Here is the official Press Release from The Mono Trio featuring Stephen Dunwoody. I have known and loved Stephen's music for several years now. He is as close to unique as you can get in his creations. (Put his name in the search box of this blog to read past posts I have written. This latest project, having had a sneak preview of some of it, blew my mind in subject matter and performance.
Tinseltown mystery inspires award winning song
Belfast jazz and blues band The Mono Trio has won Best Jazz Song at this year’s Rome Music Video Festival.
Their song ‘17575 Pacific Coast Highway’ pays homage to 1930s film star Thelma Todd whose death at age 29 sparked one of Hollywood’s great mysteries.
Also known as the Ice Cream Blond, Todd was born 115 years ago on July 29, 1906.
Up until her suspicious death just before Christmas 1935 she starred in over 120 films, including Laurel and Hardy and Marx Brothers comedies. It was the Golden age of Hollywood and Thelma was one of the few who successfully crossed from the silent era to the talkies.
Thelma Todd had strong links to Northern Ireland and she often spoke about her Irish heritage; her father John Todd was from Comber in Country Down before emigrating to Massachusetts where he became a prominent city official. Sadly, he dropped dead of a heart attack just before his daughter’s first film release in 1926.
But it was his daughter’s death a decade later that still resonates today. Following the discovery of her lifeless body slumped at the wheel of her Lincoln convertible in a locked garage, many newspapers, including the LA Times, claimed that she had been murdered.
A subsequent Grand Jury however, decided that there was insufficient evidence and concluded that carbon monoxide poisoning was to blame along with ‘suicidal tendencies’. This decision has been hotly disputed ever since.
The authorities were accused of a shoddy investigation due to the many inconsistencies outlined throughout the hearings.
There was no indication that Todd was distressed in the days leading to her death. There was also the problem of her two cracked ribs and bloodied broken nose, which the coroner wrote off as somehow caused in the course of her carbon monoxide poisoning. And then there was the line-up of shady characters who had motive: her abusive ex-husband who had ties to the Mob, her business partner, his wife, and even the West Coast mafia who wanted to use her restaurant as a late-night gambling den.
Thelma Todd was one of the very first celebrity restaurateurs opening her sidewalk café at 17575 Pacific Coast Highway in 1933, a popular haunt for the Hollywood film glitterati and day trippers hoping to see a famous face.
17575 Pacific Coast Highway is, in fact, the title of The Mono Trio’s award-winning song.
The band’s singer and pianist Stephen Dunwoody explains: “A few years ago I came across the name Thelma Todd when I worked as a journalist. At that time the Laurel and Hardy fan club The Sons of the Desert were trying to trace Thelma Todd’s relatives who lived in or near Comber.
“Several years later, the name came back to me when we were putting songs together for an album entitled ‘Film Noir’. The Thelma Todd mystery just seemed a perfect fit.”
Stephen adds, “Although her death was almost 85 years ago, writers still discuss the case. What I thought was particularly sad, and something that completely rules out suicide, was that Thelma had bought around 100 Christmas presents that had been wrapped and ready to send to family, friends and staff at the Hal Roach Studios where she was popular with everyone she came in contact with.”
Mono Trio’s song and accompanying video will be released on the band’s website www.themonotrio.com this week to coincide with the movie star’s birthday.
The album ‘Film Noir’ will be released this autumn and features band members John Convery on double bass and Graeme Arthur on drums.
View video here on HD www.themonotrio.com
Or here https://youtu.be/XLxct1dDPmw
Notes:
The Mono Trio are also in the running for the Moscow and Paris music and film awards later this year. They play regularly at Bert’s Jazz Bar.
They released a live recording of songs by Nina Simone in 2020.
Contact: Stephen Dunwoody 07810 264345
No comments:
Post a Comment