Customer Reviews

Counterpoint: The Journey of a Music Man

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Joe Harnell and Ira Skutch's Counterpoint: The Journey of a Music Man is a fascinating memoir of a long life dedicated to art, fame, and, finally, self-acceptance and a higher good. The memoir should be rewarding reading for anyone interested in the music business; in the jazz, classical, popular, or film scenes; in luminaries such as Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland, or Marlene Dietrich; or in the cultural history of music in the United States before and after the Second World War. Joe Harnell, eminent pianist, arranger, and composer for film and television, and winner of multiple Grammy Awards, tells the story from a vantage point of late-coming sobriety and self-awareness.

After an impoverished childhood in the Bronx, Harnell (born Hittelman) is offered a scholarship to Julliard. Reluctantly, he agrees to follow his parents to Florida and enrolls in the University of Miami, which also is offering him a music scholarship. His father is distant and self-loathing, and despite Joe's many efforts, their relationship never deepens meaningfully. Soon after the war begins, Harnell enlists in the Air Force and travels to Europe to play in the "Jive Bombers," an offshoot of the Glenn Miller Band. He becomes an accomplished jazz musician and later studies with Nadia Boulanger, Leonard Bernstein, and Aaron Copland. At Tanglewood, he is a classmate of Ned Rorem and Jacob Druckman, and a colleague of John Corrigliano, John Williams, Dave Brubeck, and others. As his career blossoms, he plays for Lena Horne on the occasion of her being the first Black artist to sing in a Florida nightclub. He also becomes the first White artist to record for Motown Records. He serves as musical director for "The Mike Douglas Show" for six years and conducts for Pearl Bailey in her appearances at the White House.

Although Harnell is able to develop the stoicism necessary for his professional life in music and entertainment, a life both unstable and extraordinarily demanding, his personal life eventually becomes unbearable. Like many artists before him, he is torn by the dilemma of what to put first--art or love. Tension with family is fueled by a perfectionism that contributes to career success but makes it difficult for him enjoy life's small pleasures or to be comfortable with himself.

Harnell describes warm friendships with men, as well as many brief, mainly sexual, encounters with women. His family life, for the first five decades of his life, is, however, a shambles. At the age of twenty-three, he becomes responsible for the care of his younger sister and two brothers when his mother dies young and their father becomes chronically ill for the remaining thirty years of his life. Harnell's goal growing up had been to be a "good boy," and his disciplinary orientation was strict, like his father's. He writes that his youngest brother, Stew, leaves home because he is "fed up with me telling him that he had to eat all of the food on his plate; otherwise I would stuff it down his throat." Details such as this tell, in some ways, more about Harnell's character at that time than do generalizations about his emotionally distant behavior with his third wife. Her story is only sketched, but the reader is left with the impression of a self-absorbed husband who drinks himself into stupors regularly and, in the lowest sinks of despair, wishes to die.

"My life has been a counterpoint between the professional and the personal," Harnell begins, and Counterpoint proves to be a collection of reminiscences of a life of personal struggle blended with an obsession with the world of musical performance. His memories of the latter are particularly strong. During pauses in Bernstein's conducting, Harnell recalls, musicians "with their cigars in their mouths" would read "the stock market pages on the floor at their feet." Harry Richman, a lisping Lothario, finds he can no longer sing "ah." He compensates by singing "Deep in the hcccht of Texas." While Harnell is musical director on "The Mike Douglas Show," one of the band members uses "string, threads, scotch tape, candy wrapper and papers of various sizes to build a cocoon around his drum set and himself, leaving a little hole" so that he can watch Harnell. When he isn't playing, the drummer sits "back there undisturbed, smoking marijuana, having a drink, or working on his hobby, which was carving dildos."

Counterpoint is often a hilarious book. It is rich in the black humor of the transplanted and alienated New York Jew, and it is impossible not to laugh when Harnell describes how, in preparing for a trip to Minneapolis in winter, he buys a pair of battery-operated electric socks (his shoes catch fire), or how he is playing a New Year's Eve party in a New Orleans nightclub owned and frequented by mobsters, when a balloon pops (all the men leap to their feet, with their guns drawn), or how, when John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-host "The Mike Douglas Show," Lennon blows marijuana smoke into a cage full of chimpanzees who are about to perform a live routine on scooters (hysteria results as the stoned primates run amok through the audience).

Harnell was the producer, musical director and conductor for the Israel Founders Orchestra Gala for the Jewish National Fund at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles in 1993. More recently, he was Musical Director for the Ella Fitzgerald Music Festival in Newport News, Virginia, Fitzgerald's birthplace. He continues his concert appearances as a pianist/conductor in addition to his activities as a lecturer and teacher of film scoring at the University of Southern California. In the end, one cannot but wonder at his emotional and artistic breadth. By courageously viewing professional triumphs in the cold light of personal failures, a feat possible because he is a recovering alcoholic and has finally found contentment with his children and with Alice, his wife of sixteen years, Harnell creates a fascinating, generous memoir.

I'm about a third of the way through the book and while it is interesting, it is not a literary masterpiece.

At any rate, this book is available in the Kindle format but you wouldn't know it by looking only in Books. I was invited to tell the publisher that I would like to see this book in Kindle format but I later discovered it already was.

COUNTERPOINT, the frank account of the varied and exciting life of Joe Harnell, pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, will be sure to appeal to anyone who's a fan of mid to late 20th century popular culture and it's major players, louis armstrong, marlene dietrich, etc.
While not always pretty (Harnell has no desire to gloss over the more unpleasent aspects of his life), it is an always honest and very revealing account of the artistic and personal development of a musician's musician. After reading this book, it is difficult not to be touched by Harnell's humanity whether or not one is aware of his work and contributions to popular and television music over the last five decades.

COUNTERPOINT, the frank account of the varied and exciting life of Joe Harnell, pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, will be sure to appeal to anyone who's a fan of mid to late 20th century popular culture and it's major players, louis armstrong, marlene dietrich, etc.
While not always pretty (Harnell has no desire to gloss over the more unpleasent aspects of his life), it is an always honest and very revealing account of the artistic and personal development of a musician's musician. After reading this book, it is difficult not to be touched by Harnell's humanity whether or not one is aware of his work and contributions to popular and television music over the last five decades.

"Counterpoint" provides the reader with a rare perspective on a rich era in American Music written by one of the industry's giants about other musical giants of the time. Not only is Joe Harnell's personal journey told with extreme honesty, it's written with the light touch of a master humorist. He and Ira Skutch choose to divide the dazzling parade of musical legends by giving each one their own chapter, which makes it easy to refer back to a particular singer and reread a funny anecdote or insightful observation. This book succeeds on several levels: as a chronicle of music history; as a story of personal triumph; and as an important musical autobiography.

Joe Harnell pulls no punches in this great journey from boyhood to the present. Not only did I love the descriptions of the places and times Joe has traveled through, but the insight into the musicians and stars he worked with was rewarding. The fact that he is so out front with his personal life only makes you like him more for his human foibles and the peaks and valleys that we all experience. I'm from a younger generation but truly enjoyed reliving this time period through the words and music of Joe Harnell.

Not only a riveting expose of the music business over the last half a century, but also a revealing glimpse into the intimate life of a man with the sensitivity and temperament of a true artist and all the color and drama that go with it. Joe invites you along on his roller coaster ride of a life with stories you will never forget.

I was fascinated by the fact that this very successful musician was telling his story with such a candid insight.

What a life! After reading his book, you realize the life Joe has lead behind his music. It was surprising and almost shocking how personal and revealing the writing is to the insides of his thoughts and feelings.
He shows how he is a true musician at heart no matter what professional situation he is presented. His solid background as a pianist and arranger laid the groundwork for his film scoring that did not come to mid-life and career and he almost didn't take the chance....still a 25 year fish out of water on the west coast! Thanks for a all the great music that became the soundtrack to my childhood Joe....
Also was surpised to find out about his Jewish background, he always seemed Italiano to me!
So the book leaves just one question- when is the TV movie version of Joe Harnell coming out?

If the title of this review seems strange, please turn to page 103 of this touching, entertaining, and enviably honest "journey," taken by a man blessed with talent,intelligence, and genuine sensitivity. I can't wait to read it again!