I wrote recording artist Bruce Hornsby in the summer of 2002 and asked him if there was ever a video or actual recording of his rendition of Star Spangled Banner that he performed with Branford Marsalis at the start of the 1991 NBA All-Star Game in North Carolina. I recorded that on the old betamax format and the tape had well seen better days as I must have played the entire All-Star game like 3 dozen times before it gave out.
He wrote back and told me that it was available in CD as a part of the soundtrack of Ken Burns' monumental epic "Baseball." The following day, I found the DVD box set at HMV in Fifth Avenue since at that time, I worked about a block away. It was kind of pricey ($54 if I recall it correctly) so I settled for the CD. I did go back for the DVD about a month later so I could adjust my budget.
It started out with the poignant rendition of the American National Anthem at the '91 All-Star match and it led to the epic baseball docu that inspired me further. For years I looked on youtube for any video of the Hornsby-Marsalis interpretation and it was only recently where I found one (albeit not in full as it misses out some 10 seconds).
I love Burns' Baseball documentary for its masterfully crafted research and re-telling of days gone by. It also led to my watching Burns' massive Civil War epic. This was the time when I was picking up a lot of historical stuff. His technique makes use of actual letters, poems, or narrative accounts that are juxtaposed on actual footage, old pictures as well as paintings.
A few years later, I met a Filipino in California who had quite a collection of original film footage of those Filipino fighters of yore. I used this footage in the two-hour boxing special titled Glory Road: The Story of Philippine Boxing that aired over Solar Sports (right around the time Manny Pacquiao beat Erik Morales in their third meeting).
I couldn't find the original footage (that I believe is priceless) anymore as I think it was lost during Ondoy although I still have copies of Glory Road.
Burns' epic and many of the writings of the late David Halberstam greatly influenced a lot how I look and write about sports.
One of the projects I was working on last year was a football documentary based about life in Iloilo. I lost all the footage also during the flood but only recently have begun to painstakingly put everything back together. Hopefully, I can find the time to work on the post-production on that midway through the UAAP season.
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