The Knox County Public Library system receives a steady stream of donated books and audio-visual materials. We’re fortunate and grateful. If the gift is needed and in adequate condition, it will be added to the collection and become available to borrow. If it’s not, the item will find a new and appreciative home while generating support funds through the Friends of the Knox County Public Library’s ongoing schedule of sales. Here are a few uncommonly fine finds that recently made their way to the shelves through the generosity of you or your neighbors.

Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra 1934-35 (1990, Classics Records)
This disc of excellent embryonic swing was part of a large bequest of materials from the estate of much-missed Knox County librarian Dale Watermulder. Watermulder was instrumental in developing KCPL’s extraordinary Sights and Sounds collection, and it would please him immensely—in whatever clean, well-lighted place he spends these days—if you gave this collection a spin.

Composer and bandleader Lunceford was a contemporary of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. These sides date from the decade when they were all in their prime, and when their three bands alternated onstage at Harlem’s Cotton Club. As happens whenever some new form of creative expression is born, the rules changed daily; almost every evening at the Cotton Club you could hear a big band make sounds that had never been made before. Compared to his peers, Lunceford had what may have been an unfair advantage in the person of multi-instrumentalist and arranger Sy Oliver. These recordings are superb and in favor of any newcomer to big-band swing. Oliver’s arrangements are adventurous and complex, but on most pieces the band is composed of only nine or 10 players; instead of the overwhelming brass barrage you might associate with the huge Count Basie or Stan Kenton show bands soon to follow, you hear each instrument as an individual and articulate voice. This is great music, superlative within both style and period.

The Man Without a Past (2002)
This quietly charming comedy by Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki serves as an ideal palate cleanser to Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Who is George Bailey, after all, if not the man with too much past? M (the late, craggily handsome Markku Peltola) is traveling for work. After suffering a blow to the head during a mugging, he loses his memory. Nonplussed by his wounds, his pain, his disinclination to smile, and his inability to answer the most basic questions about himself or his predicament, the indifferent currents of a large, unnamed city deposit him at a settlement of squatters living happily among abandoned freight containers at the edge of the sea. If there are American films that accomplish what this film does—remind us that unpleasant situations often end well enough, and that incomplete information does not prohibit happiness—no titles come quickly to mind. Kati Outinen is exquisite and unconventionally dazzling as the social worker who helps M appreciate the advantages of not knowing.

Schultze Gets the Blues (2003)
If you have ever found yourself wishing that the late documentary filmmaker and musical anthropologist Les Blank had ventured into feature films, you should meet Schultze. (He pronounces his name with two syllables.) The rotund Horst Krause stars in the title role: salt miner by day, polka accordionist on his own time, most often without an audience. Retirement, insomnia, and short-wave radio access to American airwaves combine to expose Schultze to the zydeco music of Texas and Louisiana. With no emotional attachments to the German village where he has spent his life, Schultze slowly becomes aware of where he belongs. The world—using tools that range from a cast-off invitation to a Texas music festival to an abandoned shrimp boat—conspires to get him there.

The Great Works of Sacred Music
One of our favorite patrons is a fan of the Great Courses audiobook lecture series produced by the Teaching Company and Modern Scholar. It’s usually a disappointment to inform someone who inquires that we don’t own and offer the title he or she seeks. Not so with this good neighbor: If we don’t have the lecture he’s interested in, he buys it and, after he’s listened to it, donates it to the collection. If these lectures, by Charles McGuire of Oberlin College, were limited to Bach’s liturgical music and Handel’s inspired pageantry, the set would still be plenty worthwhile. But it also includes an introduction to chant and polyphony and interpretations of the choral music of Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart. McGuire is a functional good sport when he demonstrates technique and effect by singing examples himself. His voice is not perfect—which makes him all the more representative of the countless voices that have sung this music over the centuries.

Shelf Life explores new and timely entries from the Knox County Public Library’s collection of movies and music.

Chris Barrett

Chris Barrett's Shelf Life alerts readers to new arrivals at the Lawson McGhee Library's stellar Sights and Sounds collection, along with recommendations and reminders of staples worthy of revisiting. He is a former Metro Pulse staff writer who’s now a senior assistant at the Knox County Public Library.