Maestros and their motor cars (43): Stravinsky’s Buick
UncategorizedIgor Stravinsky went to Flint, Michigan, in June 1952 to take factory delivery of a new Buick. He then drove it cross-country home to Los Angeles.
Along the way, he had a little 70th Birthday party at a supper club in Duluth, Minnesota. Evidently, Igor was not on his best behaviour…
Read on here
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I am trying to picture in my mind Stravinsky getting a cup of coffee and some pie in roadside dinner in North Dakota.
Craft an elegant Boswell? From this female, sitting assistant principal viola as he conducted his rehearsal and a target of his “attentions”, he was echt creepy. Almost 40 years later, all I can think of in regards to him is “EEeewww.”
There are strong indications that the Stravinsky as came down to us via Craft’s ‘conversation books’, is a fabrication by Craft, displaying quite some degrees of intellectual dishonesty.
Stravinsky’s children agree.
A friend who knew Stravinsky (a fellow composer who used to talk shop with him) used to refer to those books as “stravinskycraft.”
This is a good article, with period photos, of The Flame, restaurant in Duluth. It had seats for about 400 and served ribs, chicken and fish. With that menu and the size of the place, I doubt the story about it having only 1 bottle of wine. To me, it sounds like someone appearing to be “highbrow”. https://zenithcity.com/archive/lost-architecture/the-flame-restaurant/
This photo (undated) shows the Flame had a wine list. https://www.perfectduluthday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/The-Flame-Wine-List-Phoenix-Duluth.jpg
Stravinsky was also a big fan of Benito Mussolini. With his perspectives, unlike so many artists of the era, he didn’t have any trouble with the McCarthyites.
Stravinsky’s attitudes towards fascism are, at best, ambiguous but alas, leave no doubt about his insensitivity. The best that can be said is that he was stupid and lacked a minimum of humanism.
https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and-propaganda/igor-stravinsky/
I can’t comment on the wine list or lack of it in Stravinsky’s time, but having had numerous driving vacations along Hywy 2 in the upper peninsula of Michigan, the northern edge of Wisconsin, to the twin ports of Duluth/Superior, and up along the Lake Superior coast of Minnesota, I can testify that into the 1980s restaurant dining was an adventure and rarely a pleasant one. Even by greasy spoon standards some of these places were disturbing and disgusting. One had to decide just what shade of green finally made the meat loaf unacceptable.
Even in restaurants that had classy pretensions and wine lists had few if any staff who knew the protocols of how to serve it. At one such, where at our request we were summoned into the “goremett” room (their pronunciation) we witnessed the three French speaking fellows at the next table order and reject three successive OPENED bottles of a surprisingly expensive wine. I finally called the waitress, who was nearly in tears, over and whispered “they are going to reject every bottle until you bring it to them unopened, let them inspect the label for approval of wine name and vintage, and then open it in their presence, allowing them to inspect the cork for freshness, and pouring a small amount into one glass for one of them to taste and approve of before pouring for all.” She looked at me as if I were a space alien. The bartender, who was likely the owner, was summoned and I had to tell him the same thing. He was as slack jawed as his waitress. The food by the way was surprisingly good and the wine list was pretty impressive. We had accepted our opened bottle-of-choice without comment, mostly because we’d been drinking swill for the whole vacation before that night. We did note that the vintage of our bottle was newer than that promised in the menu’s wine list, but so what.
And other stops along the way were no better and generally worse. We won’t even mention the hotels and motels (other than a memorable sign glued to one bathroom mirror: “Please do not use washcloths for other than their intended purpose.” )
And this was in the 1980s, decades after Stravinsky’s adventure.
Duluth was a major city in this area with a population of over 100,000 and definitely not a small and isolated burg. The Flame was definitely NOT a greasy spoon.
Sounds like the Stravinsky’s were counting their shekels. Why else tabulate the gas fare? Probably they had good reason to he with 2 sponging ‘guests’.
This is the only good one in the entire motorcar series and it is more about a trip taken by a famous composer and has little to do with his car. Maybe there’s a lesson there?
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