in some remarkably beautiful deco décor and a good deal of fine acting. Inspector Japp is inserted into the film in place of the book’s Inspector Barnett and both Captain Hastings and Miss Lemon earn amusingly worthy places in the film, though neither has a place in the book. One of the most interesting points of casting here is Alan Howard, who portrays both Benedict Farley and his secretary, Hugo Cornworthy – a curious fact which proves to be significant in the story. Neville Phillips, as Holmes (the curiously unnamed butler), also appeared in the excellent 1987 Miss Marple film At Bertram’s Hotel.

Agatha Christie’s Poirot – Series 2
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 3
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 4
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 5
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 6
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 7
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 8
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 9
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 10
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 11
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 12

Agatha Christie’s Poirot - An Introduction

I first discovered this great Granada television mystery series some 10 years ago by channel surfing past PBS’s Mystery! and catching a broadcast of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I was immediately struck by the stylish settings, the impeccable acting, the good writing and the engrossing story. I was hooked.

Discovering that Agatha Christie’s Poirot, aka Agatha Christie: Poirot and henceforth referred to here simply as Poirot, was a series, I hoped to catch further episodes on TV and only rarely ever did. Finally, after many a year of waiting for TV runs or re-runs, I was able to acquire the American-issued DVDs of this superb series. But while I was glad to finally be able to repeatedly enjoy and appreciate Poirot at my own pleasure, the American DVDs have turned out to be confusingly assembled and shoddily presented.

The basic releases include Acorn Media’s The Classic Collection (2005 - the 36 45-minute presentations) and The Classic Collection 2 (2007- the first 12 of the feature-length presentations) and A&E’s rather poor and poorly-titled packages, The Complete Collection (2002), The New Mysteries Collection (2004) and the Classic Crimes Collection (2006), each containing four feature-length Poirot films.

The Acorn Media sets have always looked terrible, as if they were taped onto VHS directly from TV. They’re also presented in no particular order – certainly not running order or historical order. And the A&E sets, while the quality is somewhat more substantial than the Acorn sets, are edited for no other reason than to allow more commercials during TV runs. And, no, the A&E DVDs do not restore any of the deleted footage – usually about three to five minutes worth of worthy material. Several naughty words appear to be silenced out of the mix too. But why not include any of this on the DVD?

Adding insult to injury, many of these packages have been reissued – as is – with different and stupid names and in different and stupidly conceived configurations.

The Acorn Media sets are now ALSO available in 4 different sets that feature nine of the shorter episodes and eight of the feature-length films. The fourth of these volumes, called The Movie Collection - Set 4, features only two of the four feature-length episodes from 2008 at a ridiculously ostentatious $50 retail price. The other two 2008 episodes are still – at this writing – not even available on DVD in the US. And the three A&E packages are now combined and available as something called The Definitive Collection (2009), which lists for a ridiculous $100.

Confused? That doesn’t even sum up all the differing variations of Poirot DVD titles available at the current time in the US. Acorn has 12 other varying and over-priced sets of Poirot shows with three titles each per disc (the whole of the shorter episodes). And then there are the strange Agatha Christie compilation sets forcing some of these Poirot films, with no logic whatsoever, into sets containing some other non-Poirot related Agatha Christie films/television productions. It’s ridiculous.

Then, ITV released the realistically-titled The Compete Collection in the UK (Region 2) in 2009, answering many prayers from Poirot completists such as myself. All 61 episodes of the 11 series produced up until that time are presented here on 28 discs in running order, with great clarity, in the proper film scope in a beautiful package with a “collector’s guide” booklet detailing the series’ entire history. It is a remarkable package and worth every penny for any fan of the series – and anyone with a multi-region DVD player. It amounts to about 70 amazing hours worth of tremendous television.

While the ITV booklet does a good job of briefly describing each and every episode, there is probably much more that should be known about each of the episodes and how they compare to Agatha Christie’s originals.

Aside from David Suchet’s remarkable and definitive performance as the Belgian sleuth, the magnificent Suchet himself has been steadfast about remaining true to the character as Agatha Christie wrote him and staying close to Christie’s basic plots – a sanctity that the recent Marple series has violated repeatedly (changing killers, motivations – and even injecting Miss Marple into Agatha Christie stories the character was never a part of).

Hastings is also treated with far more humanity and dignity by Poirot in the films rather than the books – a small change that probably comes from Suchet’s significant input.

Plot changes in Poirot either happen to fill out a full episode of a thinly-plotted escapade or to help make more sense of the human machinations Christie only had to sketch out for a story. Cards on the Table, for example, makes some of the most noticeable – and, more significantly, plausible – changes in its journey from book to film. Usually, Christie’s crime and its criminal(s) remain purely in tact throughout the entirety of the Poirot series.

Early on, the Granada series finds the great detective consistently aided – or, more properly, abetted – by erstwhile associate Captain Arthur Hastings, as portrayed by the excellent Hugh Fraser (who can be heard expertly reading many of the currently available Agatha Christie audio books), Chief Inspector James Harold Japp, as portrayed by the gallant Philip Jackson, and Miss Felicity Lemon, as portrayed by the regal Pauline Moran.

David Suchet, brilliant and definitive as the great Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, delivers a deep and abiding respect to these actors, which translates to their characters and is, of course, reciprocated in kind by these fine performers, offering a sort of grand sense of repertory theatre that also made Granada’s outstanding Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett (1984-94), David Burke and Edward Hardwicke such a definitive artistic success.

Later episodes of Poirot mostly did away with Hastings, Japp and Miss Lemon, although Hastings figures rather largely in Christie’s Poirot finale, Curtain, yet to be filmed. Stories featuring the redoubtable Ariadne Oliver (a jokey pastiche of Agatha Christie from the author herself), portrayed majestically by the fabulous Zoë Wannamaker, began to appear appropriately in the 2005 film Cards on the Table and Poirot’s occasionally-mentioned manservant, George (also as Georges), was finally introduced in the 2006 film Taken at the Flood in the person of British character actor David Yelland.

Here, I will endeavor – over time in some small way – to capture some of my thoughts on each of the individual shows and the corresponding stories. Many great actors, writers and directors have passed through this long-running series and it is significant to state their contribution to Agatha Christie’s remarkable invention of Hercule Poirot.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 1
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 2
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 3
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 4
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 5
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 6
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 7
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 8
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 9
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 10
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 11
Agatha Christie's Poirot - Series 12

Black Dynamite

I recently caught the brilliantly hilarious film Black Dynamite, truly one of the baddest and best comedies in many, many a year and, possibly, one of the best films I’ve seen in a long, long time. Michael Jai White is pitch-perfect – on a number of levels – and freakin’ sensational as the 1970s superhero Black Dynamite in this amazing send up of blaxploitation films.

The film gets a bunch of stuff amazingly right: the cars, the pimpmobiles, the hair, the clothes, the shoes, the wallpaper, the furniture, the things we liked and the hair. Oh yes, and the hair. Director Scott Sanders and cinematographer Shawn Maurer don’t shy away from the low, nearly amateurish production values of the genre and its time (and the fact that the major studios hardly gave these films anywhere near the kind of money it takes to make a film) and gives it all those yucky period browns and oranges.

Indeed, many are often surprised to find that Black Dynamite was introduced to the world in 2009 and not sometime in the early seventies with fellow heroes Shaft or Superfly. The filmmakers do a tremendous “send up” that feels so real because there’s a lot of love and admiration in the knowingness, which makes the rapid-fire humor much, much funnier than a presentation of mere pastiche or parody.

Another thing the film gets right is the music. Adrian Younge, who provides the original score (and is, most oddly, the film’s editor too), and David Hollander, who scours a vast archive of library music to assemble a wall-to-wall soundtrack of fantastic sounds, are both spot on. The great folks at waxpoetics have issued two worthy Black Dynamite soundtracks on their own label – and “it’s not a comedy” for those of us who dig the funk and other seventies sounds.

Black Dynamite (Original Motion Picture Score) – Adrian Younge: Multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge makes his debut on Wax Poetics Records with his original score to the Michael Jai White comedy Black Dynamite. Inspired by the great blaxploitation soundtracks of the 1970s, Younge commands the Rhodes electric piano, Hammond organ, Hohner Clavinet, harpsichord, synthesizer, vibraphone, guitar, bass, flute, sax, cello, and drums, crafting with a singular vision. Whether it’s the witty vocal of “Jimmy’s Apartment” or the lowdown bass line of “Rafelli Chase,” the entire album is deeply authentic.

Black Dynamite (Motion Picture Soundtrack): Music supervisor David Hollander handpicked each track and cue from the vast reservoir of 1970s British library music, originally created for film and television. Maestros Alan Hawkshaw, Brian Bennett, and Johnny Pearson lay down exquisite and precise funk, but the bulk of the material comes from Alan Tew’s celebrated Drama Suite series (as heard on The Hanged Man and The People’s Court). Wax Poetics Records presents an authentic package with original artwork by Maceo Leatherwood.

What follows here is a brief clip that was not featured in the film and is ridiculously hilarious. Black Dynamite guests stars on the Sesame Street-like show “Ding Dong Roar” singing “Drugs Are Fun” (hahaha irony) with hip cat Funky Feline:

Finally, here’s another spot where Black Dynamite changes the course of history when he meets a young boy named Barry:

Eric Alexander on Delmark

Cries of “jazz is dead” are so easy to join nowadays that it’s hardly worth making the argument anymore. Sure, many continue to debate the pointless issue. Down Beat devoted a whole issue to the topic recently. Even the venerable Newsweek made some sort of weird case refuting it a month or two ago.

It’s such a moot point. As Duke Ellington once said long ago, “there is good music and the other kind.” Restricting music to genre definitions seems almost meaningless these days, especially as hardly any notable jazz has been issued in the last, well, three decades.

Good copy-cat jazz? Oh, there’s been plenty of that. Who needs another Miles Davis tribute? Or another Miles Davis-sounding player? It’s easy enough to buy a Miles Davis CD and enjoy something that was new and different when new and different didn’t mean doing something someone else did before.

Say what you will. Cite what you will cite. There aren’t more than a handful of people that would agree on any landmark “jazz” recording or noteworthy jazz-related event in the last 30 or so years.

The tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander (b. 1968) is one of jazz’s exceptions and, happily, one of its brightest lights. While, unfortunately, stuck in a meaningless jazz time warp, Eric Alexander has produced countless examples of fine musicality and much worthy “product” and plays and records with a productivity that not too many others can match.

In a phrase, it is pure pleasure to listen to Eric Alexander. Alexander possesses a universe of influences (George Coleman, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, etc.), but he is a galaxy of sound all his own. His phrasing and intonation, his style and sonority and his collaborative consistency are all unique and could only come from him. It’s something worth appreciating over and over again.

The following recordings, some of the first under Alexander’s own name, which date back nearly two decades ago now, are definitive. These discs represent the formative nature of Eric Alexander’s thinking and document some of the great passion he has for the tradition and his refusal to merely replicate what has been done before.

After many, many discs on jazz’s most vaunted – and few surviving – labels such as Milestone, Alfa, Sharp Nine, HighNote/Savant and Venus, Eric Alexander is proving to be unstoppable in his intuition, integrity and imagination. He’s never had to go looking for a recording opportunity either. In one of jazz’s few success stories, the record companies come looking for him – a lot and repeatedly.

He’s also been paired with any number of great contemporaries (Jim Rotundi, John Webber, Joe Farnsworth) and musical legends, particularly in the keyboard domain. Keyboardists of note that Eric Alexander can be heard with quite often include the great Harold Mabern (one of Alexander’s teachers and a mentor), David Hazeltine and Mike LeDonne as well as Kenny Barron, Cedar Walton and John Hicks. There are also all the organists: Charles Earland, Melvin Rhyne, Joey DeFrancesco and Larry Goldings, among others, too.

Upon reflection, these Delmark discs stand out, particularly when one considers all that came after these initial recordings. These few discs mark the very first chapter in the Eric Alexander story and a most exciting place to start an ongoing jazz adventure.

Straight Up (Delmark, 1992): Although Eric Alexander’s solo debut suggests, in both spirit and configuration, one of the old Hank Mobley-Lee Morgan Blue Note dates of the 1960s, this is an assured and, quite frankly, original beginning to the tenor player’s remarkable trajectory that has nothing to do with something that’s been done before. Neither Mobley nor Morgan ever touched any of this material – nor had they ever sounded as free and easy or, dare we suggest, as happy as Eric Alexander does here. In 1993, this disc may have seemed traditionally trivial, too then-in old school or too, pardon the awful colloquialism, “been there, done that.” But in light of not only surviving but exceeding the drudgery of two decades worth of mostly worthless “jazz,” Eric Alexander has proven that he has great insights, great fortitude, great taste, healthy appetites and an eminently appealing stance in the music (he believes in good melodies, wherever they come from, and constructing song-like solos like John Coltrane once did, without needing to quote John Coltrane to make his point). All the signs were there and they appear in abundance on Straight Up. Partnered here with the great Memphis piano legend Harold Mabern and fellow young lions Jim Rotundi, inspired and interesting on trumpet, John Webber on bass and Chicago-based George Fludas on drums, Alexander fronts the group exceptionally well, as if he’s leading a team that he knows will only work if all contribute effectively. Mabern is the glue that holds it all together and, no doubt, lends the sage’s air of timelessness that this set most assuredly achieves. He is in his rakin’ and scrapin’ groove throughout. The program bristles with choices that are either immaculately chosen (“Be My Love,” “Blues Waltz,” “An Oscar For Treadwell”) or startlingly executed (“What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life,” “Laura,” and most surprisingly, the bossa nova take of “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing”). The date’s only original, Alexander’s “Straight Up,” is especially appealing, eliciting grand playing from all involved. This is jazz the way it was meant to be heard: enjoyable without being obvious and challenging without being unlistenable.

Up, Over & Out (Delmark, 1993): After recording an album for the Dutch Criss Cross label and co-leading a standards-oriented Delmark disc with fellow tenor player Lin Halliday, Eric Alexander laid down his second “Up” disc, this 1993 quartet session – not issued until 1995 – featuring the great pianist Harold Mabern, bassist John Ore and the drummer Joe Farnsworth, who has since recorded frequently with both Alexander and Mabern. The rhythm section was paired with Alexander a few months earlier on baritone sax legend Cecil Payne’s Delmark album Cerupa and reconvenes here, providing the tenor player with his first-ever recorded sole horn spot. The shoes are big, if they are to be filled and Alexander knows it, responding in kind to the responsibility that is his charge. Throughout, Alexander displays his fondness for George Coleman (a Memphis native like pianist Harold Mabern, the two have worked together throughout both of their careers) and his soulful conceptions, but finds a way to engage even more fervently and with more zeal than even the great George Coleman has hitherto displayed. On the whole, the disc is structured like one of the great Dexter Gordon quartet records, mixing war-horse standards with challenging jazz compositions and a couple of surprises. Indeed it is the surprises that impress most and include the title track, a little-known cover of Hank Mobley’s “Up, Over & Out,” originally performed on Mobley’s 1968 Blue Note album Reach Out, Cecil Payne’s “Flying Fish,” which dates back to a 1968 Strata-East record, and Mabern’s unique-to-this-session (?) “Blues for Mabe.” The standards here include “The Nearness of You,” “Bewitched” and “I Remember Clifford” and while each is competently performed, they seem more like necessary exposition than impassioned experiences. Also on tap here are the little covered “Eronel” and the delightfully expounded “Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-Lues Are,” both tunes by Thelonius Monk, who bassist John Ore spent a great deal of time playing with in the fifties and the sixties. Indeed, Ore is afforded generous space on both tunes (Ore solos nicely on “Blues for Mabe” too). While it’s all good, this disc is probably higher-than-average class filler for more meaty samples of what Eric Alexander has since accomplished and is assuredly much more capable of. But it’s still worthwhile on any number of levels.

Mode For Mabes (Delmark, 1997): By the time of his third and final Delmark recording, Eric Alexander had already relocated from Chicago (where Delmark is based) to New York and recorded three albums for the Dutch Criss Cross label, Man With A Horn (with Cedar Walton) for Milestone, the wonderful Alexander The Great (with Charles Earland) for HighNote and the first of the “One For All” discs for Sharp Nine. Since Up, Over & Out, the tenor player had also only partnered with pianist Harold Mabern on Cecil Payne’s 1996 disc Scotch And Milk. But here Alexander returns to Chicago with Mabern, where, lest it be forgotten, the pianist got his start in the late fifties as part of the MJT + 3, for another exuberant and entrancing recording. The tenor-trumpet-trombone front line hints at John Coltrane’s Blue Train, but Mode For Mabes suggests a very different brew altogether. (Interesting oddity: Blue Train bassist Paul Chambers can be heard on other versions of this album’s “Sugar Ray,” “For Heaven’s Sake,” “Love Thy Neighbor,” “Stairway to the Stars” and “Naima” – all the songs that are not new to Mode For Mabes and mostly all with John Coltrane in the lead.) The difference is probably the soulful authority that Eric Alexander, trumpeter Jim Rotundi, trombonist Steve Davis and, most especially, pianist Harold Mabern bring to the proceedings. It’s not soulful in the usual way that critics often praise with faint damnation. It’s soulful in the true sense of the word. These guys feel the music and play to it. These are talented cats that, in addition to delivering the expected chills and thrills of melodic delivery and unique improvisation, are having a damned good time just playing the music. Highlights are plentiful and include Alexander and Rotundi’s title track, surely dedicated to the date’s pianist, whose signature sound is nicely spotlighted here; Phineas Newborn’s “Sugar Ray,” previously performed by fellow Memphis accolade Mabern on the 1990 Japanese compilation 100 Gold Fingers; trombonist Steve Davis’s Lee Morgan-like “Erik The Red” (where Alexander makes a particularly strong case as a powerful, melodically-endowed soloist – like his mentor, Harold Mabern, who also solos magnificently here); the Blakey-like intensity of Alexander and Rotundi’s “Stay Straight;” the terpsichorean quartet reading of “Stairway to the Stars,” a particularly excellent feature for Alexander’s lovely, swinging approach (and another Mabern model of pianistic nobility) and something which Coltrane performed with Milt Jackson on the great 1959 album Bags And Trane; and, of course, a particularly rousing take on Coltrane’s “Naima,” which Mabern – who is mesmerizing here – had previously recorded with George Coleman in 1981 and as part of a 1983 Jamey Aebersold play-along set. Eric Alexander shines most splendidly on “Naima” as well, capping off a shining disc in a rather sparkling – and capacious! – discography.

Postscript: Considering all the Coltrane references listed here, it is worth noting that Eric Alexander does not cover any of the aforementioned Coltrane material on his recent Venus quartet disc, Chim Chim Cheree, a sort of John Coltrane on Impulse tribute, which also features pianist Harold Mabern and bassist John Webber from Mode For Mabes.