The Terre Haute Tribune from Terre Haute, Indiana • Page 45

Greatest hit of 1742 shows no signs of slowing down KEY NOTE FOR CHRISTMAS One of the greatest hits of 1742 is one of the biggest and most popular hits of Christmas today and shows no signs of lowing down. George Frederick best-known work is nearly unavoidable in Nashville Sound: NASHVILLE. Tenn In country music, 1977 was the vear Dolly Parton Waylon Jennings got arrested and Ronnie Milsap won the most major awards. Miss Parton. a staunch country music traditionalist when she teamed with Porter Wagoner a few years ago, hired a new band and gave her music more of a pop flavor.

She also hired California management and began appearing on national television shows from the West Coast like the show Jennings was arrested in Nashville in August on charges of cocaine possession, but the charges were later dismissed, Milsap, a blind singer who once fell off a stage, won a Grammy Award for his single. A) Stand By My Woman was named entertainer of the year by the Country Music Association and was chosen male vocalist of the year. Other Grammy winners in country music were Emmylou Harris for her Hotei." the Amazing Rhythm Aces for End Is Not in Sight (The Cowboy Tune)." Chet Atkins and Les Paul for Lester" and Larry Gatlin for December. David Randall, center, conducts the Masterwork Chorus Sunday at New Carnegie Hall, only one of the places where the work will be presented this Christmas. AP The year also marked the emergence of Crystal Gayle.

Loretta Lynn younger sister, as a major country music star. She was selected top female vocalist over Miss Parton and others by the CMA and her It Make My Brown Eyes was one of the year big hits. And her image as a bashful, wholesome youngster was changed instantly when she appeared braless on the show. The Academy of Country Music named Mickey Gilley its big winner. He won entertainer of the year and male vocalist of the year while Miss Gayle was female vocalist of the year.

In another awards competition. Charley Pride was voted No. 1 male country singer and Miss Lynn was named top female vocalist at the American Music Awards, which are voted on by the public. It also was a big year for Kenny Rogers, whose recording of was chosen single of the year by the CMA. He was a iinalist for entertainer of the year and male vocalist of the year.

Although Jennings had problems with the law. he remained NEW YORK (AP) One of the greatest hits of 1742 is one of the biggest hits of Christmas 1977 and shows no signs of slowing down. George Frederick Handel best-known work, is nearly unavoidable in December playing to eager audiences in Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall in London, and countless churches, auditoriums and college campuses. It is an immensely popular work which nonetheless is esteemed as a masterpiece; it is an unmistakeably Christian work which rated several performances this month in Tokyo; it is a technically demanding work for the most skilled performers, but the audience is likely to leave humming the tunes. wears very well," says Dr.

George Geyer. Geyer should know. The Boston pediatrician has been in the chorus each December since 1946 for the Handel and Haydn Society's annual performances at Symphony Hall Why is it so popular1? Geyer savs, is just good music." is just one tune after another." says Frederick Grimes, who has directed the Christmas portion of at New York's Holy Trinity Lutheran Church I think the average person, not deeply involved in music not only wants excitement, but something to remember," Grimes says. The oratorio is chock full of high points. Foremost, of course, is the chorus.

But there is also the sprightly chorus unto us a child is born" the soothing aria shall feed his and the robust interplay of bass and trumpet one of the top country music stars His recording of Texas." joined and It Make My Brown Eyes as the year's biggest country songs. Merle Travis, a pioneer guitarist who wrote the classic Tons," became the 30th member of the Country Music Hall of Fame In June. Miss Lynn sold the motion picture rights to her swift-selling autobiography, Daughter," to Universal Studios. At year's end, she was reviewing the script The country music industry and fans were shocked at the death of Elvis Presley, who got his start in country music. After his death, his former records zipped up the country charts again Death also claimed veteran bluegrass fiddler Stonev Cooper, 58.

who with his wife. Wilma Lee. was a pioneer in traditional country music. Grand Ole Opry star Jeannie Seely was seriously injured in a June trafiic accident in Nashville, but recovered and resumed her career. in trumpet shall sound." Everyone has a favorite, is accessible," says Thomas Dunn, music director of the Handel and Haydn Society.

scriptural text is an advantage. People are familiar with it and most people are familiar with the music." is the one work that is loved no matter how it is adds David Randall, who directed the Masterwork Chorus in a demanding series of eight performances in the New York area suppose there are people who say, Christmas, I better repent and wear the hairshirt and go hear Messiah' are other oratorios by Handel that are just as beautiful. I can account for it. but Messiah' has caught on," Randall savs. Dunn rates as more difficult than Johann Sebastian Bach's ethereal masterpiece, the minor mass, but the Handel work does not scare amateurs.

Grimes recalls that his first bout with was at 14, when he directed a chorus of 16 in Hillsboro, Texas. the music is great enough to survive all these performances," he says. can withstand a tremendous amount of damage." Popularity is precisely what Handel intended for Although Handel was religious in his final illness he declared he wanted to die on Good Friday the hope of rejoining the good God, mv sweet Lord and Savior, on the day of His he was a composer for the stage with a sharp eye for the big chance. came at a low point in his career His once infallible grip on the public as an opera composer was behind him, his last stage venture in 1740 had flopped, and he had retreated to his rooms. In his seclusion.

Handel dashed off the music for in three weeks. It premiered in Dublin on April 13, 1742 to wild acclaim. Although George II jumped to his feet to salute the chorus when the work debuted in England, it was slow catching on. getting only five performances in six years By 1750. however, it was firmly established as an annual tradition and the rest, as they say.

is history. "Messiah" arrived in the United States with a partial performance by the Handel and Haydn Society in 1815 The first full performance was three years later, and has been a yuletide fixture in Boston since 1854 Mr. Christmas of music world NEW YORK i AP i Some people call him Christmas of the Music Man of a thousand tunes, he wrote one simple song almost 30 years ago that swept through hhe world in a wave of instant success. Today, at 68, songwriter Johnny Marks is still composing And his simple little song, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," remains one of biggest hits and a staunch bit of cherished Americana. write it again without changing a note," says Marks, who finished the piece in 1949 10 years after the idea came to him and sent it off to country-Western singer-actor Gene Autrv.

didn't want to record it at Marks recalls it didn't fit his image like the song, Tumbleweed did. But his wife heard 'Rudolph' and got him to do it." The original Autry record has now passed the 10 million mark as Columbia's Records' all-time best seller. isn't Marks' only yuletide hit to sell more than a million records. Others are Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," first recorded by Bing Crosby in 1956. Around the Christmas Tree." which became a Brenda Lee hit in 196C, and Holly, Jolly Christmas," which Burl Ives recorded in 1963.

Autry's no-frills rendition of which he introduced at a show in Madison Square Garden, remains Marks' favorite version out of more than 450 others recorded by such stars as Bing Crosby, Perry Como and John Denver. The musical tale of the shiny-nosed reindeer and Marks' other scores continue to reach millions through television specials. ABC broadcast Shiny New with Red Skelton, and CBS telecast Tiny Tree" with Buddv Ebsen and Roberta Flack Last month, CBS ran the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for that show's 14th consecutive airing Born in Mount Vernon. and raised in New York City, Marks attended Colgate University where he took every available music course, despite disapproval from his father, a consulting engineer. My parents didn't approve of songwriting It wasn't a real profession and you certainly didn't send your son to college to be a Marks says.

His son. Michael. 28, is a lawyer Another son. David. 22.

is in law school His daughter, Laura. 26. is a student at New York University None aspired to musical careers, according to Marks been a good career, even back in the early days when I played the clubs at night and spent afternoons on the bench in waiting rooms hoping for a chance to plunk out my tunes These days Marks is playing his music and lyrics for the likes of Ethel Merman and Mickey Rooney, among others, whose voices will be heard singing 10 of melodies in the movie and Forshy," an animated musical slated for release in 1979. Marks still lives in New York's Greenwich Village, where he wrote plus 150 other published songs and more than 750 unpublished pieces. never had to dig," he says.

write quickly it seems to come naturally. But through it all, still mv favorite." Ken Anderson, dragon rise to fame LOS ANGELES (AP) One of the bright new stars of the holiday movie season is named Elliot. He's a dragon, the creation of a bearded, 43-year Disney veteran named Ken Anderson. Anderson look it, but he's a grandfather "and I wasn't even so good as a grandfather," he quips. He was ready to retire from Disney Productions a year or so ago when executive producer Ron Miller tossed a challenge at him: help put a full- sized dragon on the screen and make him perform with human actors.

not?" Ken Anderson agreed After all. he had been fielding challenges for Disney since 1934. when he joined the swelling group of artists Walt was collecting to make White" and other features. Newly married and inspired by the imagery of the Symphonies," Anderson thought the studio might be an interesting place to work. Walt Disney learned Anderson had been an architect and assigned him to devise new ways to photograph cartoons.

Since then he has been dazzling with his versatility, creating everything from cartoon characters to Disneyland attractions. had finished doing the characters for another feature. and was about ready to retire," said Anderson "Then Ron gave me an original story that he said Walt had been interested in. was about a boy and his dragon, but the dragon never appeared to anyone. The village had to keep making up excuses for all the damage that happened a freak storm or something.

The dragon came into the story only in the dream, and then he was just a storybook dragon with no intimation of personality. was really on a spot I felt I shouldn't be critical of something both Walt and Ron had believed in I could have drawn a dragon out of any book, but I decided to operate on the ploy that Elliot appears to those who are in need of his help." From 9 a.m. until noon one morning, Anderson made a series of sketches for his concept of the star of Ron Miller and co-producer Jerome Courtland saw the result and were charmed. Miller convinced Anderson to stay on and direct the young animators who would bring Elliot to full, fire-breathing life It wasn't easy. Elliot was to appear throughout the movie, doing scenes with Helen Reddy.

Mickey Rooney, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters and Jim Dale. The scale had to be diminished so Elliot's face would not seem too huge in his many scenes with young Sean Marshall, who plays Pete. schedule for animation was Anderson said. picture had been set with the Radio City Music Hall for this Christmas and it had to be delivered in time. Fortunately, Don Bluth.

one of the young animators, came aboard as director, and he did a tremendous job. of the young crew did. They worked twice as fast as we older animators could have. On you had to be young or you would die." Disney had combined cartoons with live action before of the but never against natural locations. Scenes were filmed at the Disney ranch and at a lighthouse the Disney crew built from scratch near Morro Bay, Calif.

Elliot was then added. wasn't hard to get the actors to work in a scene with a dragon who would be painted in later," said Anderson. rehearsed with a model, so they knew what to expect. But the live-action crew had to be helped They had trouble adjusting to the fact that Elliot would later fill up half the screen." Ken Anderson expects to retire finally next April, and he plans to write and illustrate books and do some painting seen what passes for art today, I hope to restore some faith in beauty." He will leave with faith in the new crop of Disney animators "they have the same kind of drive and ambition that we had in the Nothing is beyond THE STAR IS A DRAGON Disney Studio animator Ken Anderson holds a model of his creation, Elliott the dragon. Anderson was ready to retire when studio heads asked him to create an animated dragon that could perform on the screen with human characters.

Half a days work and Elliott, the hit of the Disney film "Pete's was born. AP The year in Country Music Music Makers Bee Gees refused to go away LOS ANGELES (AP) Way back in 1968, three English brothers broke into American pop-rock with a new kind of music an orchestral, plodding sort of rock balladeering that produced two big hits and quickly made them stars. But rock music was a volatile art form in 1968, spinning by musical styles like a toy top. now toward complex, heavily instrumental pieces, then toward simple, often silly, melodic ditties. In a sense, it was dangerous to be a pop hit in 1968 rock music was obviously making a move, and what was big then seem likely to carry the same weight with audiences as the decade ended.

So. the three English brothers, who called themselves the Bee Gees, seemed destined to go the way trod by most of the other big groups of 1968 The Union Gap, The Lemon Pipers, the Box Tops, Ohio Express and. oh yes. The 1910 Fruitgum Co. (creators of that unforgettable hit, Red The predicted revolutionary convulsions did indeed come, shaking up pop-rock and hurling some of the aforementioned stars directly into oblivion.

But the Bee Gees refused to go away. Nearly a decade and Lord, how many rock music changes later, the Bee Gees are still where they started at the top. Their Deep is Your has been made one of biggest hits of the year, long after most of their contemporaries have gone into the dry cleaning business. Dog night split up," laughed Barry Gibb recently, recalling some of the Bee Gees' former contemporaries, "so I guess we re the only trio left in the world at least, I think there's another one going that's still making hit added brother Barry, "we re brothers. There's kind of a seal there." The Bee Gees didn't sink under the weight of that slow, syrupy style diplaved in their first hits.

Gotta Get a Message to You" and Started a Joke;" in fact, the style carried them to further success in the with to Me" and Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" And when it finally appeared their style was beginning to burden them, the Brothers Gibb passed the most grueling test popular musicians ever face they changed They added funk and freshness to their sound when the times demanded, as demonstrated in 1975 with their hit "We wanted to move into an area of better, tighter rhythyms. and become more of a band than just three brothers," Barry said at the time. Barry has been working on the new album of his youngest brother, Andy Just Want To Be Your and with brothers Maurice and Robin. Barry also is currently performing under another name Sgt Lonely Hearts Club Band, in the movie of the same title. It is a rock opera without dialogue, and Barry says all three Bee Gees are looking for more acting roles, preferably in films that have nothing to do with rock n' roll.

you put too much energy' into filmmaking," Barry cautions himself, you forget about your music, and that's crazy. It musn't happen. It's taken all our lives to get where we are now. We want to take it even further. The music comes ANOTHER BRITISH MUSICAL GROUP HITS THE TOP These three English brothers, Bee Gees," hit the top in 1968 with their singing, and are still there with one of the biggest hits of the year, Deep is Your I.ove.” Defying tradition they changed styles.

From their first syrupy style they added funk and freshness to their sound: another reason for ir popularity. AP.