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Show WW Max Carry is Stein's piano man Park Record Thursday, November 20, 1986 Page Bl by RICK BR0UGI1 Record Contributing Writer Meet Max Carry. He's a pianist who will be playing this winter in the lobby of the Stein Erikson Lodge at Deer Valley. Max knows about a thousand of the old standards, so if you request a favorite tune, Max knows it. Among all those songs, Max has a few special songs. One is "It Was a Very Good Year." After all, he wrote the music for it. Carry has enjoyed a healthy career as a songwriter. For singer Lou Rawls, he penned the music to "You'll Never Find (Another Love Like Mine)." He has written tunes for Tony Bennett, the Tiajuana Brass, Delia Reese and Aretha Franklin "when she was singing ballads," he said. He contributed music to the film "Ghost Story" and Sinatra's movie "Robin and the Seven Hoods." (He didn't write the song "Chicago, Chicago" from that film, but he said he wishes he had.) His most famous song, "Very Good Year," was sung first by the Kingston Trio but when Sinatra recorded the tune, he made it his. Said Carry, "When he does a tune, he nails it down." In fact, it's so identified as a Sinatra song that Max is often introduced in-troduced as the man who wrote "I Did It My Way." (That was Paul Anka.) He said he's surprised to find he gets few requests for "Very Good Year" even from an audience that knows his background. (In appearances ap-pearances like his current Stein Erikson run, Max plays background piano. He doesn't sing in the style of a piano-bar entertainer like Bobby Short.) His songwriting came after a career as a corporate lawyer. He managed both careers while being legally blind. He has lost 94 percent of his vision with enough for "guiding" vision. But he said, "I see a whole lot of that six percent. " Carry was born in Eldorado, Ark. At 11 years of age, he was stricken with mastoiditis, and the high fever burned his optic nerve until he lost most of his sight. That didn't keep him from attending atten-ding and earning a degree from the law school at the University of Arkansas. Despite the heavy-duty book work required, there were always students willing to earn extra ex-tra money by reading texts to other students. "I was not the first legally blind attorney," he said. In his legal years, he represented only four firms, mostly companies like Seagrams and Anheuser-Busch. "It wasn't easy to represent Demon , Rum in the Bible Belt," he said. But he developed good contacts with key politicians in Texas. . l . V.1: i(m. V V f. WW - Ml - R ': 'A ) j' Vv ' ' " " s ' " - f - L - . . 1 The popular '50s group The Coasters will perform their comic vocals at The Yarrow. Coasters to croon at Yarrow If you request a tune, chances how to play it. Yet he always had another in terestmusic. He had been playing music since he was five. Carry said he was self-taught on the piano. In 1962, he gave a tune to singer Billy Vaughan, who paid $5,000 for it. "I thought, 'Five-thousand dollars for a tune and I can write a new tune everday. This beats every other kind of job." He's had a steady career since then. And one rule he's followed is to not be afraid to walk right in and show them what you've got. "You got to have the guts of a government mule." Of all the well-known singers he's written for, Carry said he's known Frank Sinatra the best. But he resists the phoniness of calling it a good friendship. It's more like a steady acquaintance. "I've been in the man's presence 25 or 40 times." And he's played for Sinatra at parties. par-ties. "He says, 'Without you, we saloon singers wouldn't have nothing to sing,'" Max says. According to Max he's always gotten got-ten along with Siantra. "I don't try to placate him. I don't try to insult him, either. He calls me 'Doctor'. I used to correct him, but I don't anymore." Sinatra's real soft spot is for children. "That breaks him down like a shotgun," said Max. His favorite people are his grandchildren grand-children .- Carry can't say that he's , surrounded sur-rounded by well-known singers. But he feels he knows them well enough. are Max Carry knows "If everybody's making money, it's a good association." In his associations with lyricists, Carry usually writes the music first. The words come later. But it's the lyrics that sell the tune, he says. He responds to any kind of music, as long as it's well done. He receives requests for Beethoven. ("I'm not asked for anything by Bach, which suits me fine.") He also likes the Beatles and Chicago. But for all music, he said the hits are those tunes that are comparatively com-paratively simple and direct in their feeling. "Simplest things are the best." Looking back over his career, he says he's proud of being one person who shows that handicapped people can achieve. He also mentions the help given by institutions like the school for the blind at Little Rock in his native state. He will be playing at Stein Erikson's Lodge through the spring. Stein's will feature two pianists, Carry and Ron Jenson, during the hours of 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. every day except Sunday. (Max will tend to play on busy days at the lodge. ) He joked. "It's a shame I haven't realized a whole lot of success because I have the disposition for it." But he's not really a prima donna, nor is he dissatisfied with his. life's work. "I have been lucky more than wise," he said. "I got more than I expected." Thanksgiving: War to football by DENNA WRIGHT Park City Library Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, Holi-day, an American History by Diana Darter Appelbaum. Thanksgiving is uniquely ours our oldest and perhaps best-loved best-loved American holiday. Appelbaum chronicles the role of Thanksgiving from its beginning, through the colonial col-onial days, the Revolutionary War and into the 20th Century. The celebration of Thanksgiving, while always colored with tradition, has changed substantially with each succeeding suc-ceeding generation. One hundred years ago, football replaced the turkey shoot as the Thanksgiving Day's most popular sporting activity. activi-ty. Everyone knows how it's supposed to be observed the family gathers from near and far, offers grateful Between the Covers prayers and sits down to a feast of turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pum-pkin pie. What about that very first Thanksgiving? The author lets us know that the 55 pilgrims who survived sur-vived the first winter were truly thankful when autumn came around and their crops had been harvested. The first Thanksgiving was a feast called to celebrate the harvest, to thank the Lord, and to impress the Indians. A target shoot, during the three-day festivities, was designed to demonstrate the power of the English muskets. In the words of Edward Ed-ward Winslow,..."Our harvest being gotten in, our Governour sent foure men fowling, so that we might after a more special manner rejoyce together... amongst other Recreations Recrea-tions we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest King Massasoyt." While New England immigrants in the early 1800s were settling the Midwest, a band of missionaries found the Hawaiian Islands and introduced in-troduced Thanksgiving Day to King Kamehameha and the Islanders. Here were New England Yankees praying in Hawaiian and serving a luau for Thanksgiving dinner. Here were Hawaiians singing hymns and temperance songs in a Protestant church on Thanksgiving Day. The Hawaiian guests ate "poi with a spoon," while the Yankee missionaries mis-sionaries "accomplished the same feat with their fingers." Photographs, poetry and lyrics complement com-plement this rich account of an American holiday from its earliest celebrations to the present day. Film festival jurors are announced Organizers of the 1987 United States Film Festival have announced announc-ed the jurors for its annual independent indepen-dent film competition. The festival is presented by the Sundance Institute in cooperation with the State of Utah Film Development Develop-ment Office. It will be held in Park City Jan. 16 to 25. Twenty-six films will compete in two categories: documentary and narrative. The winning filmmakers will be awarded $2,500 in prize money and in-kind services. Independent films are non-mainstream, non-mainstream, non-studio-backed movies that are often regional in ' scope, personal in their messages and produced without big budgets. This year's narrative competition jurors include French film director Jean-Jacques Beineix. His first feature film, "Diva," won four French Cesar Awards. His newest film is "Betty Blue." Randa Haines directed this year's "Children of a Lesser God" with William Hurt. She began her career as an actor, studying with Lee Strasberg and as a writer (for the television series, "Family"). She has directed "Hill Street Blues" and the Emmy Award-winning "Something About Amelia." Amy RobinsOn has produced with various partners "Chilly Scenes of Winter," "Baby, It's You" and "After Hours." She and ac- tor producer Griffin Dunne are partners in Double Play Productions and have several projects in development. David Ansen is the film critic for Newsweek magazine and one of the hosts of the Bravo Network's International Inter-national Film Festival. In 1984 he was given the Page One Award for reviews by the New York Newspaper Guild and honored by the National Headliners Club for outstanding magazine columns. L.M. Kit Carson is a writer, producer, pro-ducer, director and script doctor. His most recent work was writing the screenplay for "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" and writing and acting in "Off Season." With Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard he adapted "Paris, Texas" to the screen. He also wrote "Chinese Boxes," directed by Christopher Petit. Documentary competition jurors include Sheila Benson, film critic for the Los Angeles Times. Her career as a critic began in 1970 with KTIM AMFM in Marin County, Calif. She wrote for the Pacific Sun in Mill Valley, Calif., until 1980. She has served on the juries of international film festivals in Manila, Berlin and Montreal. Jayne Loader co-directed the documentary "The Atomic Cafe." Her novel, Between Pictures, will be published next year. She is co-director co-director of "Right Thinking," a documentary on the far right now in production. Peter Kiskind is editor-in-chief of American Film .magazine and author of "Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying Worry-ing and Love the Fifties." David Loxton is director of drama for the Production Center at WNETThirteen and the senior producer pro-ducer of specials. As director of drama, he programs the "Great Performances" series. He won several Emmy Awards as executive producer for more than 50 documentaries documen-taries for the PBS series "Nonfiction Television." Robert Gardner made his first major film, "Dead Birds," in 1963. His other feature-length documentary documen-tary films include "Rivers of Sand," "The Nuer," "Deep Hearts," "Altars of Fire" and "Forest of Bliss." He has been director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts and the Film Study Center at Harvard Har-vard University since 1962. Three ticket packages for the United States Film Festival are available at $100, $175 and $250 and include entry to a selection of screenings, premieres, seminars and special events. A $500 pass permits per-mits entry to all events. Registration by Dec. 15 is suggested. Individual screening and seminar tickets will be available beginning Jan. 2 at the Park City ChamberBureau, 528 Main St. For more information, or to register by telephone, call 328-3465 Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Coasters, America's most popular black rock 'n roll group of the late 1950s, will be delivering their comic vocals in a live nightclub show at The Yarrow on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 28 and 29. Unlike regular concert-seating in rows of chairs, the nightclub format allows guests to sit comfortably at tables, sipping refreshments while watching the four Coasters and their nine-piece backup band go to it. Famous for their wisecracking doo-wop numbers, The Coasters' first single was the 1956 rhythm and blues song "Down in Mexico." But most people who were tuned in to '50s music will remember the group for songs like "Yakety Yak," "Charlie Brown," "Along Came Jones" and "Poison Ivy." Tickets for The Coasters are $22 for a Show Ticket, which includes drink setups, and $32 for the Dinner Show Package, which includes setups and a special dinner at The Yarrow restaurant prior to the show, which begins at 9 p.m. The doors open at 8 p.m. so that guests can select a table and relax before the fun begins. Tickets include two shows each night, with the entertainment entertain-ment expected to go on until midnight. mid-night. The Coasters are the first in a nine-concert series to be offered this winter at The Yarrow by Peterson Shapiro Enterprises. According to promoter Rick Shapiro, the Vegas-style Vegas-style shows offer an new form of entertainment for Park City. "We're excited about bringing new nightlife to town," said Shapiro. "We're looking look-ing at oldies groups like the Drifters and the Ink Spots, who are more than singing groups they're entertainers. enter-tainers. And The Yarrow is perfect for these kinds of shows, because it's a comfortable atmosphere where you can be part of the entertainment, entertain-ment, instead of sitting in a massive hall where the group is a half mile away. "If you've never been to a nightclub show before,' this is a great opportunity. I think people will discover it's a lot more fun than just a concert or a night out dancing at a club." The seating at The Yarrow is limited to 450 people. For more information in-formation about the show or tickets, call 649-7000. ACCESSORY Szz&Ly J MORE THAN A VV TRADITION y SNUG V240 Park Ave. Park City SNUG EXPRESS The Resort Center |