Relative Esoterica

Turpentine and Truth

2009-11-23T20:33:00.000-08:00

I was watching Warner Brothers' not insignificantly flawed but immensely atmospheric The Two Mrs. Carrolls:

Sally Carroll (Barbara Stanwyck), having gushed into an upper-floor studio, freezes, instantly sick and horrified at the sight of Geoffrey, her artist spouse (Humphrey Bogart), assiduously and zealously going over a canvas with a turpentine-soaked rag.

Sally: Geoffrey, what are you doing?

Geoffrey: Something I should have done weeks ago – I'm sick of looking at it – it was phony.

Sally: Oh, Sweetheart, you shouldn't have done that – you might not think it's so good, but someone might have bought it.
Geoffrey: Well, I don't care what other people think – it's what I think.
Sally: But you thought it was good once.
Geoffrey: That's why I know I'm slipping.
Sally You can't always paint masterpieces.
Geoffrey: Well, I can always try.

Barbara ... Babs ... Missy ... Sally – don't get me wrong – my sympathies are with you in the grand scheme of this little Warner Brothers drama. But your crazy, murderous, obnoxious, implacable husband is right, here: If you're an artist – heck, even if you're not an artist, but merely a person of integrity – you can't shove something out, to which you feel no sense of attachment or commitment, on the hope or assumption that no one will recognize its inauthenticity or feel its counterfeitness and that people will clamour to buy it, blinded by its slick, shiny veneer. Sure, you know they may buy it, purchase it, with money. But ultimately, in another more important sense, they won't buy it – they'll become aware of its absence of credibility. You know that – as an artist, a human being – and you can't be associated with something that is simply "product," statement without substance. Even if you have no pretensions to producing masterpieces, you can't put out intentionally small, modest things – you can't release words – that are just puffs, hollow. You have to omit – or keep the turpentine handy.

Funny that a no-good bum but ego-maniacal character like Geoffrey Carroll could see this much.

*The Two Mrs. Carrolls screenplay by Thomas Job

In Service of Music

2009-11-22T19:36:00.000-08:00

I caught Frank Vignola a few nights ago at the Ark in Ann Arbor. The tickets for the show, sticking in my bedroom mirror frame, had been tantalizing me for over a month – and Frank and confreres delivered on my expectations. His band – comprising the leader, rhythm guitarist Vinnie Raniolo, double bassist Gary Mazzaroppi and guest accordionist Julien Labro – opened with an almost misleadingly relaxed "Stardust" and, without pause and employing the instantly recognizable intro to the Django Reinhardt-Stephane Grappelly recording of "Honeysuckle Rose," went into a spirited treatment of "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" (perhaps a nod to Birthday Boy Tommy Dorsey).

In making mention, early in the proceedings, of the 2010 Django Reinhardt Centennial, Vignola set the tone for the evening. The legacy of the Belgian guitarist, like a convival, vivid and colourfully-garbed ghost settling comfortably in the best armchair, was very much in evidence throughout the set. Still, though the Long Island-born Vignola, capable of tossing off patented Reinhardt licks and creating heady Gypsy jazz atmosphere, is unmistakably a Django disciple, he's no clone. Frank Vignola is his own man – virtuosic, vibrant, vital and enclopedically informed on jazz. And blindingly fast. Apart from the distinctive manner of bending the strings, if there's one thing in Vignola's playing that, for me, conjures Reinhardt, it's the dazzling, dizzying speed. Like Django (and "Django's Tiger"), Frank flies through the changes, deftly, cleanly and with clever detours from the expected course. The velocity, though, is not without artistic purpose; Vignola's speed on the strings is always used in service of the music. Again acknowledging Reinhardt with a soulful and nuanced "Nuages" and then the recent passing of guitar-slinging giant Les Paul with a respectful "How High the Moon," Vignola verbally commented on the langourous lope into which the band had fallen with a jocular "Old guy's tempo." This guy, though often loud and fast, knows when and how to employ such.

I discovered the guitar-playing of Frank Vignola, a chronological contemporary of mine, a good 15 years ago when, intrigued by unusual instrumentation, a diverse song list and a Gatsby-esque CD cover, I grabbed a copy of the second album of Travelin' Light. Having been not just instantly awestruck by his technical skill but delighted by his unique "voice," I've been a Vignola follower ever since. The highlight of Thursday evening, for me, was perhaps an appropriately ferocious, and – yes – fast, trek through Django's "Rythme Futur" (spoken of, in Relative Esoterica, here); Frank and his fine crew took me places – in the past as well as the future – with that one. The night, or Frank's part of it (the miraculous Hot Club of Detroit took the stage next), neared its close with that perennial showpiece, "Flight of the Bumble Bee": remember, this is one of the things Harry James got critically stung for buzzing on his trumpet back in the 1940's. It was flashy, without musical substance, just a display of prowess – or so the snobby "they" said. Modest in dimensions and unassuming in manner, Vignola vindicated the Rimsky-Korsakov piece (he gave the composer credit), the artistic application of speed ... and maybe even the oft-maligned (among "purists") Harry James with a zealous and yet effortlessly-winged flight. "Serve the song," I always say (see, I'll even quote myself): playing fast or slow ... and always extremely well, Frank Vignola does just that.

Dig Italian-American Frank, unabashedly ethnic (like a certain Mr. Lang), on the 'tube:

Reflecting on Stafford Style

2009-11-12T16:15:00.000-08:00

A few months ago – if you weren't aware – the UK's Jasmine label added to its catalogue a third Jo Stafford entry, "Reflections: The Ultimate Collection." Well, naturally, I had to buy – in scanning the track listing, I'd spotted several previously unreleased records (and you know that one is all it takes, for me). Well, the 4-disc set turned out to be something of a hodge podge – even for an artist billed as "America's Most Versatile Singing Star": some of the later things from Jo's first Capitol stint ('43-'50), including duets with Gordon MacRae and Johnny Mercer; the Columbia hits, Great American Songbook and Americana interpretations and Mitch Miller-initiated dross; several religious hymns; the entire "A Portrait of New Orleans" EP, with Frankie Laine's two sans-Stafford sides as well as the duets and the solo Jo's.

Oddest – and, for me, most revelatory, perhaps – of all among these 100+ tracks, though, are the records from late in Jo's Columbia tenure, a time when Rock & Roll had supplanted big band, swing and jazz as pop music. Dopey sing-along cycle aside, A & R man Mitch Miller was a trend follower – when sparser, guitar-prominent accompaniment became the fashion, he wanted even the by then middle-aged orchestra alumni signed to the label to don the musical clothes of the day and sell records to the kids. Jo herself admitted that to some extent she was willing to go along with the program in trade-off for being one of a very few artists who didn't have to pay for their own recording sessions. Such songs, represented in Jasmine's "Ultimate," as "Hibiscus," "I'll Buy It," "What's Botherin' You Baby," and (the egregious) "Underneath the Overpass" do not bear the Kern or Gershwin pedigree and the Rock & Roll-tinged rhythms and instrumentation applied to them seem unlikely Stafford surroundings – but Jo triumphs. An amazing feat when you consider the intrinsic worth of the material.

Today, Jo's birthday, as I've listened, I've thought about the quality that preceded her celebrated versatility – adaptability: without the capacity first to gain an understanding of the environment and then to adjust and conform to and fit it, while retaining your identity, you can't acquire versatility. In those garish late '50's years, Jo didn't turn into a pony-tailed Teen Queen chanteusie – no. But she again displayed the elasticity of her contemporary outlook, so essential to her musical style.

I Haven't Forgotten

2009-11-10T16:24:00.000-08:00

Here I am: stuck in '38-'39. Well, I shouldn't say "stuck" – I mean, I'm thrilled to be planted at this point in the 20th century, surveying musically, with the aid of my CD collection, the waning years of the Great Depression. Today, I spun, among other platters, Disc 7 of Mosaic's magnificent Mildred Bailey set (out-of-print, as eventually become all things Mosaic), from which played, at the command of the mindless but benevolent random buttom, "Have You Forgotten So Soon," a treatment that I'm mad about of a now undeservedly forgotten ballad.

The song was put together by a distinguished lyricist team, Edward ("Body and Soul") Heyman and Sam ("My Old Flame") Coslow, and a considerably more obscure Tin Pan Alley composer, Abner ("On the Beach at Bali-Bali") Silver. I am touched by its plaintive, lilting melody and still more deeply affected by its picturesque and (like most everything else I adore) at once both timeless and capturing-the-period words. Who better to deliver this combination than the hip Rockin' Chair Lady, Mildred Bailey? Similar in tone to but more vivid in its details than 1940's "At Least You Could Say 'Hello,'" this 1938 offering presents an eternal question, posed yet today by hurt and disbelieving jilted lovers, against a backdrop of distinctly '30's images.

I first came across Mildred's 9/29/38 interpretation, in which she is accompanied by the band of her xylophone-playing husband, Red Norvo, and fell in love with both song and performance thereof and later reacted with equal enthusiasm to the Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra 9/22/38 take, featuring the sensitive vocal of the scandalously underrated Jack Leonard.

I couldn't find Mildred's version on youtube but came across TD's. Though Jeri Southern isn't a musical direction that I've taken, when, in scrolling down the list, I happened upon her record, on which I saw she is joined by Johnny Smith, a guitarist whose playing I greatly admire, I decided to veer off there and was rewarded by a probing exploration, which includes a verse I hadn't known. Jack and Mildred double up here and there and each has his/her own choruses . Jeri's reading, taken at a crawl, follows, in part, the Mildred lyrics. Wonder if it was La Bailey who introduced this later singer to the extremely beautiful, sentimental but not lachrymose song?

Have You Forgotten So Soon?
Music by Abner Silver,
Words by Edward Heyman and Sam Coslow

I find it difficult
To think that once you cared for me at all.
I can't believe
That you refuse to speak to me
Each time I call.

Have you forgotten so soon –
That lovely night in June;
Our graduation dance;
The glorious beginning
Of a beautiful romance;
All those gay diversions
We planned in advance –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten so soon –
The sun upon the sand;
The moon of yellow gold;
The things at Coney Island
That the fortune teller told;
Air-conditioned movies
That gave us a cold –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Don't you still remember
The Witches' Party
On Halloween?
And that grand December –
The whitest Christmas
We've ever seen.

Have you forgotten so soon –
That loving cup we made
Of old Italian wine;
That New Year's Eve at Tony's
When the gang sang "Auld Lang Syne";
All those nights in Heaven
That used to be mine –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten so soon –
My birthday party cake;
The sandwiches you made;
The kisses that I borrowed
And so eagerly repaid;
And the day we walked
In the Easter Parade –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten so soon –
The winding country lane;
A little wayside inn;
And sipping tea while list'ning to
A muted violin;
Thrilling to the old songs
By Irving Berlin –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Don't you still remember
The moonlight hayride,
The Beaux Arts Ball?
And that grand September –
The crimson woodland,
The waterfall.

Have you forgotten so soon –
The concert in the park;
The Army-Navy game;
The time I lost my money on
A horse that bore your name;
The day I snapped your picture
That's still in my frame –
Have you forgotten so soon?

I'll admit – this is a song that really starts the tears going with me.

Docile ... and Not

2009-11-09T19:35:00.000-08:00

I have the Merriam-Webster Online Word of the Day sent to my email address. Today's word is docile. I remember, twelve years ago, Nelson's vet saying that Nelson was a very docile puppy. He was – and very sweet. He was quick in learning his tricks, too – nothing fancy, as such displays in answer to a demand therefor always seem to me like making someone sing for their supper, but he did the basic stuff; his shake was particularly fetching (to keep it dog-themed). He had his own form of diplomacy: if ever he didn't care to do something I asked, he'd just turn his head away as if he didn't realize that I was speaking to him – cute!

My eldest sister says that people who have dogs are bossy and people who have cats aren't. My sister loves cats, has three.

Docile

Yes, Nelson was docile. Aubrey, on the other hand, is not. In fact, he's downright intractable. He has to see the color of my money – or, rather, training treats – before he'll deliver. And I don't ask that much. Aubrey, the little hellion, can be quite rebellious. Then again, I remember, too, my step-father describing me as a "militant rebel." Yeah ... that was an amazing flight of imagination. Aubrey's intractable ... but, then again, somewhat more subtly, so am I.

Intractable

An Anniversary: More and Less

2009-11-02T17:43:00.001-08:00

With the passing of time, some things – such as my appreciation of the artistry of Bunny Berigan, my favorite trumpeter, born 101 years ago today – grow greater; other things – such as my attention to Relative Esoterica, my web journal, begun 3 years ago today – diminish. A subjective view of subjectivity.

Please dig the one and only Bunny, unchanging in his revelance, timeless – and yet who, with the passing of time, has attained giant dimensions:

Doggone!

2009-07-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

Ah, what the heck ... I feel like following up a post about two dogs that I love with a little tribute to a record whose title features a canine exclamation: doggone! – as in "Doggone, I've Done It."

Chronologically touring the CD collection, I today found myself easing into 1933; it's been a '32-'33 day: think Roosevelt defeating Hoover and Repeal the following year. One of the highlights of my day surely has been The Sisters, accompanied by The Brothers, jiving (as only they can) through an exceedingly cute number by a Dave Franklin, whom I can't, at the moment, recall having encountered elsewhere. This record, cut 6/17/32, is truly one of my all-time favorites:

Eight sprightly little introductory bars, setting the perfect tempo, and then the girls are off, drawling away. The Dorsey Bros., Mac (Tommy) and Lad (Jimmy), play an uncharacteristically minor role in this one but, still, that no one gave the Boswells better (or as fine) support is highly evident. The line-up is Tommy, trombone; Jimmy, clarinet, Bunny Berigan (yeah!), trumpet; Joe Venuti, violin; Dick McDonough, guitar; Artie Bernstein, bass; Stan King, drums. ... Oh, and that's Martha, the eldest of the sisters, providing that fine piano comping; I love her on this side. A harmonious and inimitably swinging chorus and verse by Martha, Connee and Vet en masse and then Connee – the middle sister, vocal arranger for and heart and soul of the vocal trio – gets a chorus to herself; dig the accent and the Armstrongian sense of what's right for the moment. Next, Four String Joe, the michievous Mr. Venuti, serves up sixteen sassy bars (check out Martha behind him). ... And now – Bunny! Hear him getting on mike; the sudden increase in his volume gives the record an immediacy that you have to relish – you're right there in the studio. I love the way he negotiates the diminished chord in bar 9 of his spot. Listen hard for the great, too-soon-gone (from the planet) Dick McDonough. Fine, well-placed accents from Stan King.

Doggone, I've Done It
Music and Words by Dave Franklin

Doggone, I’ve done it – I’ve fallen in love;
Doggone, it hit me from heaven up above.
The day I met him, I knew I was gone;
My heart went kerplunk – oh boy, I was sunk.
Doggone, I’ve done it – I fell with a thud;
It must be springtime, ‘cos it’s in my blood.
Mr. Cupid sneaked behind and gave me a shove;
Doggone, I’ve done it – I’ve fallen in love.
Oh, you dog!

I don’t use strong expressions;
I’m known for my repression;
Nobody ever heard me swear.
But something’s gone and changed me;
It’s really disarranged me –
I’m cuttin’ loose and I don’t care.

Doggone, I’ve done it – I’ve fallen in love;
Doggone, it hit me from heaven above.
The day I met him, I just knew I was gone;
Heart went kerplunk – oh boy, I was sunk.
Doggone, I’ve done it – I fell with a thud;
It must be springtime, ‘cos it’s in my blood.
Mr. Cupid sneaked behind and gave me a shove;
Doggone, I’ve done it – I’ve fallen in love.

Doggone, I’ve done it – I’ve fallen in love;
Doggone, it hit me from heaven above.
The day I met him, I knew I was gone;
My heart went kerplunk – oh boy, I was sunk.
Doggone, I’ve done it – I fell with a thud;
It must be springtime, ‘cos it’s in my blood.
Mr. Cupid gave me a shove;
Doggone, I’ve done it – I’ve fallen in love.

It's The Girls!

Bunny ... Who else?

Oh, you dog ...

See C. Aubrey

2009-07-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

I miss Nelson terribly. I missed his sunny and sweet companionship so much that soon, very soon, after losing him, I found myself seeking a new canine friend with whom to walk and talk and play. Googling, I discovered a Michigan breeder of Jack Russell Terriers whose young brood, consisting of two little boys and two little girls, looked promising. Two weeks ago, I brought home, from among this furry quartet, C. Aubrey – informally, just plain Aubrey. I wanted a moniker both very British-sounding, as the breed originated in England, and one I wasn't likely to encounter in my travels. (I don't seek my inspiration from names stitched on dog beds or Christmas stockings in pet catalogues.) Who, I ask, is more English than Sir C. (the C., I discovered, stands for Charles, as I'd suspected) Aubrey Smith, kindly but imposing presence in countless Hollywood films of the Golden Age?

Aubrey, born May 13 (the birthday of powerhouse trumpeter in the Goodman and T. Dorsey orchestras, Ziggy Elman), is ten weeks old. He's teething, gnawing happily at my hands and wrists and learning, without treat incentive (unlike the highly food-motivated Nelson), the sit, down and rollover commands (I mean, "requests"). His breeders were calling him Mr. Chubsters, as he was the biggest in the litter, outweighing, at birth, the closest in size by a full ounce and had maintained a well-padded lead. He doesn't seem especially interested in his chow now, though, and his svelte little body rather reminds me of a ferret's. My Nelson was a bit of a chunk, I must admit. I think Aubrey, whose mother was the long-legged variety of JRT and father the short-legged, will be a bit taller as well as slimmer than Nelsie (I pronounce the s like a z).

He doesn't look much like C. Aubrey Smith

A few days ago, I was listening to some Gus Arnheim sides, and Aubrey was fascinated by Bing's trademark whistle. Just as Nelson and I had our little songs, I sing to this young lad as we go about our activities. As his middle-section still can be spanned by one of my fairly small hands, I often say, "Scoop of Aubrey," as I lift him from danger (killer bees!) or naughtiness (tassel destruction is a favorite pastime); sometimes I croon "You're the Scoop of C. Aubrey," to the tune of "Sheik of Araby." A holdover from Nelson's and my repertoire is the winning Harry Warren-Al Dubin "Would You Like to Take a Walk?" Nauseatingly precious, aren't I/we? Please forgive the tales of the sister of a tail-wagger.

It still seems only yesterday that Nelson was limping around, awaiting knee surgery following a tumble he took – one week to the day after his twelfth birthday – in jumping from a rock to pursue a chipmunk. We couldn't go for our daily strolls, so we'd sit in the yard, communing with nature. Literally overnight, he developed a distended stomach that was clearly causing him pain. An observatory stay in the hospital was followed by a visit to a specialist's clinic, at which he underwent an ultrasound, which didn't prove illuminating: perhaps he had a duodenal ulcer or had swallowed something that created a blockage. Back at the local hospital, exploratory surgery was the next step. Before my little baby was taken in, I told him just to make it through the surgery – pet people know about anathesia and older dogs, cats, etc. – and we, the staff and I, would take care of the rest. He then gave me a kiss. The doctor wasn't gone long; upon opening his tummy, she found that he had a tumor on his pancreas that was positioned in a way that prevented him from releasing fluids in his stomach. Too, his liver showed indications of cancer growth. Presented with the options, it was apparent to me that the purpose of any treatments, surgical or chemotherapeutic, would have been merely to give me time for a longer goodbye and Nelson time for more pain. I asked, "Does this mean there's no good way this can come out?" I didn't want to be selfish; I opted for euthanasia ... and the doctor told me that she felt I'd made the right decision: to let go. It was difficult, extremely difficult, to say the least.

Aubrey's here now. He's not a replacement for Nelson – no dog will ever take Nelson's place. Aubrey is a new friend. I've been sleeping with Nelson's collar under my pillow. At this point, I can't imagine developing with Aubrey the rapport that Nelsie and I shared. But taking care of the new lad and taking pleasure in his antics takes my mind off the loss.

Even the liveliest among us requires rest occasionally.

Aubrey's a cute kid – cute, where Nelson, even in puppyhood, was handsome. And Aubrey's affectionate, like his brother, whom he didn't know. If I can just keep him away from the damned tassels!

Not Gone

2009-07-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

"[A]nd with you gone, life just doesn't seem half so fine."

Jo Stafford, making a not insignificant change to the Sy Oliver-Jimmie Lunceford-Edward P. Moran "Dream of You" (On the 10/29/34 Lunceford Orch. record, Sy sings "[...] life no longer seems quite so fine.")

Jo still makes life seem fine.

A Tiger

2009-07-10T18:27:00.000-07:00

These last several days, I've been listening to late '20's stuff – Louis, Duke, Bix with and without Whiteman, Venuti and Lang ... that sort of thing. I've been listening, because that's what I do at home, absorb music, but also, I suppose, because I've been seeking a happy aural diversion from my very frequent thoughts of Nelson ... whom I miss. Popular music sides from the late '20's, be they entirely jazz or merely jazz-infused, were, in large part, very peppy (silly word, peppy, isn't it?) – much more so than the Depression-response crooner records that immediately followed. This afternoon, I was distracted in my reflections on a member, dear to me, of the canine community by a few insistent blasts announcing my all-time favorite treatment of a tune about an elusive member of the feline community: "Tiger Rag," recorded 11/10/28 and heralded on the record label as "A Trumpet Specialty by Tom Dorsey."

Those whose interest in Tommy Dorsey, prominent swing band leader, extends beyond merely casual are aware that the smiling, bespectacled musician was not only a virtuouso trombonist but also an extremely interesting, industrious and wholly original trumpet player. For the liner notes for "The Dorsey Brothers Vol. 1 – Recorded in New York, 1928," Jeff Healey offered these astute observations on the dichotomy of TD, the brassman:

A comment on the trumpet-playing of Tommy Dorsey should be made here. If ever a musician displayed, albeit musically, a split personality, it is Tommy. Although justifiably rated as one of the finest trombonists ever to master the instrument, Tommy was a better "straight" than "hot" player on the trombone. In fact, he all but gave up attempting jazz solos by the time he organized his first orchestra under his own name in 1935. His trumpet-playing, on the other hand, is always "hot," if not always precise. There is always a sense of agitated urgency in his tone.

I love Tommy's pithy statements in the verse section as well as the way he turns up the heat with each successive "Hold that tiger!" line. And yet he's so uninhibited and spontaneous; he just lets it go. The way he wails through that final straight mute chorus: Man! I dig Jimmy Williams galumphing bass, also. As for Eddie Lang ... well, with him on your date, you just don't need no piano player!

All this talk of tigers made me think of an amusing scene from one of my Swinging '60's-London favorites. ... I wonder what TD would think of this juxtaposition. Something tells me he wouldn't find it very gear/fab.

They're holdin' him, no?

Heigh Ho ...

2009-07-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

From Untamed, a favorite of mine
Charles E. Scoggins, story
Sylvia Thalberg, writer
Frank Butler, writer
Willard Mack, dialogue

An oft-quoted (by me) exchange on the enormities I currently find myself pondering:

Ernest Torrence as Ben Murchison: Another day in the funny old game of life.
Holmes Herbert as Howard Presley: One wonders why we trouble to play it at all.

Bob and Joan: Pondering, it appears, too

June 30

2009-06-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Eternity begins in forty-five minutes [...].
Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan in Boys Town

Nelson Eddy
5/30/97 - 6/30/09

My pal, Nelson: here and everywhere, now.

I love you, Boy.

"... just futures."

2009-06-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I just have to watch Gilda. As you may imagine of someone leading such an outwardly ... scintillating life, in which neither vacations nor nightlife as commonly viewed figure prominently, I've seen the film a zillion times – but that, and the attendant fact that I can recite the entire script practically line for line, doesn't matter. Through the years, since first being knocked out by the struttings, frettings and interplay of the fantastically beautiful redhead (faux or no), the sinisterly handsome scar-visaged chap and the boyish male lead and their alluring backdrop of a lavishly-appointed gambling house, Buenos Aires and post-WWII intrigue, I've returned to the Columbia money-and-icon-maker when I've felt the need for glamour, a look at 1946 in all its sheen with disillusionment around the edges, and "Put the Blame on Mame," in its various performances. Last night, I thought of a line, in tune with my current thinking, and plopped Gilda into the DVD player.

... Well, to digress a moment: My movie ratings book (rather out-of-date but, then, considering my viewing preferences, it hardly matters) doesn't esteem Gilda too greatly – two-and-a-half out of a possible four stars and then this:

Gambler meets the new wife of his boss, and it turns out to be the gal he once loved. This one was hot stuff when it first came out, with the Hayworth-Ford combination very successful. It may still be, but it doesn't hide the fact this is merely a routine melodrama, not particularly well done.

At least it acknowledges that the picture indeed sizzled upon its release and (grudglingly) that it may have retained its heat. Gilda is hot stuff; never fails to hit the spot. I remember smiling, years ago, at Mom's account of her and Dad, in their courting days, taking in the flick at the drive-in ... with my maternal grandmother in the backseat.

Much as I adore the picture, I will say that I find it too conventional in its philosophy to rate the noir label often attached to it. Gilda, at times, sports the look of noir, but though both the titular character and her erstwhile lover are deeply wounded, neither bears the scars of the classic noir "murky past"; neither, we find after things play themselves out, is beyond emotional and/or moral redemption. ... As for the third point in the triangle, Ballin – well, he's just crazy, and you don't have to inhabit the noir universe to be that.

They might not be scarred, but they're mighty darned burned up at each other a good part of the show: I particularly like Gilda's cool warning to Johnny, "I hate you so much that I'd destroy myself to take you down with me," as well as Johnny's disgusted likening of Gilda to a bundle of laundry, to be taken and picked up, without feeling or attachment.

Anyway, to get back on track – my recent reflections on my past, hardly sordid but in many ways unproductive in terms of my definition of accomplishment, and eventual thought that it would be nice to progress in a personal association, be it platonic or romantic, without the encumbrance of the past, without a feeling that it needed to be referred to, made me recall Ballin's silken-voiced comment to Johnny: "All three of us with no pasts – just futures. Isn't that interesting?"

But even as I just plain don't feel like talking about the last twenty years or so of my life, I realize that, though I'm not a nosy person, I probably would feel wary toward anyone who displayed to me evasiveness with regard to his/her past. And that's hardly fair. You can say, as Johnny does, in an early reel of Gilda, "Get this, I was born last night, when we met in the alley. No past and all future. I like it that way." But is it really possible to proceed in your interactions with another in such a manner? Would I like it that way? Unlike newly-ejected infants, adults bring to relationships not merely chromosomes and (if there are such) universal instincts but also character-and-outlook-shaping experiences. Who knows – maybe a claustrophobic stint in stir (for copyright infringement; nothing bloody) accounts for your love of wide-open spaces. Or maybe you're just like me – someone who has led what those fixated on colourful incident would, I expect, find a boring life. Do we need to know? Is it truly conceivable to begin together, as grown-ups, with no pasts – just futures?

Benny, Tram and My Little Dog, Too

2009-05-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

Listening exclusively to BG, born 100 years ago today ... and being reminded that a musical organization under the direction of no other leader has provided me a more satisfying aural experience than have the many outfits captained by this incomparably dedicated instrumentalist, Benjamin David Goodman

... and thinking about Tram, born 108 years ago today ... and hoping that, some time, my music and artistic "voice" will move someone as I have been moved by such assets of the great Frank Trumbauer

... and walking about the neighborhood with Nelson, born 12 years ago today ... and watching him open, with tremendous terrier determination, his birthday presents ... and reflecting that I'm very lucky to have such a fine friend as my little canine companion, Nelson Eddy:

That's how I spent my day.

Infinite Relativities

2009-05-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

[C]ompared to the life I lead, the last man in a chain gang thoroughly enjoys himself.
Katharine Hepburn as Linda Seton in Holiday

One need not be a poor little rich girl, or even a – in the self-describing words of the character – "black sheep," to relate.

A Getz Pastorale

2009-05-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

Making my way along in my continuous, looping chronological tour of my CD collection, I find myself cruising aurally through the 1950's. Today, as I was mentally zipping about in my two-toned, aqua and white, tail-finned, white leather-seated affair, which runs on sonic fuel, taking in the reedy musical landscape of the early years of Eisenhower (Mom often remarked, "He never really said anything in his speeches"), I paused in my actual physical movements at the sound of The Sound, Stan Getz, who himself was pausing, "Down by the Sycamore Tree." When Stan reflects, aloud, you have to stop and listen. Really listen.

I was introduced to Getz's recording of "Down by the Sycamore Tree" several years ago through the Verve CD, "Stan Getz Plays," which is the digital version, onto which this track and three others were tacked, of the LP of the same title. Well, it just knocked me out. And I must say, I'd already been reeling from the insinuatingly socko first few bars of this stunningly lovely set's opener, the perfect "Stella by Starlight." Stan's "Down by the Sycamore Tree," one of several languid, pensive performances in this grouping of twelve 1952 and four 1954 takes, simply stands out on its own, unique terms; it's just another devastatingly beautiful, singular moment in the electronically recorded life of one of the greatest players ever to approach a musical instrument.

Stan and son, Steve

I wasn't familiar with "Down by the Sycamore Tree," before hearing Stan's tender reading, so I had no point of comparison. I was inclined to believe that the song had words; there seemed a very compelling verbal story linked to this sweet melody. The liner notes credit the song – erroneously, I discovered – to that fellow, Public Domain, indicating a very old piece, possibly of "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair" vintage. Some years after falling instantaneously in love with Getz's go at the number, I encountered the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra's treatment and, by the CD on which it appeared, had the record set straight for me. Composer Pete Wendling and lyricist Haven Gillespie, recognizable denizens of pop music's renowned Tin Pan Alley, put together the song, typical in its bucolic quality of material of its period, in 1931. Both the Bros. Dorsey, who took a whack at "Tree" 12/9/31, and the, to me, barely bearable Rudy Vallee offered contemporary impressions.

By The Sycamore Tree
Music by Pete Wendling, Words by Haven Gillespie

Heaven seemed to be a little closer,
When you smiled for me,
On the night when you gave me your love
By the sycamore tree.

There we drew a lot of pretty pictures –
Babies on my knee;
Maybe one, two or three or four,
Down by the sycamore tree.

Sweetheart, keep on dreaming,
As you did before.
We found love by dreaming.
Tell me, who could ask for more?

We will be a lucky pair of lovebirds,
Honey, can't you see?
In a cute little two-by-four,
Down by the sycamore tree.

Phrasemaker Haven Gillespie, didn't exactly outdo himself here, I have to say. In incorporating domesticity as well as the afore-mentioned rusticity, he followed rather than bucked the then current trends in churning out little songs for the hoi polloi. The two-by-four, always "cute," turned up in many an early '30's number, presumably to remind the folks facing those lean, mean times that if a couple or a family has love, they need not aspire to a palace. ('Course there's nothing wrong with that message.) For my Depression dollars, it's tunesmith Pete Wendling who made the most intriguing contribution to the finished product, with his superficially nonchalant-sounding melody, set to "sycamore" eighth notes in bars 5-6, 13-14 and 29-30 of the chorus.

The Dorseys' record, with which I, as a follower of both Tommy and Jimmy (or, respectively, Mac and Lad) and Depression-era pop, have become intimately acquainted, is elevated from a sort of mildly pleasant mediocrity by the elegant and vital muted and open statements of jazz trumpet giant, Bunny Berigan.

Twenty-two years after the Dorseys committed their interpretation to wax – by which time, by pop standards, the "Tree" had become fossilized – Stan, in company of pianist Jimmy Rowles, bassist Bob Whitlock and drummer Max Roach, took a fresh look at the song. Where did our tenor titan dig up "Sycamore Tree"? For sure, he'd already made apparent a fondness for evergreens – but this was something different, not of "Stardust" or "Night and Day" status. Did Rowles, who knew everything, famous or obscure, bring the song to the 1/23/54 session? I can't help but wonder. "Down by the Sycamore Tree" is a song about the past, present and future: what happened, what is happening and what the first-person protagonist hopes will happen as time inevitably unfolds. Unlike Bunny, who – with his impassioned full-throttle bridge – made, it appears, an importunate plea for the future, Stan chose to focus, it seems, on the irrevocable past, describing it in delicate detail. Listening to this exquisite, quiet side, I have a strong sense of what is irretrievably gone – for Stan, for me, for all of us.

Much as I love endlessly inventive, unsurpassably facile "Stanley the Steamer" (so dubbed by an admiring Oscar Peterson) swinging hard, I love even more "Stanley the Dreamer" (my humble designation) talking softly. It's fascinating to consider that one month before the "Sycamore" date, the lavishly talented tenorist had been arrested for drug possession (for which he would do six saxless months behind bars). In his Nobody Else but Me, Getz biographer Dave Gelly had these observations to make:

In the middle of all this (two days after his court appearance, in fact), Getz recorded four three-minute numbers with Rowles, Roach and bassist Bob Whitlock, which sounded as blithe and untroubled as a May morning. "Nobody Else But Me," "with The Wind And The Rain In Your Hair," "I Hadn't Anyone But You" and "Down By The Sycamore Tree" are performances as serene as any he ever recorded. They stand as a powerful caution to anyone tempted to read a musician's autobiography in his music. It all depends on the musician. Getz, it seems, stepped into a whole different world when he picked up his instrument, a world of order and light and softly breathing passion. By contrast, Lester Young's playing unfailingly betrayed his day-to-day feelings, his state of health, his forebodings, his whimsical passing thoughts and gently ironical cast of mind.

The "Down by the Sycamore Tree" of this ballad "singer" is a thing profoundly poignant in its wistful rumination. Getz, a city boy, takes you to the country.

Don't miss it.

Fear and Faith

2009-04-25T16:47:00.000-07:00

We're all cowards. There's no such thing as courage. There's only fear – the fear of getting hurt and the fear of dying. That's why human beings live so long.

Houseley Stevenson as Dr. Walter Coley in Dark Passage

Maybe the question is too obvious, too banal, even in all its implications, to pose. Maybe the answer, whichever it might be believed to be, is too evident – or thought to be too evident: "Which came first – fear or faith?"

Well, I can't say that the conundrum just came – separate, naked, out of any context – to me. I was listening to a recording, I now forget which, of a song, perhaps not a genuine religious hymn – I rather think not – but one whose theme was religious faith, and I thought something like, I can believe in this particular expression of belief and conviction, because it is so beautifully contagious – which seems a silly reason to believe – without quite being able to believe in what is proclaimed, by the singer, to be personally believed. ... I just don't know. Someone once told me, simply, concisely, meaningfully, "That's why they call it faith." Maybe it's trivializing to talk about it in a blog post. ... Or is it? Well, I'll risk denunciation.

Soon after hearing that record, I thought of the Dark Passage line. Don't miss Houseley Stevenson's brief appearance in that movie. How cheap and vulgar and irreverent of me to link spiritual faith with Hollywood. ... It seems to me that faith comes in answer to fear. Part of everybody's standard equipment is fear – in one form or another, of something. Fear is intrinsic. Faith, belief in a higher being – beneficent, forgiving and overseeing – is a comfort, a means of overcoming or coping with the fear. Or so I believe. But what would I know?

... Then again, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. Maybe "Which came first – faith or fear?" is not the question because, fear being an inherent component of mankind and faith being intellectually arrived at or the result of a mental process, maybe the chronological precedence between the two is not being debated; the answer is clear to all, is the same for everybody.

Maybe I'm not actually presenting a question; maybe I'm merely confessing to my preoccupation with the relationship between fear and faith – or to my belief that there is a relationship between the two in that faith is an intellectual protection against fear. I don't think there's anything wrong or shameful or ignoble or reproachable in developing this protection. Just as I don't think there's anything wrong in recoiling from a flame. It's reflexive, even as it's an act behind whose commission is the knowledge or a theory of how to avert pain, physical or emotional. It might sound nicer to say that faith is based on the observation of all the good – abundant, predominant, undeniable – in the world, but I truly believe that faith is primarily fear motivated. ... But what would I know? Practically everything apart from matters mathematical is opinion.

Two Minutes and Twenty-Six Seconds of Noir

2009-04-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

I have to admit – it hardly qualifies as esoterica, relative to anything. I'm talking about the first hit record of the The Zombies: the darkly atmospheric and utterly sublime "She's Not There."

Well, to explain: Though for the past twenty-some years I've been listening almost exclusively to representations of what may be called, if we must apply labels, jazz and swing, I retain an affection of long-standing (I gave an account of my early listening background here) for the music – itself jazz-tinged, I now recognize – of The Zombies, the English quintet hailing from St. Albans, who participated in the much-celebrated British Invasion of the mid '60's. Recently, deciding that I couldn't go much longer without hearing a couple of Zombies sides I've forever loved ("I Could Spend the Day"; "I'll Keep Trying"), unlocatable-on-the-web-for-listening, and knowing that I'd never be able to unearth my "Greatest Hits" LP or cassette on which these sides appeared, I broke down and ordered the insistently tempting 4-CD "Zombie Heaven," touted (accurately, it turns out) as an impressively annotated and packaged set, containing the original group's recorded output in its entirety plus a fascinating and rewarding collection of unissued and live extras. Track one of disc one, I discovered when my copy arrived, is "She's Not There," my favorite – possibly your favorite – Zombies record. Hearing the platter, remastered, as I never had before, I realized, as I was pulled deeper than I ever had been into the music and lyrics, that I was listening to pure sonic noir: a mini (in terms only of duration) black drama, complete with femme fatale, as insidious as any ever to slink across the silver screen, and anti-hero, requisitely scarred and disillusioned.

She's Not There

Music and Words by Rod Argent

Well, no one told me about her –
The way she lied.
Well, no one told me about her –
How many people cried.

But it's to late to say you're sorry.
How would I know; why should I care?
Please don't bother trying to find her –
She's not there.

Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked;
The way she acted and the colour of her hair.
Her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright –
But she's not there.

Well, no one told me about her.
What could I do?
Well, no one told me about her –
Though they all knew.

But it's to late to say you're sorry.
How would I know; why should I care?
Please don't bother trying to find her –
She's not there.

Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked;
The way she acted and the colour of her hair.
Her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright –
But she's not there.

Whew! ... But what do we actually know about this girl – this spider woman – after the final cymbal splash? That her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright ... and she's not there. ... Oh, and she's a big liar, too. This is what is told. What is suggested is still more threatening; all those people weren't crying for nothing. It's obvious that she's beautiful – exuding a kind of exotic charm – and with an intriguing remoteness. She entranced him, we deduce, with this exciting, unfamiliar manner and became the dominating presence in his present ... but, clearly, she, like all femmes fatales, had a past – full of misdeeds so heinous and ugly that no one dared speak of them and wise up this poor chump in time – before it was "too late." Maybe she, through her deceit and manipulation, pushed a guy to bump himself off. Maybe she bumped him off. Maybe she was a heartless opportunist, flitting from prospect to more promising prospect. Maybe she was a colossal tramp (how provincial of me to pose this transgression). We just don't know. And, as is often the case with femmes fatales appearing, seemingly out of nowhere, in both film noir and roman noir, it's not necessary that we know. "She's Not There" is, simply, one beautifully put together number. Its brilliance lies in its mystery; its mystery lies in its economy and restraint.

For the "Zombie Heaven" notes, Rod Argent, Zombies' keyboardist, discussed the influences behind the song as well as the care he took in matching words and music:

I know I was very concerned with the lyrics on "She's Not There" but in the sense that they had to really complement the melody. They had to stand on their own, and had to have their own rhythm and, in that last section I was using the words with different stresses at different times to propel it along towards the final chord.

And:

If you play that John Lee Hooker song ["No One Told Me"] you'll hear "no one told me, it was just a feeling I had inside" but there's nothing in the melody or the chords that's the same. It was just the way that little phrase just tripped off the tongue. I'd always thought of the verse of "She's Not There" to be mainly Am to D. But what I'd done, quite unconsciously, was write this little modal sequence incorporating those chord changes. There was an additional harmonic influence in that song. In the second section it goes from D to D minor and the bass is on the thirds, F# and F, a little device I'd first heard in "Sealed With A Kiss" and it really attracted me, that chord change with bass notes not on the roots. And I'm sure I was showing off in the solo as much as I could!

The original impetus for the song, the original shape I had in my head, was those three sections and the last section of the three, "let me tell you about the way she looked" is all on one note really, with just the harmonies changing behind it. And I deliberately made the scansion overlap, in order to try and build rhythm and impetus towards the climax of "but she's not there." The whole idea was to make it as exciting as possible. The way it was recorded initially, I was a bit disappointed, I thought it could have been a lot ballsier, but in fact I think the way [producer] Ken Jones recorded it in the end made it more of an event than if it had gone a slightly cruder way, if you like. It's more mysterious, which was a great advantage and I think we owe a lot to Ken for that.

We know more of the protagonist, the narrator, in this sonic noir (or shall I say, "sonique noir?"). We know that, despite the fact that he realizes she's no good ... and that she's gone for good, he's still nuts about her. "What could I do?" he asks. He was putty in her hands. "Well, let me tell you 'bout ...": He's already told us she has a predilection for prevarication but, besotted regardless, he still wants to go on about her captivating features. Zombies' lead singer Colin Blunstone might not have the vocal timbre that seasoned film noir aficionados would expect from a Bogart or a Mitchum, but he has the emotional tone of noir; he conveys all the anguish, bewilderment and weary cynicism that is the standard baggage of the noir anti-hero. "Why should I care?"

Also in the "Zombie Heaven" notes are Colin Blunstone's thoughts on the song, as initially waxed:

"She's Not There really stuck out. I thought very early on that that stood a good chance of being a hit, in fact I thought all three of those tracks [produced at the band's first recording session], "She's Not There," "You Make Me Feel Good" and "Summertime," were really good, and there was a time when all three of them were being talked about as an A-side. I liked them all. "She's Not There" has got an edge. Moody, maybe a bit sinister. I think that was something we could have built on, but people didn't really worry so much about image and mood in those days.

As recorded June 12, 1964, "She's Not There," from the first A note from bassist Chris White to the last A chord from the ensemble, is a journey through the noir environs. It seems to begin in a dimly lit Bogartian apartment or flat, whose sparse furnishings allow for the lonely, hollow echo that is Colin Blunstone's voice. Beyond this non-descript, shabby room is the urban jungle into which "She" vanished. Hugh Grundy's snare and high-hat tattoo is the sound of the busy city; the bass is the winking of the neon lights; Paul Atkinson's guitar, heard almost subconsciously, is the band in every bar, on every corner; Rod Argent's electric piano, the instrumental star of this sonic noir, is the rain falling in the dark streets, obliterating every trace of her perfume; the vocal harmonies are the reflected lights from the street lamps, in the sheen of the wet pavement; the recurring minor-to-major shifts are the ambiguous, tension-filled noir universe.

Number 291 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list (uh ... I think it's performances of songs rather than the songs themselves that they mean to designate – but we won't quibble), "She's Not There" is much more than a mere Billboard second slot hit. It's as timeless as the emotional response it depicts so vividly, if in noir's trademark monochrome.

"'Well, no-one told me about her,'" comments Alec Paleo, author of the "Zombie Heaven" sleeve notes, "is still one of the most recognised opening lines in pop music." Indeed, this classic beginning could have been penned by Cornell Woolrich or spoken by Bob Mitchum. "She's Not There" is petit noir in size, but not in substance.

An Order of Jo on CD, Rare

2009-04-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to my recently arrived copy of the DRG label's new "The Capitol Rarities," the latest compact disc collection to present unreleased recordings of my favorite singer, Jo Stafford. Is this CD what it purports to be? Well ... yeah. Is it great? (More positively and enthusiastically) Oh, yes! I suppose I have to remember that not every Jo Stafford admirer would, as I would, snatch up (a hypothetical) "Jo Sings the Beverly Hills Directory, Live from a Phone Booth during Rush Hour" and, in which case, might not be aware that, really, all but three of the "Rarities" tracks have been available on CD for some time. Not a caveat – merely a clarification. Beautifully remastered and accompanied by insightful and informative liner notes by the dean of pop/jazz vocalist essayists, Will Friedwald, this well-chosen sampling of undeniably (as well as undeservedly) obscure sides from Jo's first Capitol stint offers something to win the uninitiated and satisfy the well-experienced. (I have to admit that I'm sort of put out by the absence, in the booklet, of recording dates but, hey, there's always Jim Marshall's Jo discography, clearly a labor of love.)

Shall we go through "Rarities" track-by-track? We shall:

"Out of This World" 9/13/44 Well, we discussed it before, but there's always much to say about Jo's records, which, themselves, speak volumes. Pretty and celestially evocative as the arrangement, by then future Stafford spouse, Paul Weston, is, I agree with WF (author of "Rarities" notes, of course) – it's a bit dramatic; so, Jo, of the flawless instincts, holds back even more than usual, for appropriate contrast. No one understood so well as Jo the potency of restraint. As I recall, I first caught this cosmic treatment of the minor-keyed Mercer-Arlen nugget on the Memoir label's (now out-of-print) "Too Marvelous For Words."

"Conversation While Dancing" 9/13/44
Another Mercer lyric – this time, with hep cat rather than egg head jargon and paired with a Weston rather than an Arlen melody. Jo is, perhaps, primarily thought of as a ballad singer, but as this track – on which she is teamed with her idol and boss, wordsmith extraordinaire and Capitol co-founder, John Henry Mercer – demonstrates, she could dish rhythm and jive with the best of them: JM, for example. The gap-toothed gent from Savannah "loved Jo Stafford," observed another Capitol contractee, the hardly talentless Margaret Whiting, and we can see this too in all the Johnny-Jo collaborations. Memoir's "For You" first allowed me to eavesdrop on the "Conversation."

"Alone Together" 11/29/44
You want rarities? You got 'em! Jo's 7/12/44 JM Music Shop-rehearsal performance of the Arthur Schwartz-Howard Dietz stunner, released back when WWII was raging as a for-servicemen-only V-Disc, has been available on compact disc for more contemporary civvy-wearing folks for some few years now. Her yet more nuanced, still more devastating commercially-issued take of a few months later is just making it to CD on 2009's "Rarities." Applied to Schwartz's exquisitely somber melody and Dietz's stark lyrics and layered on Weston's spare and stately orchestra animation, Jo's haunting voice is at its barest, conveying powerfully the bleakness ("the blinding rain") and nothingness ("the starless night"), indeed "the great unknown" in which the two (of whom she is steadfastly one) "cling together." Here, I strongly suspect, is Jo singing one of her favorites.

"Gee, It's Good to Hold You" 6/29/45
This hitherto unissued take contains a slightly muffed (concert) Bb from trumpeter Billy Butterfield and is a little less punchy than the V-Disc version (lauded, in RE, here), which was recorded a few days later and has been kicking around, in digitized form, for a while. Darn cute song and Jo was the girl to put it over properly.

"You May Not Love Me" 11/21/45
I was introduced to the Johnny Burke-Jimmy Van Heusen number through the 1950 Nat Pierce and His Orchestra version with a Teddi King vocal, and I must admit that I was impressed by neither song nor interpretation initially. Though both eventually grew on me, I was unprepared for the reaction I had to Jo's take – even being aware of my fondness for her singing – when I encountered the side on the Stafford-Gordon MacRae "Stars of the Summer Night." Whew! Working with quiet material, albeit such made interesting by an opening gambit, "You may not love me but you may," of an intriguing ambiguity of meaning (on which WF perspicaciously comments), and before a muted Weston-fashioned backdrop of brass and strings, Jo comes up with an reading of controlled intensity. "I only hope tomorrow won't be just another day" seems an unlikely lyric climax, but Jo makes of the line a shining zenith.

"This Time" 8/1/46
Hate to say this of material composed by Weston and to disagree with Will who finds the song "stunning" but "This Time," inherently, is a snore. The lyrics, written by someone with the surname of Benton, remind me a bit of those of "A Sunday Kind of Love." "This time, I'm taking no chances on summer romances that fade in the fall," falls, I'm afraid, though, far short of "I want a Sunday kind of love, a love to last past Saturday night" from the far superior Belle-Leonard-Rhodes-Prima collaboration of the same year. The best thing in the world to happen to "This Time," as far as I'm concerned, is Jo, who sings it for far more than its worth. The record was digitized for 2007's "The Ultimate Capitol Collection."

"Promise" 9/16/46
As WF clarifies in the notes for Sony's: "Jo Stafford: The Portrait Edition," Jo is "hardly the girl next door." Your neighbor doesn't sound like Jo; she never does; yours (and mine) sounds like Marion Hutton. In the "Promise" record, we do, though, get a confiding Jo – full of unselfconscious gee's and revelations about the "grand" and "swell" boy, from whom she hopefully awaits a marriage proposal – sounding as close as she ever did to that girl we view, from our lace-curtained window, swinging on the veranda on starry summer nights. Here the sweet-toned Miss Stafford is everything we imagine of and idealize about post-War, pre-McCarthyism America. An unassumingly charming ditty, most winningly rendered. I like the way Weston scores the reeds, too. This one first appeared on CD, some years back, on ASV's fine "Coming Back Like a Song."

"It's as Simple as That" 10/18/46
WF sees the material as "a bargain basement 'She's Funny That Way'" – while acknowledging that Jo "treats it like a first class song." Well, I heartily agree with the second part of the analysis. Being not a paean to a slavishly devoted gal/guy but, rather, a celebration of love oblivious of and immune to adversity, "Simple" strikes me more as a kind of "two against the world" number along the lines of 1938's equally undistinguished "Never Felt Better, Never Had Less." Jo indeed shows complete commitment to this modest ballad, making me believe and relate.

"Through a Thousand Dreams" 11/4/46
Jo dips into her rich lower register, dazzling with those seamless legato lines, for this Arthur Schwartz-Leo Robin beauty, the type of yearning satisfied song at which she excels. You can always tell a Stafford side for which Paul Weston did not provide the arrangement: musically, something just seems impersonally different. The pizzicato strings somehow seem to belong on somebody else's record.

"Give Me Something to Dream About" 12/20/46
So snazzy! Instead of Jo's trusted Paul Weston, it's Lloyd Schaffer, the conductor for the Chesterfield Supper Club leading the orchestra but, despite the anomaly, the proceedings are, in the parlance of the comparatively innocent day, dreamy. Jo, with her perfect but never over-precise diction, always says words so prettily; lovely gets my attention on this. Very nice electric guitar obbligato placed here and there. Wonder who that is!

"It's Monday Every Day" 12/17/47
The muted compressed-sounding trumpet in the opening sets the tone beautifully for Jo's rueful, reflective reading of a nifty number by the lesser known Robin – Sydney Robin, the guy who set words to Charlie Shavers' "Undecided." Our always sensitive interpreter of music and lyrics makes effective use of that (afore-mentioned) "California-modified Tennessee accent." Marvelous Weston-scripted saxes provide strong support on this bluesy doozy.

"It was Written in the Stars" 12/31/47
Well, if there was ever written a Jo Stafford kind of song, it's this Harold Arlen-Leo Robin amber gem. Against the composer's dark sky of minor chords, pinpointed at times by major chord stars, Jo sings stirringly of destiny (it's nice to believe, sometimes). "It was written in the skies that the heart and not the eyes shall see" is, I think, highly representative of the Jo we encounter most frequently in song. Hear her soar on "so it shall be."

"Jolly Jo" 4/1/49
WF considers the Dave Lambert (later of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross) composition, "Jolly Jo" – or, in long form, "m + h + r x 3ee - oo (over) 4/4 aa3 x (times) 32 + bop (Jolly Jo)" – "easily the furthest out thing she [Jo] ever did." Well, who can say, when you look over the variegated material covered by the unmatchedly and unmatchably diverse Miss Stafford? No question, though – this platter (the flip of the ultra groovy, more widely known "Smiles"), on which Jo appears alongside the author and his Vocal Choir is a must-be-heard-to-be-believed, even for admirers of "America's Most Versatile Singing Star." Jo never took on anything she couldn't handle; truly, she could do it all exceedingly well. Hear the voice that Billie Holiday thought "sounds like an instrument" trading fours with Lambert; scroll down and click on "Jolly Jo" – here.

"If I Ever Love Again" 8/29/49
"[E]ssentially like a retread of 'I'll Never Smile Again'" is how WF sees this material. I look at it more as a sequel, but I suppose that's only because I'm aware that Ruth Lowe, author of "Smile," wrote her big song after, and in reaction to, the death of her husband. I picture the protagonist of "If I Ever Love Again," (both songs incorporate again, you've noticed, I'm sure), in the process of moving beyond the grieving phase, thinking, If I feel able to give my heart again, it will be you to whom I give it: "If I ever love again, it will be you." Actually, I find the song itself by far superior to "Smile"; it was the Tommy Dorsey, with Sinatra and The Pipers, and later solo Jo interpretations that made "Smile" appear something special. Jo and the always superb Starlighters, backed by romantic reeds and brass, give a very pretty song the deluxe treatment. Jo applies vibrato very sparingly in her singing; when she does, as here, on the last two words of her sans Starlighters, "No one else's charms can fill my empty arms," the effect is powerful.

"Open Door, Open Arms" 12/21/49
This record could be seen as either a companion to Jo's folkie Capitol sides like "Red River Valley," "Smilin' Through" and "Goodnight, Irene" or something that presages the country terrain she explored during her Columbia stint that followed. Melodically and harmonically, the song itself doesn't sound terribly Continental, but WF calls it a "European import"; English words were added by Buddy Kaye, of "Till the End of Time" fame. In any case, Jo, supported by The Starlighters and very spare instrumentation, treats this rather slight piece respectfully, singing it with obvious sincerity.

"Pagan Love Song" 4/27/50
Jo may be widely labeled a "pop singer," but as this devilish disc – on which she is ably assisted by Paul Weston's Dixie Eight, which includes, among others, Bob Crosby-ites Eddie Miller and Matty Matlock and ex-Miller man, Clyde Hurley – attests, she is a very fine jazz singer, too. She really digs in on the Arthur Freed-Nacio Herb Brown warhorse. What a tone! I much prefer this sizzling B-side to the A with which it was paired, "Play a Simple Melody."

"Our Very Own" 7/13/50
This is one of those songs that I strongly suspect I wouldn't be able to take emanating from any other throat or what appears to be heart. Separating the song from this rendition, I find the Victor Young melody just OK and the lyrics downright drippy. Jo, with no help from Harold Mooney's Orchestra (Paul Weston had just left to work for Columbia; his future wife would follow him shortly), makes of the intrinsically lackluster "Our Very Own" something radiant and lovely.

"Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" 12/21/49
WF is right – his point, in essense, being that this Leo Robin sparkler from Gentleman Prefer Blondes doesn't really seem like Stafford territory. Jo and Paul, indeed, can be found "trying gamely" with this statement of a golddigger's philosophy but, here, as they do elsewhere on occasion, they rely on their amusement rather than engagement with the material to do the work. I like Jo's street-wise "Yeah, but where can you hock it?" and the xylophone's downward glissando on the final word in "He's your guy, when stocks are high/But beware when they start to descend." The big-top accompaniment is kind of dorky but intentionally so, I imagine.

"Prisoner's Love Song" 12/19/47
Every bit as hilarious as Jo's first outing as hillbilly chantoosie Cinderella G. Stump, "Tim-tay-shun." Is this nasal neigher the same girl who makes you cry and your hair stand on end? Yup! Here, unlike on "Diamonds," she's totally immersed in character; with Red Ingle and His Natural Seven wheezing jauntily (they prove that such is possible) behind her, our gal's hollerin' about how she "can't ecscape." Probably not what crooner/"Prisoner of Love" co-author Russ Columbo had in mind, but I like to think he would have been amused.

"This is the Moment" 12/10/47
Well, I talked about this beautiful one before, but I'll add here that it's one of my favorite Jo records. Everyone who has yet to fall in love as well as all, cynical and hard, who believe they can't fall again, should hear this. ... And it's more than just the pretty Frederick Hollander tune and sweet Leo Robin lyrics – it's, most importantly, the voice, of understanding and reassurance, telling you not to pass up that true "moment"; you can't help but believe.

"The Stanley Steamer" 6/30/47
Never having seen Summer Holiday, the MGM Mickey Rooney-Gloria DeHaven-starring extravaganza from which the Harry Warren-Ralph Blane number comes, I just decided to check Amazon for a sound sample of the soundtrack version of "Steamer" – for comparative purposes. Well, I'm afraid I wasn't buoyed or made to smile by the DeHaven warbling – as I am by the Stafford-Starlighters belting. Too bad this absolutely terrific take on a very cute song wasn't in the film! Jo's always great on stuff with an old-fashioned theme, like this and "The Trolley Song."

"Candy" 12/6/44
I'm not quite sure what this Number 2 on the charts Mercer-Stafford-Pipers side, which has been available on Jo collections for years, is doing here, on a CD entitled "Rarities." ... Ah, who cares! This confectionary offering, which Mom told me you couldn't miss hearing if you stepped into a juke joint in '45, is something to be enjoyed slowly – like a chocolate-covered caramel. It's a hit that deserved to be a hit. I've always imagined that Johnny had kind of a musical crush on Jo; this is the record on which I first detected it.

"Tell Me Why" 12/31/47
Well, here we find another genuine rarity! This intended-as-but-never-issued-as-a-78 is showing up here for the first time! WF doesn't have a darn thing to say about either the record or the song itself, written by a team identified as "Gold/Alberts," so we're left to our own devices. This "Tell Me Why," unlike the better-known one which showed up seventeen years later in the groundbreaking musical, A Hard Day's Night, may not have a famous pedigree, namely "Lennon-McCartney," but it's, nevertheless, a very fine song. We could spend considerable time in talking about the two identically-titled ditties and treatments thereof! The Beatles' "Tell Me Why," from Ringo's first bomp of tom-toms, bashes you over the head, while the Stafford-Weston record takes a low-key song and, with orchestration and vocal interpretation, makes it yet more insinuating and subtle. John Lennon demands of his love a reason for shabby treatment, while Jo asks of hers an explanation for the joy-inducing effect he has on her. ... Stately and passionate seem odd words to apply to the same thing, but the mysteriously withheld Jo-Paul record is both simultaneously – potently so. Jo's final "Suddenly I'm feeling happy/So happy, I want to cry" is supernal. Here, on "Tell Me Why," is "that tone" I'm always talking about.

"White Christmas" 9/19/46
Well, I still think Bing owns the Berlin mega-standard, but I consider Jo my favorite among the song's many lessees. Somehow, this California girl, born and raised, makes you see the whole scene – the treetops glistening and the children listening ... and, of course, the snow – and makes you believe in the magic of Christmas. Even the Lyn Murray Singers can neither weigh her down nor yank her skyward: Jo, surrounded by drifts, we can imagine, and, tender and imperturbable, radiating good will, gifts us with a perfect reading of this homey, hope-inspiring hymn.

WF goofs in a couple of instances: neither "Give Me Something to Dream About" (available on "Stars of the Summer Night") or "White Christmas" (present on "Coming Back Like a Song") were previously unissued. ... And there are other Jo CD's, containing Capitol material, out there that I would consider more worthy – on the basis of including more of the genuine article, obscurities – of the description, "Rarities." Still, this latest effort toward transferring the Stafford recordings, in their entirety, to compact disc boasts both a wonderful sound and program and is a boon to collectors. Between you and me, it takes only one new Jo side to get me to buy.

Another Time, Another Place

2009-03-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

In One Way Passage, surrounded by lush dance music and revelers, before the bar of a Hong Kong nightclub, Joan Ames, played by the incomparable Kay Francis, and Dan Hardesty, played by suavity personified, William Powell, bump – literally – into each other. The attraction is immediate, intense – and as jarring as the bump. They share a few drops, those not spilled – in the bump – from Dan's glass, of an exotic concoction, romantically labeled a "Paradise Cocktail." Jarred, again, this time from paradise and back to reality, Joan asks if Dan would care to meet the people in her party; Dan demurs with a courtly, poetic and, we later discover, prophetic comment about the few drops of paradise allowed them by Fate. Smiling and gracious, Joan attempts a conventional good-bye; Dan counters with an exquisitely pronounced "Auf Wiedersehen," on which vocabularic premise the film's remaining sixty-some minutes proceed. It is a profoundly touching moment in one of Cinema's most poignant offerings.

Those of us who converse in English get the idea of auf Wiedersehen; absent the input of a certain German-born gentleman, a fellow web-journalist, I shall attempt an Americanized translation, aided by The Free Dictionary's explanation: see/dig you later; so long. Auf translating to until and Wiedersehen to seeing again communicates a temporary, rather than a final, goodbye. In 1932, the year of release for One Way Passage, as the Great Depression was tightening its grip on the United States, songwriters Al Hoffman, Al Goodhart, Ed Nelson and Milton Ager offered a tender reassurance for a beaten populace that had found itself bidding, to concepts and possessions as well as to people, too many permanent goodbyes – the beautiful "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear." Interestingly, the film that directly preceded One Way Passage for both William Powell and Kay Francis, the naughtily delightful Jewel Robbery – glaringly, gloriously Pre-Code, with its marijuana cigarettes (I'm shocked!) and casual attitude toward the bonds of matrimony – features prominently the lilting, lovely "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear" amid the struttings of impudent and debonair jewel thief Powell and not fanatically married baroness Francis. Though One Way Passage employs the equally sentimental Al Dubin-Franke Harling "Where Was I?" as the love theme for doomed lovers Dan Hardesty and Joan Ames, Powell's delicate dropping of the German version of the French à bientôt is, we can be sure, a nod to "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear" the popular song.

These last few days, with my recently purchased Epiphone (OK, scoff, Gibson snobs) acoustic, I've been kicking "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear" around the parlour. I love its melody – importunate but gentle. Though I don't croon the now sadly archaic, other-worldly words, "Come, let us stroll down Lover's Lane ..." I feel as if, in merely plucking the notes, I'm speaking in a foreign tongue. Does anyone relate to such sincere, sensitive sentiment today? I don't imagine many, if any, would care to hear my rubato renderings of '20's, '30's and '40's romantic ballads – so I don't take to the trail, guitar case in hand.

Italian-American crooner and musical prodigy (and, at the time of his death, fiance of Carole Lombard) Russ Columbo introduced me to "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear." I've since heard no interpretation of this song to equal his. Dead, at 26, in 1934, Russ, like me, "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear," William Powell, Kay Francis, Pre-Code Cinema ... and a lot of other things, belongs to another time and another place.

Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear
Music and Words by
Al Hoffman, Al Goodhart, Ed Nelson
and
Milton Ager

It happened in Vienna;
If you were there, you'd see
Two lovers in the moonlight,
Beneath a linden tree.

Sweet violins were playing;
And to his love, the lad was saying:

Come, let us stroll down Lover's Lane,
Once more to sing love's old refrain.
Soon we must say, "Auf Wiedersehen,
Auf Wiedersehen," my dear.

Here in your arms I can't remain,
So let me kiss you once again.
Soon we must say, "Auf Wiedersehen,
Auf Wiedersehen," my dear.

Your love will cling to me,
Through the lonely daytime.
Each night will bring to me
The magic memory of Maytime.

I know my heart won't beat again
Until the day we meet again.
Sweetheart, goodbye, auf Wiedersehen,
Auf Wiedersehen, my dear.

The Look ... and Lonely

2009-03-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

Taking in my usual high quotient of late '40's flicks, I've run into the redoubtable team of Bogie and Bacall twice this week – re-screening (yet again) two of my favorites, 1947's romantic noir, Dark Passage (spoken of, in Relative Esoterica, here), and the following year's gangster drama, Key Largo (discussed, in RE, here). Perhaps with solitariness – volitional or circumstantial – on the brain, I've found myself thinking about what struck me through these closely held viewings of the two films: Dubbed, upon her introduction to the world at large, "The Look" for her cool, in-control, eyes-at-half-mast gaze, Bacall, in her cinematic aspect, is a loner – and this is one of the chief reasons why she paired so exquisitely in celluloid with quintessential lone wolf Bogart. Yes, opposites, we know, attract – both each other in the real world and, projecting themselves from the make-believe of the silver screen, audiences. The same, though, can be said for sames.

In Dark Passage, when Bogart's escaped convict Vincent Parry, asks Bacall's artist-heiress Irene Jansen, "Don't you get lonely up here, all by yourself?" she – desirable and desired – responds, "I was born lonely, I guess." Through the actress' delivery, the character, clearly, is both resignedly lonely and at once naturally and preferentially a loner. Irene Jansen, despite the dissimilarity between her circumstances and Parry's (both those on display in the present and those we must imagine for the past leading to his incarceration), is just the right girl to come to the aid of a fleeing, emotionally beaten man who, for a chatty cabbie's benefit, comments on his own dislike for talk with a dry, matter-of-fact "Yup, that's why I don't have many friends." Irene and Vincent are star-crossed lovers – and loners.

In Key Largo, Captain Frank McLeod and Nora Temple are both just meeting and – through their connection, the now dead George Temple, Nora's husband and Frank's army buddy and underling – well-acquainted. Seeing the quiet, hard-working young woman's current situation – companion to and caretaker for her father-in-law and proprietess of an island hotel, with no man in sight – Frank (echoing Vincent Parry) inquires "You're never lonely?" and Nora offers a slight and ambiguous shake of the head. Sketching her past, she follows with, "George tell you, I met him at a USO dance. He was lonesome, and he wanted company. I was working in a defense plant; I knew lots of people, but I was lonesome, too." Like Irene Jansen, Nora is both separated by her nature from the hordes and in need of the understanding of one person. Frank, another in a long line of Bogart rugged individualists, venturing that now, the War over, he might take to the sea as a "hand on a fishing boat," declares, "Life on land's become too complicated for my taste." Though Nora explains her sense of place and rootedness with "Now, I'm like one of these mangroves" and Frank, conversely, is, at this time, feeling footloose, having had enough of pre-War and War ties, roots and responsibilities, they are alike: lonesome loners. In a nice, twins-over-as-well-as-under-the-skin touch, they even wear matching white button-down shirts through the entire film.

Bacall, almost immediately iconic upon her mid-'40's slink to fame, was the perfect female counterpart to the great Bogart. The two, individually, were cool; as a screen team, bringing to mind the lyrics of the beautiful, noiresque "Alone Together," they were cooler.

Alone Together
Music by Arthur Schwartz, Words by Howard Dietz

Alone together, above the crowd;
Beyond the world, we're not too proud –
To cling together;
We're strong as long as we're together.

Alone together, the blinding rain,
The starless night were not in vain –
For we're together.
And what is there to fear together?

Our love is as deep as the sea;
Our love is as great as a love can be.

And we can weather the great unknown
If we're alone together.

"So begins another spring"

2009-03-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

Well, today, this first day of spring, I think I'll follow yesterday's post about Donovan with ... another post about Donovan – and spring. Early this evening, somebody who has been stuck inside for a few days asked me how the weather was. Responding that it was in the upper '40's, I realized that it was March 21 – always an important date in my book, even if it takes me until late in the day to note its presence.

A few hours back, Nelson and I took our nightly stroll. It was 46 Fahrenheit, calm and, with daylight savings time coming earlier now, still light. Nelson, the boss, took us on our longest walk so far this year. It seems he, too, knew this is a special day. ... Much as I love music, I'm not one of those people to be found with a skinny black cord trailing from their ear and leading to an attached Walkman; when I leave the house, music is pouring from the speakers, as it is when I return – but while I'm outside, I want to hear the song of nature. As the lad and I made our way about, I thought, yet again, of the walks, of which I have read, of two people whose artistic efforts I admire: George Arliss and Daphne du Maurier. Each, it seems, loved to tramp, canine companion at heel (or running merrily ahead), England's countryside – changeless, we can romantically imagine, but by seasons. Sometimes Nelson and I go, in my mind, with George; sometimes with Daphne.

When my new Donovan CD's were trickling in, via the post, a few weeks ago, I fell in love with a song from what, in album form, was the second record, "For the Little Ones, " of the singer/songwriter/musician's two-part "A Gift from a Flower to a Garden." This celebration of the season of rebirth is called "The Lullaby of Spring." There is mystery in the minor chords – immaculately rendered, in this performance, by solo acoustic guitar – and wonder in the words, so richly evocative of the most magical time in the year.

The Lullaby of Spring
Music and Words by Donovan Leitch

Rain has showered far her drip;
Splash and trickle running.
Plant has flowered in the sand;
Shell and pebble sunning.

So begins another spring;
Green leaves and of berries.
Chiffchaff eggs are painted by.
Mother bird eating cherries.

In a misty tangled sky,
Fast a wind is blowing.
In a newborn rabbit's heart,
River life is flowing.

So begins another spring;
Green leaves and of berries.
Chiffchaff eggs are painted by
Mother bird eating cherries.

From the dark and whetted soil,
Petals are unfolding.
From the stoney village kirk
Easter bells of old ring.

So begins another spring;
Green leaves and of berries.
Chiffchaff eggs are painted by
Mother bird eating cherries.

Rain has showered far her drip;
Splash and trickle running.
Plant has flowered in the sand;
Shell and pebble sunning.

So begins another spring;
Green leaves and of berries.
Chiffchaff eggs are painted by
Mother bird eating cherries.

Redigging Donovan

2009-03-20T00:35:00.000-07:00

A few of months ago, if you had expressed interest, I could have told you about my fascination, occurring through my British '60's-obsessed teenage years, with Donovan. I would have talked about having heard the chart-toppers, by then not contemporary, when I was a small tot but not really becoming curious until I sat down, at thirteen or so, with my eldest sister's well-worn, oft-played LP copy of "Donovan's Greatest Hits" and tuned in. This is how it went:

I was enormously intrigued by the almost discordant -seeming, slightly disorienting "Epistle to Dippy," with its thudding electric guitar and bass opening, harpsichord, strings and hipster lyrics ("elevator in the brain hotel" particularly delighted me). "Sunshine Superman," "Season of the Witch" and "Wear Your Love like Heaven" transported me to the first past – in which I, born in 1966, was not a significant participant – that I idealized, the Psychedelic Era. The closing track, "Lalena," struck me as beautiful but almost unbearably poignant. Sitting in a corner of my basement, surrounded by my stereo equipment, records and, of course, guitar, I looked at the picture booklet included in the "open-out" album; seeing the shot (shown above) of the very young, pre-fame Donovan, parked at a piano but chording on a twelve-string guitar, his hair so closely-cropped that his trademark waves are not apparent ... and the one, now iconic, in which he, barefooted, clothed in a long gown and holding a peacock fan, gazes out to sea from where he reposes, enclosed front, back and above by a stone structure, I wondered What sort of person is this Hurdy Gurdy Man, who creates vivid and enticing pictures with his song poetry, sings sometimes in a reverb-simulating voice, and gently but not at all tentatively – just masterfully – strums and picks an acoustic?

For the next several years, still loyal to what can came from the British Isles in the '60's and can loosely be termed rock and folk, I listened to Donovan, as enchanted as ever by his imagery and the sort of trill, not at all precious, with which he often presented it. I bought copies of "Mellow Yellow" and "The Hurdy Gurdy Man" as well as an album representing his introductory period (in which he was labeled, by a label-obsessed press, "The British Bob Dylan"), which, I was to find, contained tracks from both his first, "What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid" and second, "Fairytale" LP outings. The cover of a Shawn Phillips composition, "Little Tin Soldier," from the early collection made me sad; I listened least of all to the record on which it appeared, which I acquired last. I logged countless hours with "Mellow" and "Hurdy" – from the former, I especially loved "Writer in the Sun," "Sand and Foam," "House of Jansch" (I didn't know then who Jansch was; thanks, Tom, for enlightening me), "Young Girl Blues," "Hampstead Incident" and "Sunny South Kensington"; from the latter, the title track and "Get Thy Bearings."

In short, I could have told you much, composed of both minutiae and superficialities, about my long-held passion for Donovan – but I could not, in these more recent times, have expressed my intensity of feeling about his music, because it's all but impossible, perhaps genuinely impossible, to reheat, re-experience, and then accurately communicate an emotional response, even one sustained over a period of years. I can, though, tell you now about my present rediscovery of Donovan and my new interpretation of his music and its magic.

Last October, having been inspired by Will Hodgkinson's funny-as-heck, illuminating and "it's never too late"-themed Guitar Man, I returned to the six-string guitar (so much for this). A great deal had happened in my music listening life since I first was playing this instrument in earnest and digging Donovan. I had discovered jazz and swing! One of the reasons, in fact, that I had abandoned the guitar is that I felt unable to adapt myself to the greater demands of playing jazz after years of strumming harmonically simple barre chords in a rock setting. Anyway, all of a sudden back to my first love (and seemingly overnight in possession of some new guitars, bought with savings), I started thinking about what I wanted to do this time around with the six-string. I had realized in my tenor-playing days that I had a yen to become proficient as a solo guitarist in the chord melody style ... and also that I had no desire to sing (I'm not bad – I mean, I sing in tune ... but I'm no Jo Stafford.) Since being turned on to Davy Graham's staggeringly diverse music, I've been making an effort to expose myself to more ... stuff and people – to allow myself to be influenced as well as to enjoy that thrill of discovery. Sometimes, I've learned, discovery can actually be rediscovery. I found myself, in considering what can be done with one little ol' guitar, remembering the Donovan concert – just the man and his guitar – that I attended in ... oh, I guess it was '87, and how impressed I'd been by his ability both to suggest, with just that one guitar, some of the complex arrangements that were used for his records and breathe new life into songs he'd surely performed thousands of times. This, I understood now more deeply, was something by which to be inspired.

... Well, I can't say it was déjà vu all over again, as I'm no longer quite so starry-eyed about some of the aspects of the time in which the Scottish singer/songwriter/musician rose to fame, once very much caught up in my appreciation of his music, but I am, yet again – decades after I thought I was moving on to something else – an ardent admirer of the great Donovan. Funny thing is, I see now that way back when, before I was officially a jazz fan, I was grooving to the snazzy arrangements that John Cameron cooked up for Don's hits and album cuts, which contain elements, now unmistakable to me, of both jazz and swing. I hesitate to use the word, as it somehow seems to impart something much less, cheaper, than what I want it to, but Donovan, regarded at least at first primarily as a folkie and later as a prime exponent of psychedelic music (whatever that, technically, is), was "jazzy." ... Ah, I hate labels. It wasn't apparent to me when I was a young fan, as I knew nothing about jazz, but Donovan, I've realized in this rediscovery, dug jazz – I didn't need the confirmation I've found in reading up on the guy in these past weeks.

Donovan, both then was and now is, associated with a positive message – which might best be represented musically by major chords – but I've been pleased to note again all that minor chord melancholy – "Sand and Foam," "Young Girl Blues," "Hampstead Incident." I love those moody, ruminative minor chords, and Donovan employed them most effectively.

I've been on a regular Donovan buying spree lately, securing compact disc copies of "Fairytale," "Sunshine Superman," "Mellow Yellow," "Donovan in Concert," "A Gift from a Flower to a Garden," "The Hurdy Gurdy Man" and "Barabajagal." The extremely familiar as well as the entirely new, which includes all those lovely, spare demo recordings that have been so generously included in the CD reissues, are thrilling me. I await the arrival of "Sunshine Superman – The Journey of Donovan," the three-hours-plus documentary of whose 2008 release I just learned. Whew ... much material to absorb. Last night, I watched my newly acquired copy of "Donovan Live in L.A. at the Kodak Theatre," which captures a master musician, singer and songwriter (in the company of a fine double-bassist and percussionist) nodding to a magical musical past that seemed to represent infinite possibilities; speaking, with total relevance, in the present and looking optimistically toward the future. Before launching into "Happiness Runs," for which he, as he had when I saw him over twenty years ago, instructed the "boys" and "girls" in their parts for the sing-a-long, Donovan made an acknowledgment of the song's use in a Cheerios commericial: He mentioned that the Wall Street Journal had (clearly chidingly) inquired if he was "selling-out" by leasing his song for the purpose of hawking something and then explained that he was "selling in" – "The songs must go to the largest audience," he succinctly put it .

Happiness runs in a circular motion.
Thought is like a little boat upon the sea.
Ev'rybody is a part of ev'rything, anyway.
You can have ev'rything if you let yourself be.

It's a good message – for ev'rybody.

Do watch Will Hodgkinson's excellent, probing interview with Donovan – begin here.

Fearsome Attraction

2009-03-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

In the noir masterpiece, The Woman in the Window, a middle-aged associate professor of psychology and a beautiful ... well, she's a courtesan, who have just met, converse over drinks at a local nightclub. The woman asks the man if he would care to take her home, so that he might view (in a variation on etchings) an artist's sketches of her. When the man shows reluctance, the woman, flirtatiously, incredulously and mock-innocently, asks "You mean you're afraid? Of me?"

See the scene (plus a little more at either end)

Are we not more often plagued by fear of those things and people with which we desire contact (of one kind or another) than those with which we do not?

Serenade for a Forgotten Maverick

2009-03-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

The name Reginald Foresythe first came to my attention, in the relative infancy of my love affair with jazz and swing, as that belonging to the composer of a harmonically intriguing, amusingly titled song that was winningly rendered by Fats Waller and His Rhythm, "Serenade for a Wealthy Widow." The artist behind the unmistakably British handle remained, for several years, a man of mystery – until a few days ago, when I listened for the first time to the BVHAAST label's recently released "The New Music Of Reginald Foresythe" – which I purchased entirely on the strength of the fascination that the aforementioned "Serenade" held for me – and read its accompanying notes.

In 1934, as Reginald Foresythe's fame approached its height, his "Serenade for a Wealthy Widow" outdistanced the competition in sheet music sales (the cleverly constructed charmer, originally an instrumental piece, eventually received the additional pedigree of a Dorothy Fields lyric), then a more accurate indicator of song material popularity than record sales – and yet the pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader's artistic vision ultimately proved too avant garde for a Depression-era general public accustomed to more straightforward, easily categorizable music.

Born, in 1907, to an African father (a lawyer, from the Sierra Leonean community in Lagos, Nigeria) and an English mother of Scottish and German ancestry, Reginald Foresythe – his racially mixed background, alone ahead of its time, would give rise, among provincial fans, to confusion about his ethnicity, which the adult entertainer playfully did nothing to dispel in interviews – grew up in West London, where he received piano lessons as a child. Not yet fully grown, Foresythe got his professional start working dances as a member of the band of a neighbor, a veteran of the Boer War and composer of marches. The talented young pianist found himself in demand to play locally but, at this point, rather than attempting to make a career in music, chose to utilize his language skills under the employment of a translating bureau.

In 1929, Reginald Foresythe got his first substantial musical opportunity when he signed on to accompany blues singer Zaidee Jackson, popular among the day's chic set, for Paris engagements. The pianist then teamed with vocalist Walter Richardson and headed for Australia; though, owing to the light tenor's stylistic dissimilarity to the highly esteemed Paul Robeson, this sojourn proved less successful, the pair's eventual migration to California, via Hawaii, led to Foresythe's entrance into privileged musical circles. Intriguing with his accent and cultured background, the handsome musician was welcomed into black nightlife; he performed at smart soirees and dances and recorded with bandleader Paul Howard, whose aggregation included Lionel Hampton and future Ellingtonian, Lawrence Brown. In Hollywood, Foresythe thrived – meeting and then arranging for Duke Ellington himself; the two later would collaborate on material for a Cotton Club revue. Too, the pianist applied his emergent compositional skills to film, writing for, among other projects, D. W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln.

Foresythe then moved on to the mid west's jazz mecca, Chicago, homebase to pianist Earl Hines; the two newly acquainted aces of the 88's cooked up the Hines Orchestra's moody theme song, "Deep Forest." The author of the BVHAAST CD's liner notes, Val Wilmer, believes that a musical exchange took place when Foresythe came to America, wherein the Englishman, now in jazz's homeland, absorbed the defining elements of our New Orleans-born improvisational music as well as influenced – through his admiration of, for example, Delius, and his knowledge of the classics – American pianists, such as Hines, Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson, who themselves were to exert tremendous influence.

In addition to arranging for Hines and Ellington, Foresythe provided charts for a big band led by Wild Bill Davison; unfortunately, these scores have not survived, but the cornettist himself fondly recalled "all that screaming brass and wonderful chords." Before ending his rewarding stay in the States and returning to England to launch his own bandleading venture, Foresythe met with smiling baton waver and shrewd judge of talent, Paul "King of Jazz" Whiteman, who commissioned new works from the pianist.

In 1933, Reginald Foresythe's New Music, featuring the uncommon lineup of saxophones, two clarinets and a bassoon in place of the more familiar brass-reed combination, opened at London's Café de la Paix. Ironically, though the orchestra's debut met with great anticipation, English audiences, finding Foresythe's music not conducive to dancing, revealed themselves not ready for Foresythe's outre ideas. Fortunately for future generations (a minute percentage of which might be enjoying the BVHAAST Foresythe disc today), listeners in the States received Foresythe's progressive sounds warmly and looked upon the sophisticated bandleader as an artist in the Ellington mould.

Foresythe returned to New York in 1934 to appear, as featured soloist, with Paul Whiteman's orchestra; given the segregation firmly in place both in and out of the entertainment industry of the times, the significance of this honor accorded the black musician cannot be overstated. The following year, Foresythe was back in America to record, as leader, in the company of future swing stars Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and John Kirby, among others.

The mid-1930's was a period of high activity and visibility for Reginald Foresythe. In England, he accompanied singers (one of whom, Judy Shirley, rhapsodized, "[E]veryone knew he'd always make you sound good."), wrote for the theatre and films and recorded a series of duets, which garnered accolades, with the Scottish Arthur Young. In 1937, Foresythe was back in New York; he provided scores for a pioneering effort, a "Negro ballet," and attended white-tie affairs, at which he duetted with the formidable Fats Waller. As the decade wore down, so too did Foresythe's productivity; maintaining his creative momentum began to take a backseat to keeping up a frantic social pace. The Englishman, still admired by the musical cognoscenti but now drifting professionally, opted to drink and revel with friends in Harlem dives. After suffering a street-attack, he recuperated in Duke Ellington's apartment.

The Second World War having commenced, Foresythe was drafted into the RAF, with an officer's ranking. The Britisher served at remote Scottish air-bases and then, following VE Day, entertained troops throughout the Continent. Upon his return home, Reginald Foresythe was attached to an official film unit in the capacity of composer. The remainder of the 1940's saw the pianist touring Europe as a solo concert artist for the British Council, recording show tunes with a modernist quartet, working in Paris and, finally back at home, playing out the summer seasons at a West Country hotel.

On the eve of the Rock & Roll Era, Reginald Foresythe was living in London but belonged to the dead past. He worked for a music publisher and continued to compose music – but nothing of import; once musically ahead of the times, he had become something of an an anachronism, an artifact of a sophisticated day long gone. He spent the last of his all too small allotment of years suffering from heart trouble and existing in genteel poverty – according to Val Wilmer, to whose illuminating liner notes I am deeply indebted, "eking out a living" and "playing background music in seedy rooms barely deserving of the name 'clubs,'" for an audience undoubtedly ignorant of his past accomplishments. Reginald Foresythe died, at the close of 1958, at the age of 51.

As might be expected, the CD, "The New Music of Reginald Foresythe" is made up entirely of performances of compositions of the forward-thinking Foresythe. The first fifteen tracks come from the bandleader's own The New Music of Reginald Foresythe, the self-explanatory name he gave to the instrumentationally unusual outfits he captained in the 1930's. The remaining eleven tracks present various '30's interpretations of Foresythe songs; the bands of Lew Stone, Fats Waller and Paul Whiteman in turn take on "Serenade for a Wealthy Widow"; Hines delivers his signature, "Deep Forest"; and the King of Jazz, leading a '35 crew that includes Jack Teagarden and Frank Trumbauer, offers, in addition to "Widow," fine readings of the Hines theme and "Dodging a Divorcee," "The Duke Insists," and "Garden of Weed." In my opinion, most conventional – though dramatically and effectively delivered by Louis Armstrong – is "Mississippi Basin," with a South-extolling lyric by Fats Waller's most frequent collaborator, Andy Razaf. Apart from the Waller recording, it is the New Music sides that really interest me. This, I must say, is not the sort of stuff I'd put in the car's CD player or use as a background to light conversation; the Forseythe records are, in my little world, for library listening. There are the shifting moods of "Berceuse for an Unwanted Child" (Foresythe's witty titling pre-dated Raymond Scott's whimsy by a few years); the mysterious atmosphere of one of my favorites, the enigmatically named "Bit" and the sad stateliness of "The Autocrat Before Breakfast." Most beautiful of all, perhaps, is the piano solo "Because It's Love," a song Foresythe dedicated to his friend, the American singer, Elizabeth Welch. The last four New Music sides, recorded at the beginning of 1935, are obscure must-hear's for swing aficionados: Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa lend their unmistakable sounds to the Foresythe's sonic pallette. It could be said that Reginald Foresythe was an Impressionist, using soft hues, in a landscape of Realists.

Of Lamplighters

2009-03-01T18:52:00.000-08:00

Having finally gotten 'round to reading Niven Busch's 1948 novel, The Furies (my copy of which came with Criterion's DVD release of the film by the same title, starring the great Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston), a few days ago, as I neared the book's conclusion, I happened upon an especially pleasing paragraph:

In the street the lamplighter was going from pole to pole, turning on the gaslights; fog rolled in from the harbor, shrouding each light in a soiled halo and wrapping the home-going crowds in mystery.

In reading Busch's painterly passage, I was instantly reminded of Paul Francis Webster's poignant lyrics for "The Lamplighter's Serenade," which were set to Hoagy Carmichael's wistful melody.

The Lamplighter's Serenade
Music by Hoagy Carmichael,
Words by Paul Francis Webster

My, how times goes flying back;
It's eighteen ninety-three.
As from a one-horse open hack,
There steps a grand old memory.

A moment after dark, around the park,
An old-fashioned gent comes parading.
Dressed in funny clothes, but singing as he goes
"The Lamplighter's Serenade."

The old boy loves to talk with couples on the walk;
But when it's half after love time,
He reaches for his sticks and from his bag of tricks,
He lights ev'ry star in the sky.

And if a lady or a beau should answer, "No,"
He sprinkles their hearts with his magic.
Then he steals away to sing another day,
"The Lamplighter's Serenade."

This morning, remembering that today, this first day of March, is the one hundred and fifth anniversary of the birth of bandleader, arranger and trombonist Glenn Miller, I thought again of the beautifully nostalgic Carmichael-Webster collaboration; the Glenn Miller Orchestra, that Swing Era aggregation which, perhaps more than any other, brings to vivid life, through its recordings, a somewhat distant past, produced my favorite version of "The Lamplighter's Serenade." The appropriately slow and dreamy side ranks easily among my favorites by Miller. In my travels, upon printed page and through cyberspace, I haven't been able to locate an arranger credit, but I want to attribute this lovely chart to Bill Finegan, an immensely talented chap who did his painting with black dots. I love the Ray Eberle and Modernaires vocals; particularly nifty, I think, is the way in which, in the introduction and coda, the quartet, anticipating doo-wop, echoes the trombone choir's figure.

In one way, Glenn Miller, like the lamplighter, is part of a time capsule, someone enclosed and suspended in an irretrievable past. In another, he is – again through his recordings – a part of a perpetual now.

Speaking of the continuing relevance and power of popular music recordings of one period in the 20th century, the ever-opinionated Artie Shaw had this to say, in an interview for George Simon's The Big Bands:

[...] But then, take the energy and ferocity of what was going on in the late thirties and early forties. That's hard to beat. It's hard to top what a Basie does or an Ellington does at his peak. It's hard to top what I was doing at my peak, or what Benny [Goodman] was doing at his peak, or Tommy [Dorsey] at his. You see, I didn't mention Glenn [Miller], because Glenn, too, was the recipient of an enormous amount of mass publicity—the fact that he died in the mysterious circumstances that he died in, and all that. But musically, his was essentially ground-out music—ground-out like so many sausages. [...]

Sausages. Hmmm ... Well, that's one way of looking at it. If this were so, however, I don't believe we'd be talking today about Miller's late '30's-early '40's recordings any more than we would about last Thursday's pot roast. When I hear Glenn Miller's music, I think not of sausages, to be ingested, digested and forgotten, but both of lamplighters and their gas lights, icons illuminating the past – and the timelessness of the romantic emotions that this music stirs.

Touching Reality

2009-02-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

This ain't real, what's happenin'; you're havin' a dream.
Edward G. Robinson as Johnny Rocco in Key Largo

"Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about."
from "Strawberry Fields Forever" by John Lennon (Lennon/McCartney)

Is reality a condition created through the forces, combined but not concerted, of nature and all human beings?

If reality is a state of existence based in what is real and true, why are some people said to be "living a lie"?

Is reality a perception? Is it individualized ... or is my reality yours?

Is reality the outward circumstances, unanticipated and sometimes frightening, in which you find yourself? ... Or is it the inner world, calm and ordered, of your own devise?

Cybergod Knows What I Like (Sometimes)

2009-02-16T19:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I don't usually do this – build a post around a link, that is – as when the link vanishes, what have you got? Ah, well ... except for the "our love" of the Bros. Gershwin's "Love is Here to Stay," it's all ephemera, is it not? Anyway, checking in, as is my wont, at youtube this evening, I discovered, among my "Recommended for You" videos (have to say that not infrequently Cybergod, interpreting my tastes rather loosely, comes up with some unendurable doozies) something heralded, accurately enough, as "Anita O'Day Live in Tokyo '63." Well, naturally, I clicked – I mean, I love Anita! Well, what should this clip turn out to be but the inimitable Ms O'Day doing her thing to one of my favorite songs, Sammy Fain and Lew Brown's "That Old Feeling" (extolled, in Relative Esoterica, here) Well, what a combination – one of the finest jazz singers of all time and one of the most romantic songs ever written; for sure, Anita – even with her sassy and swinging air of irreverence – knew how to sing a love ballad. I dug everything about this video, including, as one might expect, the band and arrangement – except its premature ending; our chanteuse was barely into her second chorus when the screen faded to black. Enterprising lass that I am, I did a search for "Anita O'Day That Old Feeling" and got the entire performance – not much longer, as she does only two choruses (with no instrumental break between them), but satisfyingly complete. Comments for the abbreviated presentation led me to google "Anita O'Day Live in Tokyo '63"; it seems that the full concert in which she does the dreamy standard is available on DVD. In this appearance, the great O'Day is accompanied by an Japanese all-star orchestra, with Bob Corwin on piano, and the arrangements are provided by Buddy Bregman, whose bold, trombone-showcasing charts I have always highly fancied.

Read about it!

Dig Anita; experience "That Old Feeling":

The jazz vocalist had, of course, taken on this scorcher with Russ Garcia's orchestra in 1960, for her superb "Waiter, Make Mine Blues" album, but she can always be relied upon to bring a fresh interpretation, with her spontaneous feeling, to a previously visited tune.

A Strange Loneliness

2009-02-12T17:12:00.000-08:00

Four large commercial fans and an imposing dehumidifier whirred noisily, drying the carpet, and the furniture was disarranged (a bit of a plumbing disaster having dispersed large quantities of water on part of the floor) in the lower level room in which I normally take my evening snack and visit my virtual haunts. Gloomy machine drone and disorder denying us our wont, Nelson and I took to the library (in which my beloved noir charcoal hangs and Nelson has posed fetchingly for a journal post). Nelson parked expectantly beside his filled water bowl, on the rug, and I deposited my coffee, a glass of milk and one of those huge and ridiculously over-frosted and sprinkle-adorned cupcakes that Costco sells on the small table next to the chair in which I planned to install myself, handed Nelson his Milkbone and selected, almost instinctively, from one of the bookshelves Margaret Forster's Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller. Since first reading the book a few years ago, I have returned to it, a few pages or a chapter at a time, often – not because Daphne du Maurier is my favorite author (as regular readers might know, Cornell Woolrich holds that distinction) but because I identify strongly with the Rebecca writer's violence of emotion, revealed in the Forster book through a sampling of du Maurier's correspondence with her close (and ever-unattainably distant) friend, Ellen Doubleday, wife of the English novelist's US publisher.

My scanning included, yet again, this passage, which I find especially resonant:

It was, she realized, a strange kind of loneliness from which she sometimes suffered—not the loneliness which comes from having 'loved but lost' but rather from 'feeling the loneliness of a loved one never known'. She felt there was an experience of loving and being loved that she had never attained, and it had nothing to do with sex. It was to do with being perfectly in tune with someone, which might involve the body, it was true, but was more to do with the fusing of mind and spirit.

(The above items in quotations come from a 2/22/50 letter from du Maurier to Doubleday.)

I, yet to know what I shall call a "conventional loneliness," one derived from either a temporary or consistent lack of what some might quaintly label "company," feel frequently this "strange" emotion, which Daphne du Maurier channeled so successfully into her work. ... In any encounter with Forster's description of Daphne's "strange kind of loneliness," (not strange but familiar to me), I am reminded of the similarly titled, melodically undistinguished and lyrically interesting ditty that the Bunny Berigan Orchestra waxed 10/7/37:

A Strange Loneliness
Music by Sammy Mysels, Words by Johnny Burke

A strange loneliness was in my heart
For someone I never knew.
A strange tenderness was in my heart –
And no one to show it to.

Then you came along with sunshine and roses to share.
Then you came along with kisses that taught me to care.

A strange loneliness has turned into
A strange happiness with you.

If only the condition could be so simply and pleasantly alleviated.

Third Point in the Triumvirate

2008-12-29T20:16:00.000-08:00

I read, yesterday, that Ann Savage, who created one of my three favorite film femmes fatales – Vera of the noir masterpiece, Detour – died on Christmas Day, at the age of eighty-seven. By all accounts, the actress, whose most recent screen appearance occurred in 2007, in the highly regarded Canadian feature, My Winnepeg, was a far cry from the vicious Vera, the hitchhiker who proves the undoing of perennial loser Al Roberts (Tom Neal).

There's Barbara Stanwyck's steely Phyllis Dietrichson of Double Indemnity, Jane Greer's cold-blooded Cathie Moffat of Out of the Past, and Ann Savage's savage Vera: the Femme Fatale Triumvirate. Though no less lethal than her noir sisters, Vera is the only one among the deadly three to display any vulnerability. She is the crudest; unlike Phyllis and Cathie, she has no intriguing, beguiling veneer – but ultimately she arouses sympathy, even as she inspires repulsion.

Al Roberts in Detour:

That took me by surprise and I turned my head to look her over. She was facing straight ahead so I couldn't see her eyes, but she was young, not more than twenty-four. Man, she looked as if she'd just been thrown off the crumbiest freight train in the world. Yet, in spite of this, I got the impression of beauty. Not the beauty of a movie actress, mind you, or the beauty you dream about when you're with your wife, but a natural beauty, a beauty that's almost homely because it's so real.

Ann Savage was indeed "not more than twenty-four" when she played Vera. Nice acting, kid.

Who Comes Down Your Chimney – Santa or Santy?

2008-12-24T14:03:00.000-08:00

I have been fascinated by the word Santy – a variant of Santa, as in Santa Claus – since first I heard it, some years ago, uttered by the most recognizable child actress of all time, in one of her films. Why Santy and not Santa? I wondered. Encountering Santy again, in other vintage movies, but still not in real life, I imagined the word to be a colloquialism fallen out of favor in these homogenized times in America. (Since forming this conclusion, I have happened upon, in song and verse, the rather rustic-sounding "chocolate [substitute flavor of your choice] sody" for "chocolate soda," which seems confirmation.)

Whence Santy and does anyone in this day exercise this pronunciation option? This from "The History of Santa Claus" at NorthPoleSantaClaus.com:

In the 1600's, the Dutch presented Sinterklaas (meaning St. Nicholas) to the colonies. In their excitement, many English-speaking children uttered the name so quickly that Sinterklaas sounded like Santy Claus. After years of mispronunciation, the name evolved into Santa Claus.

According to Wikipedia, Santy Claus is one of a few designations used by the Irish for the jolly, bearded one.

I kind of like the air of informality in "Santy," with its t softer in emphasis than that in "Santa." I find myself keeping track, in my movie-viewing, of who says "Santy" and who says "Santa":

Clark Gable says "Santa" in It Happened One Night
Ginger Rogers says "Santy" in I'll Be Seeing You
Kay Francis says "Santy" in In Name Only (this floored me, by the way)

Shirley Temple and James Dunn say "Santy" and Jane Withers (playing Shirley's inappropriately named nemesis, Joy) says "Santa" in Bright Eyes

Betty Grable and Robert Cummings trade choruses on Robin and Rainger's jauntily romantic "You Started Something" – Betty singing "I believe in Santa Claus" and Bob singing "I believe in Santy Claus" – in Moon Over Miami

In popular music, (the ill-fated) Joe Harris baritones "Santy Claus came in the spring" in Benny Goodman's version and Cliff Weston tenors "Santa Claus came in the spring" in Tommy Dorsey's version of the winning Johnny Mercer concoction.

A New Deal-era Santy
(Some viewers may find certain images, reflecting racial stereotypes, offensive)

For whom are you leaving out milk and cookies tonight?

"[A] force of nature"

2008-12-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

Davy Graham,
"The Complete Guitarist"
November 22, 1940 - December 15, 2008

Davy Graham, virtuoso guitarist, chief exponent of the DADGAD tuning system, melder of geographically native musical styles, innovator and fearless improvisor, has died – this I just learned from my fellow web journalist and friend, who, incidentally, introduced me to this astonishing artist.

Those initiated, listen to "Anji" ... and then work your way through the recordings; those not, discover the miracle that is Davy Graham.

Your Hand in Marriage?

2008-12-04T08:55:00.000-08:00

[...B]ut, you see, marriage is a very tricky business. People have impulses, compulsions, drives, let us say, towards escape – escape from loneliness. They seek that escape in the companionship of someone else and, lo, just when they think they've achieved it, they find they've put on their own handcuffs.
Sydney Greenstreet as Dr. Mark Hamilton in Conflict

Though it's not in my nature to knock something I haven't tried, I, a bachelorette, incline toward this belief held by Sydney Greenstreet's Dr. Mark Hamilton – the character himself a bachelor.

To Really Live

2008-11-23T19:35:00.000-08:00

One must have courage to really live in the world.
Miss Gilchrist in The Seventh Victim

Sometimes you just have to split the infinitive. ... Yes, really living – as opposed to merely existing, which demands neither effort nor bravery – requires determination and great courage. Living is an active state; existing passive. In living, you make things happen; in existing, you let them happen. What are you doing? What do you want to do? ... I want to live, to really live!

CD, Sixteen Bucks; Dorsey, Priceless

2008-11-19T15:26:00.000-08:00

Chapter Six, "Swing High: More White Bands," of Bruce Crowther and Mike Pinfold's The Big Band Years begins, beneath the sub-header, "DANCING ON THE CEILING," with a quote from The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing, Tommy Dorsey: "They paid $1.75 to get in; let's give 'em $3.50 worth."

Today, on the 103rd anniversary of TD's birth, with five Dorsey discs shuffling around in the CD player upstairs and "Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, 1938" pouring from the computer speakers before which I sit, I consider the tremendous kick given me by the music of the Irish-American Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr., my favorite musician. Dorsey, peerless legit player and facile hot man; his arrangers, my favorite, Sy Oliver, and Paul Weston, Axel Stordahl, Deane Kincaide, Bill Finegan; his musicians, my favorite trumpeter, Bunny Berigan, and Ziggy Elman, Bud Freeman, Charlie Shavers, Buddy Rich, Joe Bushkin, Dave Tough, Johnny Mince, Don Lodice; and his vocalists, my favorite, Jo Stafford, and Frank Sinatra, The Pied Pipers, Jack Leonard, Dick Haymes, Edythe Wright, Stuart Foster, could deliver – something for everybody. The Dorsey crews had no weak spots, no holes; all of the many aggregations fronted by Dorsey in his 20-plus year bandleading career were able to alternate between quiet, crawl tempo romantic ballads and blazing, pounding killer-dillers with ease, assurance and authority.

Tommy Dorsey died – one week to the day after his 51st birthday – not quite ten years before I was born, so I never got that $3.50 value live performance for a $1.75 admission. (Oh, how I wish I had been around in the '30's and '40's!) I have gotten, though, something from that trombone and those bands, on records, now transferred to compact disc, whose worth is inestimable.

Dig Dorsey today!

Cornell and the Snake Woman

2008-11-16T19:51:00.000-08:00

I'm currently perusing Darkness at Dawn: Early Suspense Classics by Cornell Woolrich, a fourteen story representation of the The Father of Noir's pulp magazine beginnings in the realm of suspense fiction. I found oddly fascinating the entry that I most recently read, "Kiss of the Cobra," a yarn in which a woman, exotic to the extreme in that she resembles and behaves like – goodness, it seems she even smells like – a snake, systematically goes about killing, in a highly unusual manner, the relatives she has only just acquired through marriage.

Narrating in the present tense, the protagonist, Charlie, an L. A. County detective on sick-leave, tells of his, his wife's and his kid brother's homicidally disastrous meeting with the reptilian bride of his father-in-law. As this unmistakably Woolrichian tale slithered before my eyes, I thought of a phrase my mother frequently used to describe those not exactly overflowing with the milk of human kindness – "all the warmth of a hooded cobra."

This passage in "Kiss of the Cobra" quite amused me:

"Charlie, I think you'd better notify the state asylum," she whispers. "I think his death has made her lose her mind. She must really think she's a snake."

This is putting it so mild that I have a hard time not laughing right in her face. That creature lurking back there in the house doesn't only think she's a snake; for all practical purposes, she is one. I don't mean in the slang sense, either. She is sub-human, some sort of monstrosity or freak that India has bred just once in all its thousands of years of history.

Now, there are two possibilities as I see it. She is what she is, either of her own free will—maybe a member of some ghastly snake-worshipping cult—or without being able to control herself. Maybe her mother had some unspeakable experience with a snake before she was born. In either case she's more than a menace to society, she's a menace to the race itself.

"[S]ome unspeakable experience with a snake" – I love it. And "a menace to the race itself." Ah ... Mr. Woolrich, ever the outsider, sometimes chooses to cast himself, perhaps for a refreshing change, as the observer of the outsider. Clearly, some rather interesting fancies, distortions of reality, flitted through this extraordinarily reclusive man's mind – his biographer, Francis M. Nevins Jr., believed that Cornell had an obsession, intriguing in its psychological implications, with orally administered death – and yet he was able to depict facets of the real world, i.e. New York in the '30's and '40's, with startlingly stark genuineness. Surely, he didn't pick up all his insights from his brief and professionally uneventful stint in Hollywood, the land, after all, of surreality. I must imagine that he simply kept his ears wide open as he hunched, perched on a barstool at the local watering hole, over his procession of drinks.

Don't ask me why the snake woman kills (Cornell's description of the method of murdering is to be relished); I'm not sure that even the "Kiss of the Cobra" author knew. I enjoyed, though, second-hand, the effects of her poison.

Five Questions

2008-11-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

Listening today, Jo Stafford's birthday, to the music of my favorite singer, I remembered an interview I heard for the first time a few months ago, shortly after the incomparable vocalist's passing. In this conversation between Jo and a California DJ – which took place in 2006, some time before Jo's eighty-ninth birthday that year – Jo responded in her usual thoughtful and intelligent manner – to the same tired, old questions that I, in my capacity of audience had encountered many times before and she, in her capacity of subject, surely must have encountered hundreds of times before. As I listened, back in July, I thought, This is the latest interview with Jo that I've heard; most likely, I'll never run across a more recent one – now she's gone ... and I'll never know the answers to the questions that have burned in my mind since I discovered that voice.

The interview – conducted by musician and Standards Era historian, Michael Feinstein – that concludes the 2003 CD debut of Jo's 1959 concept album, "Ballad of The Blues," is, by far and away, the best with Stafford that I've come across. Because Michael talked to her musician-to-musician. He posed questions that allowed Jo to reveal aspects of the musical miracle that was/is Jo Stafford. There was none of that "Well, what was the young Sinatra like?" (Why ask Jo Stafford about Frank Sinatra when you can ask her about Jo Stafford?) ... Still, the exchange with Feinstein serves to intrigue rather than satisfy fully.

Now, in 2008, like in the late '80's when first I heard that voice, that tone, Jo seems to have come out of nowhere. I'm sure that all whose initial exposure to the Stafford sound came in 1940 reacted as I did – and musician/composer/arranger Johnny Mandel did: "Who is THAT!?" Where did she come from; what did she evolve from?

In 1995, I wrote to Jo. I didn't ask for an autographed picture; I didn't ask any questions – I just rhapsodized, without expectation of acknowledgment. A couple of weeks after I sent my missive, I got a reply from her, which opened with, "Thank you for one of the nicest – if not the [she underlined the – twice] nicest letter I have ever received." Well, did I smile. .. Perhaps such was merely this gracious lady's standard response to a devotee's outpouring of enthusiasm, but I like to imagine that I met my objective of communicating to my favorite singer my tremendous admiration for her talent and music.

If I had had the opportunity that many others had (and, it seems to me, squandered) to speak with that musical enigma, Jo Stafford, I would have asked:

Who and what were your musical influences?
What did you listen to when you were growing up?
What do you listen to now?
Who is your favorite composer?
Does an identification with the lyrics aid you in your interpretation?

Banal? Maybe. Yet, I believe these five questions might have helped me to understand. ... Jo's parents came from Tennessee. Her mother played banjo. Jo had five years of operatic training and took piano lessons. She spoke of having listened, in the '30's, to Glen Gray and Benny Goodman. She dug the Mercer-Teagarden duets with Paul Whiteman's orchestra. The Stafford Sisters, the vocalizing trio in which Jo made her professional debut, took their stylistic cue from the jazzy New Orleanians, The Boswell Sisters. "Our talents — his and mine — fit the music of the time,” she said, of herself and her husband, bandleader/composer/arranger, Paul Weston. “And the music fit us." ... Still, where the heck did Jo Stafford come from? How do you take the environment and the times and get Jo Stafford? Recently, I was listening to her Reader's Digest recordings from the late '60's; Jo, at the time these sides were made, was a 30-year veteran of the music business. And the musical landscape had changed considerably since her heyday. She, singer-trombonist Warren Covington and the then current edition of The Pied Pipers were doing, among other things, that easy-listening '60's anthem "What the World Needs Now," (penned by the then ubiquitous Burt Bacharach), in a take, extremely late '60's in manner, on the quasi-spiritual "Yes, Indeed" approach of Dorsey arranger, Sy Oliver. I could just envision the vocal assemblage swaying, on a variety show (Ed Sullivan; The Smothers Brothers), before a mod, bold, colorful backdrop. The one timelessly hip element of the record was Jo's delivery. That cool tone and laidback style. Jo was hip and modern in 1940. She's hip and modern today. She will be so, long after we, of this moment, are gone. Perhaps the simple, one-word explanation for the newness, the unprecented quality that Jo brought to her environment and times – or anybody else brought to his/hers, for that matter – is uniqueness. Just the same, I would like to have heard her responses to those five questions.

The People's Choice

2008-11-04T08:50:00.001-08:00

Well ... for Election Day: a Swing Era favorite introduced to me by The First Lady of Swing, Ella Fitzgerald, with Chick Webb and His Orchestra

Vote For Mr. Rhythm
Music by Ralph Rainger, Words by Leo Robin, Al Siegel

Vote for Mr. Rhythm –
Raise up your voice,
And vote for Mr. Rhythm,
The people's choice.

You'll be happy with him –
Take my advice,
And vote for Mr. Rhythm;
I'm voting twice!

Ev'ryone's a friend of his;
His campaign slogan is,
"Change Your Woe
Into a Wo-De-Ho!"

Vote for Mr. Rhythm –
Let freedom ring,
And soon we'll all be singing,
"Of thee I swing!"

Have you exercised your right to choose today?

Bunny and Me

2008-11-02T18:30:00.000-08:00

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of my favorite trumpeter, Bunny Berigan. I've been celebrating his genius in listening to some of the many recordings to which he lent his unmistakable tone, formidable technique, boundless creativity and matchless vitality.

Today, also, is the 2nd anniversary of the inception of Relative Esoterica, the web journal I'm keeping, after a fashion.

Assessing the Damaged

2008-09-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

From my viewing, which took place many years ago, of a mere snatch of Moontide I had retained a foggy memory only of fog, the nebulous stuff of both literal and figurative atmosphere, and Ida Lupino. These elements were enough to convince me to order the film, a brand new addition to the "Fox Film Noir" DVD series. A couple of nights ago, I watched Moontide and found it beautiful – in the way that something containing ugly aspects can be beautiful. Beneath the falseness of its dreamlike construction lies the truth of Moontide's essential substance: Loneliness, a condition intrinsic to human beings, and the need to be comforted and loved compel even those emotionally mangled to reach, from the crushing rubble that is the past, for one specific understanding soul.

Among the special features accompanying the film is a fairly short but densely-packed with information and insight documentary entitled Turning of the Tide: The Ill-Starred Making of Moontide. I was surprised – and yet not – to find two Noir experts – Eddie Muller and Megan Abbott – using the phrase "two damaged people finding each other" in summarizing the main point in the story's plot. I don't imagine for an instant that these cinephiles decided together upon the "two damaged people" label. It just fit, and they both knew it. The pair of dinged and dented souls to whom the description is applied are Bobo, a longshoreman and nomad, played by Jean Gabin and Anna, a former "hash-rassler" and wharf waif, played by Ida Lupino. Bobo has a dark secret buried in the shallow grave of memory: His quick temper and strong hands came to his aid when a man came at him with a knife – he strangled the weapon-wielding antagonist. Too, his most recent alcoholic blackout (depicted in a Salvador Daliesque sequence) gives rise to the suspicion that he has killed another man. Though under '40's Production Code dictates, Anna's past is kept unclear, she enters the story attempting to drown herself to escape this past and prevent the unfolding of an unpromising future. (Documentary contributors reveal that in the book, Willard Robertson's Moontide, on which the film was based, Anna, a prostitute, has been raped, is poor and can't find work.) Bobo pulls Anna out of the water, takes her home to his bait barge ... and, the next morning, Anna fixes eggs – sunny side up – for Bobo. She, a "damaged" person, becomes – almost inconceivably, at first – his "Sunny Side." "[A] gypsy is dying and a peasant is being born," observes Nutsy, Bobo's sage friend, of Bobo's transformation. A tender treatment of Irving Berlin's bittersweet "Remember," wafting from the phonograph of a neighboring barge, provides the film's love theme. How ironic: "You forgot to remember," reproaches Berlin's heartbroken protagonist – while Bobo and Anna must remember to forget.

Moontide, indeed, is, in Eddie Muller's full phrase, "[a] story of these two damaged people finding each other and falling in love." More generally, it is about these two and other damaged people. Tiny (played by the great Thomas Mitchell), weak and yet sadistic, having witnessed the murder-in-self-defense, has attached himself like a lovesick flea to Bobo and demands maintenance in exchange for silence. Nutsy (played by adorable Claude Rains) – wise, clearly well-educated and kind – hasn't "slept since about 1936" ("or was it '37?") and wanders about, casually-groomed, in an old "Smokey the Bear" ranger hat, philosophizing in his nightwatchman's off-time. (His toasting with a bottle of Coke suggests a reformed alcoholic.) Mildred (played by Robin Raymond), a young patron of the extremely lively Red Dot bar, is a prostitute. Everyone, it seems, bears scars, nicks and chips.

Having seen Moontide, when I heard "damaged people," I found myself wondering when experience becomes damage . At what point do some of us transmogrify from a person to bring to a relationship a unique perspective, shaped by the individual process of living, to something like those shelter puppies deemed "hard-to-place?" However horrific the event, however great the accumulation of events, it is, I decided, not what has happened but its effect on the affected that is the determinant. In Moontide, Bobo and Anna are damaged but not totaled, and each recognizes this not only in the other but in him/herself. I like to believe that those beyond the celluloid realm, you and I, too may assess our own damage and decree our own redeemability.

Bigger than the Great Norvo ... and All of Us

2008-08-31T21:37:00.000-07:00

After having consulted Whitney Balliet's American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz for a recent post, I didn't return the volume to its home in the bookshelf but instead kept it handy beside the computer. I was thumbing through the silver-covered paperback this evening. The title of the chapter on vibraharpist/xylophonist Red Norvo once again caught my eye – "The Music Is More Important." I've read this book many times, but, hey, you can't retain everything; I decided to peruse these few pages. Frequently Balliet's chapter titles in this book are taken from a statement made by the subject; such, as I imagined it would be, was the case here:

Red Norvo in the Balliet book:

The main thing is that jazz should be fun. After all, the music is more important than any of us musicians. I'm beginning to think it's not that way anymore, which is too bad. We've come into an age of geniuses, of big musicians swaggering down the sidewalk, and nobody has any fun anymore. I've never done anything musically unless I liked to do it. [...]

I strongly agree – the music is more important. Serving the music – the gerund, in this instance, having two intended meanings – is what matters most: Playing in service to the songs and offering these songs to an audience; therein lies the fun and the reward. While I can think of many instances in which a musician has taken mediocre (or worse) material and fashioned it into something beautiful, I regard this not as proof that the music is secondary to the performer thereof but, rather, as an act of selflessness on the instrumentalist's part. He/she looks at what is at hand and tries to find in it something of merit to emphasize; he/she promotes compositional substance over self. Bunny Berigan – still, sixty-six years after his death, an instantly recognizable, widely-admired virtuoso trumpeter – was a master at finding and exposing the one felicitous melodic twist in an otherwise humdrum piece. Playing music, as far as I'm concerned, is about songs and chords and melodies and lyrics; it's not about image and personal stature. I love Red's phrase, "... big musicians swaggering down the sidewalk." I believe that those who swagger, literally or, as in interviews, figuratively, are big only in self-conception. Red Norvo was a giant of his instruments – first the xylophone and then the vibraharp – but his facility and imagination were to him, clearly, not the end but the means. The music was more important. It remains so, I think.

"... thinking over Sunday"

2008-08-31T19:44:00.000-07:00

I've never been crazy about Sunday. It seems that, since childhood, I've always been too preoccupied with the fact that the dreaded Monday would follow to enjoy the traditional day of rest. I am, however, mad about the 1926 published "Sunday," the first hit for Jule Styne, who, in those days, was spelling his name differently. I like the song's chord changes and upbeat melody; "Sunday" is a very good vehicle for improvisation.

Sunday
Music and Words by Ned Miller, Chester Cohn,
Jules Stein, Bennie Krueger

I'm blue ev'ry Monday, thinking over Sunday –
That one day when I'm with you.
It seems that I sigh all day Tuesday, I cry all day Wednesday –
Oh, my! how I long for you!

And then comes Thursday;
Gee it's long; it never goes by.
Friday makes me feel like I'm gonna die.

But after payday is my fun day;
I shine all day Sunday –
That one day when I'm with you.

Playing "Sunday" this Sunday evening, I thought of an interesting anecdote involving the song, in Rhythm Man: Fifty Years in Jazz, guitarist Steve Jordan's autobiography:

The 1973 Chiaroscuro album Buddy Tate and His Buddies was recorded on a Sunday because of me. Producer Hank O'Neal called to say that Buddy Tate wanted me for the date with Roy Eldridge, Illinois Jacquet, Mary Lou Williams, Milt Hinton and Gus Johnson. But the only night off I had from a regular gig in Washington was Sunday, and I told him it would be tough for me to take it and, anyway, there were a lot of good guitar players in New York. "No, no, Buddy wants you, not anybody else," O'Neal told me. So, the date was scheduled for a Sunday, and six prominent jazz musicians had to rearrange their schedules to fit mine. That was nice of them and good for my ego. That's also the reason why the old standard, Sunday, is on the album. After we had finished recording the special tunes for the date, a new piece by Buck Clayton, two by Buddy, and one by Mary Lou, we had time for one more. I suggested Sunday simply because it was a Sunday and because I knew it was a tune all these jazz veterans knew and would be comfortable with. Or so I thought. Mary Lou, a veteran of countless jam sessions and one of the best pianists of the swing era, insisted she didn't know Sunday. I couldn't believe it. Nor could Roy. "Everybody knows Sunday," Roy kept telling her, "Mary Lou, I know you know Sunday!" But she said she didn't, and when we decided to go ahead with it I wrote out the chord changes for her. And if you listen closely to the lengthy solo by Mary Lou on the recording I think you will notice that she doesn't play the melody of the song. I guess she really didn't know it. But it's a marvelous solo, anyway, as her solos always were, and conceived only from the chord changes, a kind of conception all good jazz players are able to achieve.

Both of us having read Rhythm Man, my mom and I one time discussed this story. I expressed my amazement at Mary Lou's not being familiar with "Sunday," but, like Roy Eldridge, Mom insisted that the pianist could not have not known the jazz standard. I like my mother's romantic theory – that "Sunday" held for Mary Lou some unpleasant association and, for this reason, she wished to avoid playing it. We'll never know, I'm sure, but this does seem a plausible possibility.

Having heard this treatment of "Sunday" since initially reading the amusing tale, I have to say that I am certain that Mary Lou's hesitation to make the recording had nothing whatever to do with a lack of acquaintance with the song. Jordan's right – she doesn't play the melody; she does, however, dance around it here and there, and her paraphrases, though brief, are close enough to indicate that she knew the ditty. Besides, she followed Eldridge who stated the melody in the opening chorus; any jazz musician would have taken off after the song was introduced. Maybe Mary Lou just wasn't especially fond of "Sunday." You'd never guess this, though, from the way she goes through the jaunty tune, tinkling brightly and throwing in the occasional modern alternate chord. Only Jordan's story would arouse your suspicions.

Ok, we'll imagine that Mary Lou didn't really dig "Sunday." Surely, though, she, who became an extremely religious person, loved Sunday. Me, I'm just the other way around.

Watching Westerns like a Girl

2008-08-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

My copy of Warner Brothers' newly released Errol Flynn Westerns having arrived yesterday afternoon, I watched, last night, the earliest film in the collection, 1940's Virginia City. Well, I found the picture rather entertaining – if a bit convoluted. I've grown quite fond of Westerns in these last few years; I never paid any attention to them before – which is odd, really, as when I was a tot, I adored playing cowboys and Indians. I suppose that at some point I realized that a little girl's conception of the world of cowboys is quite different from that world itself, or even from '30's and '40's Hollywood's version of it. However ill-suited I have come to see that I am for a life on the open range, though,I can't watch a Western without thinking that I hope that, before I die (naturally), I have an opportunity to ride in a covered wagon.

Well, I shan't launch into a plot description of Virginia City. Lacking the gift of conciseness, I have never been terribly adept at writing synopses. Besides, I've lost all taste for trying to write them. Too, fond as I am of what I term "Golden Age" movies, I crave no identification with the fraternity of the so-called "classic film blog." ... I will, though, say something about Virginia City.

When the credits were rolling, I was surprised by Randolph Scott's name. I've always thought him awfully handsome; I like his boyish haircut as well as the fact that it appears that he used little or no pomade. For some reason, once I learned that he was in Virginia City, I wasn't prepared to find him playing antagonist to Flynn; I didn't think about The Spoilers, with Scott and John Wayne, which I saw a few years ago. Well, Randy, as Confederate officer Vance Irby in this one, is an honourable, if desperate, adversary to Union man Flynn.

Bogie I was expecting to see. My goodness – that mustache ... ugh! And the Mexican accent – horrible, phony as a three-dollar bill. How Warner Brothers abused that poor guy. At this point in his career, his fine and, it later became apparent, iconic turn in The Petrified Forest – a film in which star Leslie Howard had insisted that Bogie be cast in the part of Duke Mantee, as he had been in the Broadway play – had proven a false breakthrough. The powers that be (or were) just didn't recognize his gifts or potential. He'd been curly-haired, riding-booted, Irish Michael O'Leary in Dark Victory in '39, and now, in '40, he was a half-breed outlaw, opponent to both Flynn and, as things turn out, Scott. And it appeared that big Flynn or big Scott could have flattened slightly-built Bogie with one punch. Well, a gun compensates. ... Thank goodness that High Sierra came along for the one-and-only Humphrey Bogart.

... And Mr. Errol Flynn. Well, he was just excruciatingly beautiful. I don't mean that he was pretty – I don't like pretty men; he was very masculine-looking. I just mean that he was so exquisitely put together. My gosh – the eyes, the profile, the jaw, the (naturally streaked) hair, the physique. In Virginia City, he delivers another thoroughly convincing, heroic performance. I'm glad to see that critics are beginning to acknowledge what a fine actor he was. As was the case with Gable, Flynn's larger-than-life quality became the preoccupation and his talent was unjustly neglected.

I don't want to sound catty, but I'm not sure that Miriam Hopkins, excellent actress though she be, was just the girl for Virginia City's Julia Hayne, barroom chanteuse/Confederate spy, role. Then again, I'm not sure that frequent Flynn co-star Livvy de Havilland (who, at this time, sagely understood that she had to get away from Errol and period pictures) would have been right. Whom would I have cast? Well, let's see, who was at Warners then: Well, Queen Bette – she was out. ... Ann Sheridan maybe? Or was she too sexy – perfect for the saloon singer bit but not quite so for the determined Rebel agent aspect. This is a tough one. Anyway, Miriam was far from bad ... and she did have a number of costumes that I found to die for. Also, she had a marvelous line:

Once in the titular town, Flynn's Kerry Bradford goes into the local watering hole and is disillusioned to discover that Julia, whom he thought a proper lady, is a common entertainer. Julia, becoming torn between patriotic duty and love, wistfully tells him:

[B]ut, you see, Kerry, no matter how much a man's in love, he really wonders whether the woman's quite ... good enough for him or not. But when a woman's in love, well ... she's just in love and ... that's the end.

I share this point of view. 'Course, I'm a girl.

Well, though, after she says this, Bradford responds with, "Uh-huh." So he evidently agrees ... and he's a guy. Is this, Julia's statement, so? I can speak only from a girl's perspective.

The Biting Brass

2008-08-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

Today, in continuing to make my way, year-by-year, through my CD collection, I played, among other discs, the one, Classics' "Benny Goodman and His Orchestra 1936-1937," that contains the first commercial sides on which the Goodman band's legendary "Biting Brass" triumvirate appears. Comprising Harry James, Ziggy Elman and Chris Griffin, this trumpet section was, I feel, the finest, of any size, ever to grace a bandstand or recording studio; for its power, precision, virtuosity, and esprit de corps, the trio was without equal. I'm not alone in my admiration: Glenn Miller, a great devotee of strong section work, deemed "The Biting Brass," so dubbed by the musical cognoscenti, "the Marvel of the Age." Duke Ellington, who, for three years, enjoyed the services of a trumpet team composed of Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart and Wallace Jones, thought Griffin, Elman and James "the greatest trumpet section that ever was." Chris Griffin himself reported that Harry Glantz, the New York Philharmonic's highly esteemed first trumpeter, asked Benny Goodman, after taking in, at NYC's Paramount Theater, a display of the Brass' ferocity, inquired, "What do you feed those trumpet players? Raw meat?" Those guys, as the Goodman recordings waxed between December 30, 1936 and December 23, 1938 reveal, were fit to eat the competition alive.

Having been recommended to Goodman by music producer and critic John Hammond, native New Yorker Gordon "Chris" Griffin, who, before he turned twenty-one, had replaced jazz legend Bunny Berigan in the CBS Studio Orchestra and played in bands led by Charlie Barnet and Joe Haymes as well as one co-captained by Barnet and Red Norvo, was the first among the "Brass" to join the BG crew. He made his recording debut with the aggregation 5/27/36.

New Jersey-born Ziggy Elman (formerly Harry Finkelman), a child prodigy multi-instrumentalist, specializing in trumpet, and veteran of Alex Bartha's band, followed. When BG lead man, the highly regarded Zeke Zarchey, acquired a bad lip just as the orchestra was set to open at Atlantic City's Steel Pier, Goodman, in a panic, borrowed the dazzlingly versatile Elman from the Bartha house band to fill the empty chair. So ended powerhouse Elman's professional association with Alex Bartha. Loud-talking and louder blowing Ziggy had his first studio session with Goodman's outfit 10/7/37.

Like Elman, a child prodigy, Texan Harry James, in his youth a performer in his parents' "Mighty Haag" touring circus, completed "The Biting Brass." Goodman's brother, Irving, a section trumpet man and occasional fill-in with his clarinetist sibling's band, promoted not-quite-twenty-one-year-old phenomenon James, with whose studio and live work with the Ben Pollack Orchestra he had become acquainted, as a permanent replacement for the still ailing Zarchey. On the night of December 19, 1936, BG, having been sufficiently pestered by brother Irving, tuned in to a Pollack band broadcast from the Cotton Club in Culver City. At once tremendously impressed by the incendiary James, Goodman called the California night spot to offer the lavishly talented trumpeter a job. With his drummer boss' blessing, James took his leave, bound for, in Pollack's phrase, "the Big Time." "The Biting Brass" came together before an audience on the Tuesday after Christmas, and James made his first recordings as a member of this Goodman trumpet section 12/30/36.

The Biting Brass: James, Elman, Griffin

The following, from Ross Firestone's essential Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman:

There was a certain amount of playful competition among the three trumpet men. They had a standing bet of a dollar about who could learn his part in a new arrangement first, and the last one still to resort to the written score was always in for kidding. But there was also a fierce camaraderie and shared pride in achievement that led them to close ranks whenever Benny tried to interfere with the section's operation. "We always tuned up a little sharper than the rest of the band to make it more brilliant," Chris Griffin recalls. "We could cut better that way. But Benny could never quite tune up to where we were, so one night he got the three of us behind the bandstand and said, 'Hey, fellas, it's so sharp I can't get it. Don't you think you ought to tune down, you know?' He looked at Harry—'Don't you?'— and Harry didn't say anything. Then he looked at Ziggy, and Ziggy looked at me, and neither of us said a word. Benny sort of went, 'Whew,' turned around and walked out. And we never changed at all."

In most trumpet sections, one man played lead and the others held down the less demanding second and third trumpet chairs. In the Goodman band, though, the lead was alternated among all three players. "They switched the parts around because there were so many high notes for the trumpets they'd wear one guy out," Jess Stacy explains. "They had to switch the parts. If they hadn't, one guy would have died."

... And from Peter J. Levinson's superb Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James:

The Goodman book was very difficult to play and so exacting that it required a split trumpet lead. James, Elman, and Griffin all played lead on separate numbers, although on some numbers the lead was shared by all three.

On the evening of Sunday, January 16, 1938, it was The Biting Brass that followed "King of Swing" Goodman onto the Carnegie Hall stage for the venue's first ever "jazz concert." Just before striding from the wings, a nervous Harry James extemporized the now famous, "I feel like a whore in church."

"I Want to be Happy"; "Chloe"; "Peckin'"; "Roll 'Em"; "When It's Sleepy-Time Down South"; "Changes"; "Sugar Foot Stomp"; "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby"; "Minnie the Moocher's Wedding Day"; "Camel Hop"; "Life Goes to a Party"; "If Dreams Come True"; "Don't Be That Way"; "One O'Clock Jump"; "Make Believe"; "The Blue Room"; "Big John Special"; "Wrappin' It Up"; "Margie"; "Russian Lullaby" ... and, of course, "Sing, Sing, Sing" – dig The Biting Brass in '37 and '38.

All good (and Goodman) things must come to an end. The last to join was the first to leave: Harry James, who, like Ziggy Elman, had cut records under his own name, using pick-up groups, while a member of the Goodman Orchestra, wanted to form his own band. A weird situation precipitated his inevitable departure.

Harry James in the "Harry James Revisited" sub-chapter of the "Big Bandleaders Revisited" chapter in George T. Simon's indispensable The Big Bands:

"I don't think I ever told anybody this, but I was going through a real mental thing, and it was all built around 'Sing, Sing, Sing.' I'd been sick and they gave me some experimental pills—sulphur pills—only they weren't very refined yet. Well, they wigged me out, and it happened the first time just as I was supposed to get up and play my chorus on 'Sing, Sing, Sing.' I just couldn't make it. I fell back in my chair. Ziggy said to me, 'Get up!' but I couldn't, so when he saw what was happening, he got up and played my solo. I was completely out of my mind.

It happened again another time, too, and so every time the band played 'Sing, Sing, Sing' I'd get bugged and scared it would start all over again. You know, that Stravinsky-type thing that the trombones and then the trumpets play just before the chorus? Well, that would really set me off. I tried to explain it to Benny, and I'd even ask him to play 'Sing, Sing, Sing' early in the evening, so I could relax the rest of the night. But, of course, that was his big number, and I couldn't blame him for wanting to hold off. So finally I just left the band. I couldn't trust myself anymore. At least with my own band, I could play the tunes that I wanted to play."

Harry James participated in his final studio session as part of The Biting Brass on 12/23/38. He left the BG Orchestra in January of 1939 to launch his own band. His former boss provided much-needed financial assistance.

Chris Griffin was the next to leave. Soon after the band's August 16 recording date, he quit Goodman and returned to CBS, tired of the road and eager to establish a home base for himself, his wife and children.

Ziggy Elman was the last to go. In July, 1940, Goodman, in agonizing pain and partially paralyzed as a result of a slipped disc, was forced to undergo spinal surgery. Anticipating a lengthy recovery period, he broke up his orchestra, retaining only a few, key members – among whom, Ziggy Elman. During Goodman's convalescence, Elman played with Joe Venuti's band, and when Tommy Dorsey offered the trumpeter Bunny Berigan's recently vacated chair, Elman parted company with Goodman.

In the '40's, four-player trumpet sections became the norm. Some bands, one of which belonging to Harry James, carried five trumpets. No trumpet section, though, attained the verve of Goodman's Biting Brass.

Living Your Song

2008-08-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

Last night, in reviewing, for my previous post, some of the material in "Bobby Hackett: Making It Sing," the chapter on the masterful Rhode Island-born musician, in Richard Sudhalter's Lost Chords: White Musicians and their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945, I came across the paragraph that pertains to the April 13, 1939 Vocalian recording, by Bobby Hackett and His Orchestra, of the cornetist's theme, "Embraceable You." I was delighted to happen upon a forgotten mention of Bobby's subtle paraphrase of a popular song and then future standard in the body of his solo:

The peak [of the Hackett Orchestra's first studio session], however, comes last, on "Embraceable You." Compared to this, the Commodore performance of the previous year seems a warmup. The Hackett charms are in full early bloom: balanced phrasing, the melodic essence glowing through the embellishments; an unerring ability, as Ruby Braff observed, to select the most poignant intervals and chordal voices—all delivered with a heart-warming tone. From his lilting first phrase, an oblique allusion to the Harry Warren-Al Dubin "Shadow Waltz," he comes close to recomposing Gershwin's melody.

Yeah, I thought, I've always loved Bobby's little intimation of "Shadow Waltz." It took some guts, I believe, to do that with a string of notes from the pen of the great composer, George Gershwin. Who but the great recomposer, Bobby Hackett?

Well, having smiled over Sudhalter's words, I was then onto "Shadow Waltz" – first, playing, in my brain, Bobby's little figure, suggesting a maj7 to supplant the plain major; next, picturing the scene in Gold Diggers of 1933, the film for which the song was written, in which a chorus of girls swirl about – under the direction of mad genius Busby Berkeley – with neon-lit violins and bows ... and hearing Dick Powell's lusty tenor serenade platinum-topped Toby Wing; finally, thinking of my favorite line in the romantic ditty, "Let me live my song."

Shadow Waltz

Music by Harry Warren, Words by Al Dubin

Shadows on the wall,
I can see them fall –
Here and there, ev'rywhere.
Silhouettes in blue,
Dancing in the dew.
Here am I. Where are you?

In the shadows, let me come and sing to you;
Let me dream a song that I can bring to you.
Take me in your arms and let me cling to you;
Let me linger long;
Let me live my song.

In the winter, let me bring the spring to you;
Let me feel that I mean ev'rything to you.
Love's old song will be new,
In the shadows, when I come and sing to you;
In the shadows, when I come and sing to you.

What a marvelous phrase – "Let me live my song." A song is, after all, an account of a genuine episode or series of events in someone's life ... or a representation of a dream of an experience or feeling desired. What songs have you lived? Isham Jones and Gus Kahn's "The One I Love (Belongs to Somebody Else)"? The Bros. Gershwin's "'S Wonderful"? Brian Wilson's "All Summer Long"?

What songs do you hope to have the right to say, some day, that you have lived? Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's "The Folks Who Live on the Hill"? Ervin Drake's "It Was a Very Good Year"? Those two are mini-epics, encompassing decades. A lifetime can, though, last, literally and figuratively, only a few months, a few days, a few hours. Can you claim really to have felt Henderson, Lewis and Young's "I'm Sitting on Top of the World?" Duke Ellington's "In a Mellotone"? Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies"? My favorite song, Rodgers and Hart's "I Didn't Know What Time It Was"?

... Or are you incapable of identifying closely enough with someone else's material, to be able to say, "I have lived his/her lines?" Must you write your own lyrics for it to be, truly, "live my song?" ... I used to try to write my own songs, until I discovered that I was rotten at it. I can say that the words of Larry Hart, Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Fields, Edward Heyman and a few others are those to which I both have related and do aspire.

What More Do "They" Want?

2008-08-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

Not because I harbour wistful fantasies of launching, in the capacity of guitar slinger, a middle-aged attack on the local bar scene, but because I like to play music and am conscious of having improved quite a bit in these last few months, I've been thinking about the fact that if my ability were or became ten times greater than it is now, I will never possess the stuff of public performing. It's not that I'm shy. It's merely that I have some self-defeating ideas about the typical multifariously-composed audience. A passage in Richard Sudhalter's Lost Chords: White Musicians and their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945, which contains an insightful comment by the great Ruby Braff concerning the utterly sublime Bobby Hackett, has been floating around in my brain:

[...] What kept the name of Bobby Hackett, for all the excellence of his musicianship, from major public recognition?

Ruby Braff, for one, has strong convictions on the subject. "Bobby didn't give his heart to an audience," the cornetist said. He gave it to his horn. He just wanted to play beautifully and wonderfully—but for himself and other musicians, not for the people. I think he shared an attitude very common among musicians. You know—'here they come, the enemy is coming.' Them. The enemy. I think Bobby had a certain amount of that; he seemed to be afraid that other musicians would put him down if he fell in love with performing. Almost as if he had something against the idea of show business, performing for an audience.

"Audiences know that. They feel it when you've disconnected yourself from them. I've always felt that if Bobby had reached out a little more it would have helped him make that connection. Can you imagine what would have happened if he'd been able to open his heart and really give it to his listeners?"

Ruby, his every printed utterance attests, was an intelligent guy; plus, he knew the man of whom he spoke. I respect his opinions – even as I am amazed to find these particular ones coming from a fellow whom I have always regarded, albeit from the vantage point of someone personally unacquainted, as a lovable curmudgeon. Still, I, inevitably, have my own, somewhat different take on Bobby's inaccessibility: First, Louis Armstrong – not only the most important musical figure but also one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century – being Bobby's idol, I can't believe that Bobby had anything like a disdain for or dismissive view of the talent of performing before an audience. I imagine that he simply considered it a skill beyond his range. Second, I am inclined to think that Bobby felt that his heart was represented, particle by particle, in the carefully chosen notes that he blew, in every situation – be it in a recording studio, surrounded by friends and peers, or at a gig, before an audience, comprising both the receptive and the immune. Perhaps he believed that in the making of music alone, he was giving of himself sufficiently. If this, indeed, was his stance, was he wrong? I don't doubt, for an instant that he held a sort of "us and them" attitude about the relationship between musician and audience; it doesn't take more than one experience in front of a crowd to realize that many people are incapable of digging. And yet even those who hear without listening sense disconnectedness – maybe because they see that someone who is presenting an aural art is unwilling to couple it with some other expressive medium. You're expected, by some, to be a dancer, a raconteur, a comedian, a fashion plate and a matinee idol, as well. If you can't deliver, you're judged remote. I don't get this. What more do they want? If Bobby couldn't "give" on such terms, I can relate.

So often, it seems that what you're doing isn't enough. And, frequently, if you're liked, you are so for all the wrong reasons.

This from Jess Stacy in "Back from Vallhalla," the chapter devoted to him in Whitney Balliet's American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz:

"[...] So in the late forties I went to California to live and started playing in piano bars. It was all new to me. I'd always been a band pianist, and I hardly knew any tunes. I did have five or six years that were all right. The people in the bars would ask for 'On Moonlight Bay' or 'Clair de Lune,' which I always thought of as 'Clear the Room.' But they'd pretty much leave me alone, and sometimes they'd even clap or some guy would lay a tip on me. But around 1955 TV began keeping the nicer people home, and I came to feel those piano bars were snake pits. I had to walk around the block six or seven times every night to get up enough courage to go in. While I was playing, somebody would put a nickel in the jukebox or some fellow would ask me if I'd play real quiet so he could watch the fights on the bar TV. Or else they'd all get drunk and sing along. [...]"

Jess Stacy... Can you imagine, "play real quiet?" I remember it broke my mom's heart to read that. Speaking of my mother, who faked her way through childhood piano lessons, gave them up and went on to become one of the greatest music listeners – read diggers – I've ever known, I learned in observing her that you need not be a musician to appreciate the nuances in and aims of an instrumentalist's or singer's work. I know that there are others like her out there, with whom I would enjoy communicating through music, but I know, as well, that I would have neither the ability nor the patience to adapt myself for the purpose of playing music before an unknown audience.

I recently came upon this statement, made in an unspecified 1996 interview, by my hero, Jo Stafford: "I'm basically a singer, period, and I think I'm really lousy up in front of an audience— it's just not me." Jo knew what the mass expectations were; that they related to more than the music itself.

Again, what more do the "they," which I know exists, want?

Idée Fixe

2008-08-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

It's as though I ... I want something that I just can't have.
Jessica Lange as Julie Nichols in Tootsie

Well, I address not the fringe-of-society crazies whose desires impinge upon the wants and rights of others – those scary creatures don't read Relative Esoterica anyway, do they? – but ... just people who respect other people:

It's very, very tough to want something that you can't – or mayn't – have, whether it is circumstance, or someone else ... or you who imposes upon you the denial. Because you go right on wanting, don't you?

I don't know which is worse – wanting something seen, glimpsed, that one factor or another won't allow you, or wanting something that you're sure you'll never have, because you suspect that it doesn't exist. ... I'll have to ponder this.

I keep thinking of those lines, written by Oscar Hammerstein II, from "It Might as Well be Spring," my favorite song by Rodgers & Hammerstein (a songwriting team that regular readers are, I'm sure, aware that I have never liked nearly so much as Rodgers & Hart).

I keep wishing I were somewhere else,
Walking down a strange new street;
Hearing words that I have never heard
From a girl I've yet to meet.

You keep wondering: Is this this state, this condition that I have yet to experience even obtainable? ... Is this person that I have yet to encounter even out there?

"One More Once" Ad Infinitum

2008-08-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

William "Bill," "Count" Basie

"The Kid from Redbank," born August 21, 1904, one-hundred-four years ago today
Absorber and distiller of the Waller style
Second pianist and arranger in the mighty Bennie Moten Orchestra
One fourth (along with each of Walter Page, Jo Jones, and Freddie Green) of the so-dubbed "All-American Rhythm Section"
Leader of perhaps the swingingest big band of all time
Composer of the jazz standard, "Blue and Sentimental"
Discerning judge of talent – think: Lester Young, Lips Page, Buck Clayton, Jo Jones, Herschel Evans, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Buddy Tate, Joe Williams
As pianist and organist, Music's, in my phrase, "Master of Minimalism"
Died April 26, 1984 – but yet alive through his brilliant, joyful, ever-popular recordings

Happy Birthday, Count Basie

"One more time":

Happy Birthday, Count Basie

"Let's try it one more once":

Happy Birthday, Count Basie

Read His Lips

2008-08-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

I only just finished reading something that I long had wished to see but never seriously imagined that I would see – a biography of one of my favorite musicians, trumpeter Oran "Hot Lips" Page. Todd Bryant Weeks' Luck's In My Corner: The Life and Music of Hot Lips Page, published this year, proved to be far more than I dared expect of a contemporary portrait of a jazz artist who, as well as being today an unjustly obscure figure among the musical form's contributors, was, in his lifetime, under-utilized and grossly under-promoted, despite the high regard in which he was held by his peers and admirers. Having purchased the book sight unseen, I was greatly encouraged in seeing the name of the man who provided the book's introduction, Dan Morgenstern, and subsequently in reading the introduction itself; the redoubtable Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University wrote the liner notes for the CD that acquainted me with Lips Page's remarkable talents. Morgenstern didn't exaggerate – Luck's In My Corner is a "wonderful biography."

Making use of every available resource concerning Page, including the insightful comments of his son, Oran Page Jr., Todd Bryant Weeks restores human substance to a Herculean trumpeter, captivating vocalist, incisive songwriter and electrifying performer who, though having attained, in the nearly fifty-four years since his death, a mythical (and thus hazy) status, was regarded by musical associates, friends and fans alike, as a person of tremendous warmth, good cheer and benevolence. The book diligently follows Page's steps, taken in an all-too-short forty-six years, from the Deep Ellum area of Dallas, the place of his birth in 1908; through Corsicana, Texas, in which he developed as a musician; into Oklahoma City, Texas and Kansas City, Missouri where he established a name for himself through his powerful work with first Walter Page's (no relation) Blue Devils and then Bennie Moten's Orchestra and finally to New York City, the musician's home base for the last nearly two decades of his life. Nearing the book's conclusion, Weeks exposes a mystery, yet unsolved, surrounding the circumstances leading to Lips Page's death, which is commonly attributed to a heart attack brought on by pneumonia.

The author, an educator and jazz historian, explores the origins of Page's style – his fondness for playing the '20's song, "Hot Lips," (the popular Paul Whiteman Orchestra version of which features Henry Busse's growling trumpet) earned him his nickname – rightly placing emphasis on the influence of Louis Armstrong and the blues he heard in Dallas as a boy. The mature Lips, perhaps best known today for his incomparable plunger mute growl work, was, Weeks stresses, a master at setting riffs to support solo, improvisational playing; it was in this secondary role that Page revealed his artistic and professional generosity, his desire to make not merely himself but the whole musical aggregation look/sound good.

Without (belated) agenda-fueled invective, Todd Bryant Weeks appropriately keeps prominent in his narrative the racially repressive attitudes that undermined the efforts of black entertainers, none more so than Lips Page, to share their art with the masses. It seems that a quota system, established by whites in the business (read power) end of the entertainment industry, and based on the belief that there was room at the top, in any given area of artistic performance, for only one African-American, prevented an enormous number of talented blacks from receiving sponsorship, managerial shepherding and exposure in the least comparable with that given white artists.

Week's greatest strength as a storyteller is perhaps his ability to evoke vividly the New York City, particularly the Harlem area thereof, of the 1930's and 1940's. This colorful place, at this exciting time, was the setting for the after-hours jam sessions that Lips so loved; at once ever the gentleman and a formidable opponent, the trumpeter dominated, by sheer presence, the instrumental jousting contests of the Swing Era. Luck's author practically seats you at a table near the bandstand and serves you a drink.

Luck's In My Corner is a title intentionally both ironic and fitting: In 1936, Lips Page left the on-the-cusp-of widespread recognition Count Basie Orchestra, in which he was featured, to embark upon his own bandleading career, under the management of Joe Glaser – only to be ignored in favor of Glaser's Number One client, Louis Armstrong. Lips, clearly, was deemed too much competition. In 1941, on the advice of band member Max Kaminsky, Artie Shaw, captain of a highly successful as well as artistically uncompromising swing outfit, hired Lips, made him, after Shaw himself, the crew's chief soloist, and turned down tours through the South, in which ill-treatment of the lone black musician in an otherwise white orchestra was to be expected. While working hard and contributing significantly, Lips enjoyed the warmth of the spotlight for five months – until, with war clouds forming overhead, Shaw broke up the band to join the Navy. Lips, versatile, individual, part of the great Armstrongian lineage, peer of Eldridge and Gillespie, was always primed for super-stardom ... yet it never came. Still, he – of, in Shaw's description, "sunny disposish" – wrote, sang, and believed, "Luck's in my corner, and I keep rollin' on."

I strongly urge all those yet unacquainted with Lips Page's work to be on the lookout for a copy of the Classics label's scandalously out-of-print "Hot Lips Page 1940-1944." (the primary contents of which I praise, in Relative Esoterica, here) Page – trumpeter, vocalist, songwriter, mellophonist – and his superb bands are on glorious display in this blues-drenched set. From the extraordinary trio and quartet sides of 1940 that open the disc to the moody big band sides of 1944 that close it, there isn't one less than marvelous track. Easily in the Top 15 of my well-in-excess-of three thousand CD collection. (Dig a youtube sample.)

Listen ... and read Todd Bryant Weeks' excellent Luck's In My Corner: The Life and Music of Hot Lips Page.

... Read, too, an interview with this first-time author.

Of Conduits and Ends

2008-08-17T15:50:00.000-07:00

Whilst at youtube, I was routed, by means of "related videos," from the most recent offering of the guitarist, troubleclef, to an interview with another six-string slinger whose work I greatly admire, Barney Kessel. Impressed by what I heard, I then found myself clicking on one link after another presenting music performed by the Oklahoma-born musician. Come to think of it, the word musician, though less specific than guitarist, is probably the one Kessel would have chosen first to describe himself in his artistic aspect: In a brief clip in which he spoke about the features of his customized instrument, Barney Kessel revealed a self-portrait that, it seems to me, would be quite at odds with that of the "guitar hero" of today:

[...] I'm really more interested in music than the guitar. See, the guitar is a tool to play music, and I think about being a musician rather than being a guitar player – therefore if I can play this and feel about it as though I'm wearing a pair of old, comfortable house slippers, I don't have to think about the guitar at all; I can get on to thinking about the music.

Ah, a viewpoint, a self-perception, that I greatly admire – and (she admits, immodestly) share. Creating music – not playing or mechanically operating the guitar – is my focus. The guitar is the means rather than the end. Though I concede that it is possible for anyone whose ostensible objective is to produce music on an instrument to become absorbed in the instrument itself to a point at which music becomes submerged, I believe that greater numbers of aspiring musicians have been seduced and consequently obsessed by the guitar than by any other device for making music. I'm not trying to get Freudian here – I merely believe this to be so. It seems to me that, back in the 1950's, a few factors coalesced and resultantly provided a breeding ground for the typical guitar-crazed ... musician: The world's largest demographic segment, the baby boomers, were entering their teens – in relatively affluent times. Their ears were yet unsophisticated but they had money to spend and power in numbers. Rock & roll, an outgrowth of rhythm and blues with elements of country music mixed in, became the music of, by and for the younger set. Guitars, portable, comparatively inexpensive and easy, if not to master, to get someplace with quickly, were the dominant instrument in this musical form. With the advent of first the solid body and then the semi-hollow body guitar, enormous variety in sound and, of course, appearance were placed before the teenaged public. Kids became guitar conscious ... and things were forever changed.

I love the guitar – it was my first instrument; much as I love the trombone, my favorite instrument, I must admit that I appreciate the fact that the guitar is a chord as well as a melody instrument, one upon which you can produce both, simultaneously. Still, I have heard no instrument endure more abuse, in the name of creating music, than the guitar. Unfortunately, tactile abuse – of the guitar, by the guitar player – translates to ear abuse of the hearer (I didn't say, "listener"). Many of today's guitar players, weaned on rock & roll, with their fleets of "axes," have great dexterity. But it strikes me as the kind of digital skill that could be applied just as successfully to shooting marbles or working in an assembly line. They operate guitars. They move their fingers rapidly along the instrument's fretboard, they scrape the strings for some sonic effect that I can't fathom, they manipulate the instrument – but they don't make music. They recreate versions of songs but they don't play songs. You need a wah-wah pedal to play "White Room." Yeah?

I find myself thinking of something I read about the great Charlie Christian, one of the first authentic so-called guitar heroes but, in truth and essence, a musician. This from James Lincoln Collier's superb Benny Goodman and the Swing Era:

[Lester] Young's influence [on Charlie Christian] was lasting; Jimmy Maxwell [Goodman Orchestra trumpeter] said that Christian always wanted to play tenor saxophone like Young, sang Young's solos on the band bus and learned to play them all on his guitar.

Charlie Christian was a marvelous, ground-breaking, highly influential guitarist. First, though, he was a musician. He was moved by Lester Young's revolutionary approach to a melodic line and rhythm and wanted to speak in a similar musical voice, wanted to communicate musically in Young's language. He already was a guitar player and he could not afford a tenor saxophone – so he made music with the instrument that he had.

The guitar is the vessel through which music travels to the listener, the instrument with which music is made. It is, as Barney Kessel said, a "tool"; the means, not the end.

Don't Let's Get Spliced

2008-08-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

I wish someone could convince me that there's nothing deceptive or misleading in employing the device of splicing multiple takes of a musical piece or song to produce something to be represented as a single performance. For some months, I've been thinking about and feeling bothered by the fact that this practice of combining best portions of various attempts to create the illusion of a spontaneous rendering now has long been a convention in recording production. I only just learned (with amazement) that as far back as the 1930's the splicing technique was employed to obtain the accuracy or "perfection" that was believed to be expected of the presentation of classical music. Now I don't want to be arbitrary or dogmatic in my views concerning the utilization of this studio expedient. ... Neither do I want to be contradictory: I am at least tolerant – in many instances, extremely appreciative – of the results of overdubbing, a tool that necessarily removes the possibility of an overall spontaneity from a finished recording. And I realize that if you goof up on an over-dub, you redo it. So how is layered "flawlessness," if that's what it should be labeled, different from the flawlessness that is achieved through splicing together the strong segments of two performances? Why do I see creativity and versatility behind overdubbing and, if not artistic ineptness, artistic unreliability behind splicing? I don't know. I can't defend my inconsistency in attitude. Maybe my objection to splicing is based on its spuriousness of presentation; again, these pasted recordings are offered as a performance – the key word being a, signifying "singular." One continuous performance; not the stuck-together good parts of otherwise uneven takes. There's no misrepresentation in overdubbing: You know these multi-instrumentalists had to assemble the finished recording track by track.

I don't know which is the most common effect of a musician's or singer's exposure to audio cosmetology – to become lazy or to become intent on a perfection like the false, sterile perfection conjured by a sound man/woman. Neither scenario seems beneficial. I'm not hung up on flawlessness. Perfection, in regard to artistic endeavors, is, for me, largely a subjective perception of an emotional perfection – the ability to powerfully portray emotions and, consequently, to elicit strong emotions. And you can do that in one take, with as well as without a cracked note. Think I'll go listen to Lee Wiley's woozy rendition of "Let's Fall in Love," complete with Lou McGarity's muffed note in bar two of his eight bar spot.

The Known and Unknown; The Solved and Mysterious

2008-08-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

I'm watching Day-Time Wife, a silly little movie from the newly released Tyrone Power (ah ... Ty ...) DVD set, Tyrone Power Matinee Idol Collection, and Warren William, one of the screen's great cads, says to Linda Darnell, his secretary, whom he is trying to lure into a little dalliance, "After a while, a wife gets to be a sort of a solved crossword puzzle." That's an interesting way of putting it, I muse.

"A solved crossword puzzle." I think first of Brief Encounter (discussed, in Relative Esoterica, here and here): In the scenes that play in the present, Laura's husband, Fred, is working on a crossword puzzle; he occasionally seeks his wife's assistance. I perceive a bit of symbolism, relating (unintentionally, on the part of Brief author, Noël Coward, it is certain) to Day-Time Wife: Though, to Laura, Fred has lost his new romance, to Fred, Laura remains an unsolved puzzle.

Still puzzling over Solved Puzzle Syndrome and still on a Cowardian groove, I think of Elyot's lines, speaking of yet alluring ex-wife Amanda, in Private Lives:

You're looking very lovely you know, in this damned moonlight. Your skin is clear and cool, and your eyes are shining, and you're growing lovelier and lovelier every second as I look at you. You don't hold any mystery for me, darling, do you mind? There isn't a particle of you that I don't know, remember and want.

The other side of the coin. ... Well, that you can know every particle of a person is, of course, an illusion. The important thing, though, is that some people, it appears, crave a state of complete familiarity with a love, a spouse, and are happy when they believe that they have attained it. The preservation of mystery is not important, not an object.

People – husbands and wives, lovers – do come to be perceived as "solved crossword puzzles," it must be conceded. Once objects of scrutiny, in the exploration of whose charms and aspects great time and effort were invested, and now, too well known, with no unprobed facets yet apparent. Every square filled with a letter, everything fitting neatly and logically.

So how do you keep from becoming a solved crossword puzzle? Well, you continue to grow, to learn, to seek new experiences and contacts. You present something to talk about that is different from that which has been discussed. And yet ... suppose my growth takes me in a direction toward which you feel no inclination. Should I care? Or suppose your development makes of you something I can't stand – different, but not intriguingly so. Should you care? So difficult it all seems to me. No wonder Rachel Crothers referred to it as "the ghastly job of living together."

The Ripple Effect

2008-08-04T23:33:00.000-07:00

Today, only just returning, somewhat sadly in light of the persistent pull of a recent deviation from course, to regular programming, or my chronologically guided tour through my CD collection, I encountered, with joy, a very dear, old friend, Fats Waller's "African Ripples," recorded 11/16/34. The pianist's original composition and recording thereof are known not to those casually acquainted but, rather, those intimately familiar with the Harlem-born stride specialist's work. That Fats Waller was more than an author of jazz standards and an irresistibly impish performer is, I fear, not nearly so widely recognized as it should be. Perhaps I'm attempting to align myself, somewhat pompously, with those in the know. Or maybe I'm merely trying to convert every last mother's son and daughter. ... Yeah! that's it. Fats – Thomas Wright – Waller was a serious composer, well-versed in the musical traditions preceding the syncopated, sin-encouraging (ah, 1920's morality) jazz that brought him fame. Everyone should know this.

"African Ripples" comprises two themes – one, in opening and closing the piece, framing the other. The first of these themes is, in subtlely altered form, borrowed from a earlier Waller solo piano composition, recorded 8/2/29, entitled "Gladyse." The second, which dominates the performance, is first played out-of-tempo and then, in somewhat modified substance, in a slow, bluesy stride. Modulatory passages join the two strains. In the first delivery of the "Gladyse"-derived theme is the sound, the representation, of childlike exultation in discovery ... or so it seems to me. Left hand, eager steps and right hand, eager glances of the young or young in heart, the not yet or no longer cynical. I can't identify that which the second, dominant theme symbolizes for me. I find this section excruciatingly beautiful, though. What was Fats thinking of? What inspired him here? In the rubato passage, he makes exquisite use of dynamics. The shift to slow 4/4 places me in a gin joint, a dive, like those depicted in 1930's Warner Brothers films. My present becomes 1934. The first theme returns with a manic vigor, with Fats striding and rapidly tinkling like a man possessed. A brief coda device provides release.

From Loren Schoenberg's liner notes for "Fats Waller and His Rhythm: The Middle Years, Part 1 (1936-1938)":

"I don't think people realize what great depth there was in Fats. He knew Brahms, Liszt, and Beethoven as well as he knew jazz, and often discussed and analyzed their work. He was well-read, too; he read and talked about Shakespeare and Plato and could have been a great actor." These were the comments of his frequent lyricist, Andy Razaf.

[...] Occasionally, a stock arrangement would be used as the basis for an opening instrumental chorus [...] Not content to use pedestrian harmonies found therein, Fats would call upon his compositional skills to enrich the chords. As Herman Autrey [Waller trumpet stalwart] has recalled, Fats, faced with a stock "would hit the ceiling. 'No! Why did they do that? Bring me that bass part.' He would take it and change it. 'That's lousy—who's doing this? Oh my, they'll never learn.' And we'd make the record, and it would be beautiful, because they had the right notes and the right chords. He knew—believe me when I say he knew, he wasn't guessing."

I reject any positing of Waller as "Tragic Clown" – mugging and jiving before swing and jazz-crazed and, worse yet, entertainment-mad audiences but inwardly crying for lack of proper appreciation. And yet, I can't help but believe that he sometimes yearned for wider recognition for all of his artistic facets. Everyone – those uninitiated in the phenomenon known as Fats Waller and those who enjoy his classic rendering of "You're Feet's Too Big" or his many takes on his own "Ain't Misbehavin'" – should hear "African Ripples."

Jo Songs - Part 7

2008-07-31T23:10:00.000-07:00

Today, I conclude, for the time being, my tribute to the eternally great Jo Stafford with this thought: If anyone, uninitiated in her music and sound, were to ask me, "What does Jo Stafford sing about" ... or, for that matter, "In her performances, what quality does Jo Stafford project," I would have to reply, simply, "Steadfastness." Jo sang of love, as all others among her contemporaries did but, more specifically, she sang of loyalty, devotion ... steadfastness; she, meeting the criterion of the day for pop singers, sounded romantic but, more meaningfully, she communicated staunchness and dependability. Jo was someone in whom you could believe. And remains so.

This Is Always
Music by Harry Warren, Words by Mack Gordon
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 3/29/46

This isn't sometimes –
This is always;
This isn't maybe –
This is always.
Yes, it's love –
The real beginning of forever.

This isn't just
Midsummer madness –
A passing glow,
A moment's gladness.
This is love –
I knew it on the night we met.
You tied a string around my heart.
So how could I forget you?
With ev'ry kiss
I know that this is always.

(Possibly my favorite Warren and Gordon. Stunning Weston arrangement. In Jo's tone is all the joy of the discovery of love: "The real beginning of forever." "This," she sings, "is always" – not "a passing glow" or "a moment's gladness"; this is a Jo Stafford type of love song.)

Through The Years
Music by Vincent Youmans, Music by Edward Heyman
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 11/27/47

Through the years, I'll take my place beside you;
Smiling through the years.
Through your tears, I'll keep my place beside you;
Smiling through your tears.

I'll be near, no matter when or where;
Remember, what is mine I'll always share.

Through the night, I'll be a star to guide you;
Shining bright, the clouds may come and hide you.
Through the years, 'til love is gone
And time first disappears,
I'll come to you, smiling through the years.

(This record sounds like something that should be placed in a time capsule. Nowhere is that stalwart quality that Jo possessed more apparent than in this performance.)

Here'll I'll Stay

Music by Kurt Weill, Words by Alan Jay Lerner
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 11/10/48

There's a far land, I'm told,
Where I'll find a field of gold.
But here I'll stay with you.

And they say there's an isle deep with clover,
Where your heart wears a smile all day through.

But I know well they're wrong,
And I know where I belong –
And here I'll stay with you.

For that land is a sandy illusion;
It's the theme of a dream gone astray.

And the world others woo
I can find loving you,
And so here I'll stay.

(Others might sell out, or be lured or beguiled ... but not our Jo. Beautiful song, beautifully interpreted; all those here's have so much meaning and weight.)

A Thought In My Heart

Music and Words by Robert F. Calder
Recorded by Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 6/3/49

For ev'ry beautiful rose that ever grew –

I'll keep a thought in my heart for you.
For ev'ry bird in the sky that ever flew –
There'll be a thought in my heart for you.

For each star that twinkles far away
And ev'ry clock that ticks away the time of day –
I'll think of you.

For ev'ry ripple upon the ocean blue –
I'll have a thought in my heart for you.

(One of my favorite Jo and Gordons. I love their humming – what a blend; nobody could touch them, for my dough. Love, too, that urgency in their reprised "I'll think of you.")

Mountain High, Valley Low
Music by Raymond Scott, Words by Bernie Hanighen
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 6/3/55

If you need me, I will be near by –
Mountain high, valley low.
My love follows you until the last
Lightning fast, turtle slow.

Journey to the North Star,
South winds blow my thoughts to you.
If you need me, I will be near by –
Mountain high, valley low.

When your hair turns snow white,
You will find me by your side.
I'll be with you though our fortunes sway –
Lantern gay, willow sad.

Go in search of new moon;
Dreams will bridge the skies to you.
If you need me, I will be near by –
Lantern gay, willow sad,
Valley low, mountain high.

(I just about flipped when I learned that Raymond Scott wrote this music; here's one you never heard in a Warner Brothers cartoon. ... Jo is so grave in this performance; her final stanza, in particular, is devastating.)

... To quote Johnny Mercer, "So long, friend" – but not goodbye.

Jo Songs - Part 6

2008-07-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

One of the finest among those composers whose songs Jo Stafford recorded was Paul Weston, the singer's arranger and husband of forty-four years. Today, I salute Paul's beautiful music, paired with Jo's lovely voice.

Congratulations

Music by Paul Weston, Words by Sid Robin
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 12/10/47

Congratulations – my very best to you.
Congratulations – may all your dreams come true.
May life's sweet refrain
Leave you never;
May this love remain
With you forever.

Congratulations – may lovers never part.
Congratulations – from deep down in my heart.
Anyone that's loved by you is lucky –
That's very plain to see.
Congratulations – how I wish the lucky one
Were me.

(The first Weston songs that I encountered – in Jo's renditions thereof, of course – were "Shrimp Boats" and "Congratulations." They hooked me, to put it simply. Like all great composers – indeed, like all great anythings – Paul Weston had a unique "voice." A Weston song proclaims itself to be such. The gentle swelling that you find in the music itself and the arrangement is complemented by Jo's thoughtful, restrained delivery.)

When April Comes Again

Music by Paul Weston, Words by Doris Schaefer
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 2/7/50

If you can't remember now,
If love has lost its way,
If romance grows dim,
With each passing day,
If you've forgotten how
We met in April rain,
Wait 'til April comes again.

When robins return and spring
Has softened winter's chill,
Will you then recall?
Will your heart stand still?
Will you remember when you
Walk in April rain,
And love me
When April comes again?

(One of my favorite Westons. The chord juxtapositions here provide a good representation of the composer's style, his sound. Sensitive, as always, to lyrical and musical mood, Jo delivers a reading of quiet intensity. The climactic passage, starting on "Will you remember when ..." is a heartbreaking final plea. The reprised "When April comes again" just soars.)

Once To Every Heart
Music by Paul Weston, Words by Mickey Stoner
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 10/10/52

Once to ev'ry heart,
There comes a love divine.
Once for ev'ry heart,
And now, it's come to mine.
You are the angel, dear
Bringing this gift so rare.
Heaven let you appear,
After it heard my prayer.

Once for ev'ry heart,
All wishes and dreams come true.
Once to ev'ry heart,
The wonder of "I love you."
One look at you discloses
A lifetime of moonlight and roses.
It happens once to ev'ry heart.

(A beautiful chord structure and melody. I love the line, "One look at you discloses/A lifetime of moonlight and roses." You don't hear this sort of tribute anymore in song, it seems. And Jo gives it her all.)

If It Takes Me All My Life
Music by Paul Weston, Words by Sammy Cahn
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 11/10/52

If it takes me all my life,
I'll make you know how much I care.
The sun may shine; the win'try winds may blow,
But, sun or snow, you'll know
My love for you is always there.

If it takes me all my days,
I still won't have a day to spare.
And when we are old and gray,
You'll hear me say,
"A lifetime seems so small,"
If it takes me all my life.

(This one strikes me as, harmonically, uncharacteristically dark for Weston. A very somber piece. And, of course, I always like Jo on somber material; she's very good on it. I like to hear the hint of melancholy.)

The King Of Paris

Music by Paul Weston, Words by Marilyn Bergman
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra
and The Norman Luboff Choir 11/23/56

The King of Paris
Walks through the city for ev'ryone to meet;
He's in ev'ry street and sidewalk café.

The King of Paris
Speaks and his voice is like music from above –
Music you can't forget;
We heard it the night we met.
The King of Paris,
The King of Paris is love.

The cathedral smiles down on the city;
A choir of bells starts to sing;
Ev'ryone joins in a song of love,
For in Paris love is king.

(This record sounds as if it should be in a movie soundtrack; something to accompany a couple's enchanted stroll through ... Paris. Jo's diction is, as usual, a thing of beauty. She says words so prettily – and never in a put-on way. I'm talking about when she's being Jo; when she's being Darlene, she really bites into those "sophisticated" words that the lady from Trenton so adores. Both Weston's music and the arrangement capture the atmosphere of the City of Love.)

How Can We Say Goodbye
Music by Paul Weston, Words by Sammy Cahn
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 7/11/58

A goodnight kiss before parting;
This was to be the final break.
But, all at once, it seems to be starting.
I guess that little kiss was a mistake.

How can we say goodbye,
When we can't even say goodnight?
How can I let you go,
When you're holding me, oh, so tight?
How can a love grow cold,
When the glow of it warms the night?
No, we can't say goodbye;
We'd only be fools to try.
For how can we say goodbye,
When we can't even say goodnight?

(What a profoundly touching – not to mention romantic – song. It's nice to hear Jo's pristine voice backed by just piano and bass; the instrumentation enhances the intimate mood established by the lyrics and melody. She, clearly, is really feeling this song.)

I Should Care
Music by Axel Stordahl and Paul Weston,
Words by Sammy Cahn
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 8/1/58

I should care;
I should go around weeping.
I should care;
I should go without sleeping.

Strangely enough, I sleep well –
'Cept for a dream or two.
But, then, I count my sheep well;
Funny how sheep can lull you to sleep.

So I should care;
I should let it upset me.
I should care,
But it just doesn't get me.
Maybe I won't find someone
As lovely as you.
But I should care,
And I do.

(Paul Weston and Axel Stordahl spent five years together in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra organization, each writing arrangements. Axel contributed many of the band's ballad charts, while Paul handled most of the jazz. The two were good friends and became fine collaborators. It was on their joint recommendation that the original eight Pied Pipers were invited to join the Dorsey crew for radio appearances. Paul married Jo Stafford; Ax married Jo's successor as lead singer in the Pipers, June Hutton. In the '40's, Paul was at Capitol, in the capacity of musical director and also, along with label founder Mercer, A & R man. Capitol's workhorse, Weston was kept busy writing arrangements for Jo Stafford, Johnny Mercer, The Pied Pipers and others as well as creating and recording "Mood Music," a genre characterized by distinctive yet unobtrusive arrangements of standards. At this same time, Axel Stordahl was at Columbia, sculpting a sound for Frank Sinatra, with whom he had left the Dorsey band. While the Stordahl-Weston classic, "I Should Care," was recorded by Sinatra in '45, when it was brand new, it was not given the Stafford treatment until '58, for inclusion in Jo's "I'll Be Seeing You" album. I must mention here that it was Sammy Cahn who provided the wonderful lyric for this haunting song. With an elastic phrasing that draws attention to her phenomenal breath control, Jo gives weight to every perfect, straightforward word. In his Singers & The Song, Gene Lees said, "She almost sings 'ah' for the personal pronoun I [...]." You can hear that here. ... When she croons, "I should care and I do," you believe her.

Day By Day
Music by Axel Stordahl and Paul Weston,
Words by Sammy Cahn
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 10/31/45; 1/3/63

Day by day,
I'm falling more in love with you.
And day by day, my love seems to grow.
There isn't any end to my devotion;
It's deeper, dear, by far, than any ocean.
I find that –

Day by day,
You're making all my dreams come true.
So, come what may,
I want you to know –
I'm yours alone,
And I'm in love to stay,
As we go through the years
Day by day.

(My favorite Weston song and one of my favorite songs, irrespective of composer. A beautiful melody that always brings tears to my eyes. In both the '45 and '63 renditions, you find a vocal reading of exquisite tenderness and warmth. And, on the technical side, more of Jo's amazing breath control. I can remember playing the '63 version back in September of '96, upon learning of Paul Weston's passing.)

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Jo Songs - Part 5

2008-07-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

I move along in my inspection of the many wonderful songs recorded by the great Jo Stafford with a look at two songwriting teams with the same composer: Rodgers & Hart and Rodgers & Hammerstein. Now, a while back, in a piece in which I enthused about Jo and her various performances of Rodgers & Hammerstein's "The Gentleman is a Dope," I admitted that I'm not nuts about the duo. That still goes. Quite frankly, I'm not nearly so fond of Rodgers and Hammerstein together as I am of either with other partners. I am a tremendous admirer of Hammerstein's work with Jerome Kern as well as a Rodgers & Hart fanatic. Rodgers & Hammerstein, though, rarely seemed to equal what either of its components did elsewhere. Still, to return to my focus, Jo recorded most of what I regard as Rodgers & Hammerstein's finest and these superb interpretations are well worthy of discussion. Her recordings of Rodgers & Hart tunes rank, I believe, with her best work.

There's A Small Hotel
Music by Richard Rodgers, Words by Lorenz Hart
Recorded by Jo Stafford and Teddy Johnson
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 10/4/51

There's a small hotel, with a wishing well;
I wish that we were there together.
There's a bridal suite – one room bright and neat,
Complete for us to share together.

Looking through the window,
You can see a distant steeple;
Not a sign of people.
Who wants people?

When the steeple bell says, "Goodnight; sleep well,"
We'll thank the small hotel together.

Looking through the window,
You can see a distant steeple;
Not a sign of people.
Who wants people?

When the steeple bell says, "Goodnight; sleep well,"
We'll thank the small hotel;
we'll creep inside our little shell
And we will thank the small hotel together.

(Well, we first have to look at the story behind this record. Jo Stafford and British vocalist Teddy Johnson anticipated Frank Sinatra's mature duet albums in making this side. In California, Jo, backed by Paul Weston and His Orchestra, recorded Rodgers & Hart's timeless "There's a Small Hotel." The tape was sent to England and, in Abbey Road studios, Teddy Johnson added his vocal, creating a "duet." (The process was reversed with the Johnson-Stafford "The Moment I Saw You, with orchestral accompaniment by Norrie Paramor.) ... Now – "Small Hotel" is one of the top entries in the Great American Songbook; melodically, harmonically and lyrically, a beautifully constructed song and it's a delight to hear it given the Jo Stafford treatment. I find Teddy Johnson a bit blandly smooth, but no matter – I listen to this track, on Disc 3 of the fairly recently released 4-disc "Jo Stafford: Her Greatest Hits, Expertly Remastered," for Jo and the incredibly romantic song." I dig her chimelike "the steeple bell" behind Johnson's "When the steeple bell ...")

Spring Is Here
Music by Richard Rodgers, Words by Lorenz Hart
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 2/19/52

Spring is here –
Why doesn't my heart go dancing?
Spring is here –
Why isn't the waltz entrancing?

No desire,
No ambition leads me.
Maybe it's because
Nobody needs me.

Spring is here –
Why doesn't the breeze delight me?
Stars appear –
Why doesn't the night invite me?

Maybe it's because
Nobody loves me.
Spring is here, I hear.

(Well, I included these lyrics in an earlier post, but, hey, it's my journal – I can repeat whenever I jolly well please. And it's important to me that I discuss Jo's reading of this gem. ... Some people get drunk – I listen to Jo. She is THE voice for "melancholy" ... and "longing" ... and "wistfulness." All of these emotional states are present in poor Larry Hart's devastating and, one suspects, autobiographical lyric, and Jo sings them with authenticity. Her reprised "Maybe it's because nobody loves me" is heartrending.)

My Romance
Music by Richard Rodgers, Words by Lorenz Hart
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 9/5/52

My romance doesn't have to have a moon in the sky;
My romance doesn't need a blue lagoon standing by.
No month of May; no twink'ling stars;
No hideaway; no soft guitars.

My romance doesn't need a castle rising in Spain,
Nor a dance to a constantly surprising refrain.
Wide awake,
I can make my most fantastic dreams come true.
My romance doesn't need a thing but you.

(Such words! Larry Hart, my favorite lyricist, gleefully drags out all the familiar props for and settings of a romantic encounter and says "Phooey – I don't need any of this hackneyed stuff. To fall in love, to be in love, to stay in love, I need nothing but you." All those "doesn't," no," "nor" negatives lead to a positive – "you." And Jo's delivery – earnest, straightforward and warm – of this lovely lyric is perfect.)

Dancing On The Ceiling
Music by Richard Rodgers, Words by Lorenz Hart
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 6/3/55

He dances overhead,
On the ceiling, near my bed;
In my sight,
Through the night.

I try to hide, in vain,
Underneath my counterpane.
There's my love,
Up above.

I whisper, "Go away, my lover –
it's not fair!"
But I'm so grateful to discover
He's still there.

I love my ceiling more,
Since it is a dancing floor,
Just for
My love.

(Definitely in my Rodgers & Hart Top Five. Composer and lyricist, each, through his respective medium, captures "elusiveness." A love song in a class by itself. And Jo, in this performance, is a music singer – no, a lyric singer. Whatever, she's intoxicating. Magnificent Weston support.)

It Never Entered My Mind
Music by Richard Rodgers, Words by Lorenz Hart
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 1/17/58

Once I laughed when I heard you saying
That I'd be playing solitaire;
Uneasy in my easy chair –
It never entered my mind.

Once you told me I was mistaken,
That I'd awaken with the sun,
And order orange juice for one –
It never entered my mind.

You have what I lack myself;
And now I even have to scratch my back myself.

Once you warned me that if you scorned me,
I'd sing the maiden's prayer again;
And wish that you were there again,
To get into my hair again.
It never entered my mind.

(This has got to be in my Jo Top Ten. Marvelous Weston arrangement, with great trombones. Jo, in a beautifully phrased performance, is interpretively rueful and aurally romantic – there's that incomparable tone. Hart, I'm telling you, was The Man, and nobody read him like Jo did. A very adult treatment of a very adult song.)

Blue Moon
Music by Richard Rodgers, Words by Lorenz Hart
Recorded by Jo Stafford
and Her V-Disc Boys 4/19/45;
Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 2/19/52;
Jo Stafford
with The Pied Pipers and orchestra 12/8/70

Blue moon,
You saw me standing alone,
Without a dream in my heart,
Without a love of my own.

Blue moon,
You knew just what I was there for;
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for.

And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will ever hold.
I heard somebody whisper, "Please adore me."
And when I looked the moon had turned to gold.

Blue moon,
Now I'm no longer alone,
Without a dream in my heart,
Without a love of my own.

(Well, I've got to pick the first version, the V-Disc, as my favorite: "Hiya, fellas; this is Jo Stafford. We've been makin' a V-Disc today. This tune is 'Blue Moon' – and I'd like you to listen to Lou McGarity's trombone." So cool of Jo to put in a plug for Mac. It's just great to hear her in the company of all these heavy jazz cats – Billy Butterfield, Hank D'Amico, George Wettling, Boomie Richmond ... and, of course, my man, McGarity. Late night, after hours, dimly-lit jazz club kind of jazz. Love those pear-shaped appeared's. ... Time magazine's 7/21/52 "New Pop Records" found the '52 "Blue Moon" one of two on Jo's 10-inch LP "As You Desire Me" with "more bounce"; the review thought the other six tracks "lugubriously slow." (Read it!) Jo is an instrument here, breezing through a romantic song that she obviously likes. ... '70 sounds like ... well, '70, arrangement-wise. Jo leading the then current Pipers is a beacon; in her solo spots, she turns back the clock twenty-five years.)

That's For Me

Music by Richard Rodgers,
Words by Oscar Hammerstein II
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 7/2/45

I saw you standing in the sun
And you were something to see.
I know what I like,
And I liked what I saw,
And I said to myself,
"That's for me."

"A lovely morning," I remarked,
And you were quick to agree.
You wanted to walk,
And I nodded my head
As I breathlessly said,
"That's for me."

I left you standing under stars;
The day's adventures are through.
There's nothing for me
But the dream in my heart,
And the dream in my heart –
That's for you.
Oh, my darling,
That's for you.

(Lots of pictures in this lyric and a pretty melody. All those tumbling words to represent the fast action – no wonder you say "That's for me" "breathlessly." Jo rarely seems girlish – the voice is just too womanly – but in this and another one, "Promise" (from '46), for example, she does. Here, she projects something like the Jeanne Crain character in State Fair, the film from which "That's for Me" comes. It was Vivian Blaine who introduced the song in the picture; Jeanne Crain pretended to sing "It Might As Well Be Spring." Another fine example here of that technique of building interpretively to the climax: "That's for you/Oh, my darling/That's for you.")

If I Loved You
Music by Richard Rodgers,
Words by Oscar Hammerstein II
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 12/10/47

If I loved you,
Time and again, I would try to say
All I'd want you to know.

If I loved you,
Words wouldn't come in an easy way;
Round in circles I'd go.

Longing to tell you, but afraid and shy.
I'd let my golden chances pass me by.

Soon you'd leave me;
Off you would walk in the mist of day,
Never, never to know
How I loved you –
If I loved you.

(Wonderfully oblique musically as well as lyrically; the "Round in circles" is in the melody and harmonic structure as well as, literally, in the lyrics. Maybe I like Rodgers & Hammerstein better than I thought I did. ... And the voice is so pure and the diction so beautiful. I especially like the final "how I loved you, if I loved you.")

Some Enchanted Evening
Music by Richard Rodgers,
Words by Oscar Hammerstein II
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 3/9/49

Some enchanted evening,
You may see a stranger;
You may see a stranger
Across a crowded room.
And somehow you know,
You know even then
That somewhere you'll see him
Again and again.

Some enchanted evening,
Someone may be laughing;
You may hear him laughing
Across a crowded room.
And, night after night,
As strange as it seems,
The sound of his laughter
Will sing in your dreams.

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons;
Wise men never try.

Some enchanted evening,
When you find your true love;
When you feel him call you
Across a crowded room,
Then fly to his side
And make him your own.
Or all through your life
You may dream all alone.

Once you have found him,
Never let him go.
Once you have found him,
Never let him go.

(Here's a Rodgers and Hammerstein that I've always loved. This rendition was an early Jo favorite of mine. Maybe this is where I discovered her quiet power. I like how she doesn't breath, as one would expect her – or anybody – to, after the "try" in "Wise men never try." She goes right into the next stanza with "Some enchanted evening." It's seamless. You hear a lot on the similarity between Sinatra's breathing and Dorsey's. ... Well, Jo was doing the same thing, from the beginning, that they were doing. It takes a big rib cage, which each of them had, enabling you to take in more air than the average person can; it also takes, I think, a certain amount of thinking and planning: You sneak breaths in unexpected places and then don't breath between the conclusion of one line and the beginning of another. It creates the illusion of never breathing. ... We all dream of that "across a crowded room" moment, don't we? When you "feel" him/her call you. Jo tells you, here, that it can happen. I love the final, soaring "Never let him go" ... And Weston's "fly to his side" orchestration.)

I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair
Music by Richard Rodgers,
Words by Oscar Hammerstein II
Recorded by Jo Stafford with The Starlighters
and Paul Weston and His Orchestra 3/9/49

I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
And send him on his way.

I'm gonna wave that man right outta my arms,
I'm gonna wave that man right outta my arms,
I'm gonna wave that man right outta my arms,
And send him on his way.

Don't try to patch it up –
Tear it up, tear it up!
Wash him out, dry him out,
Push him out, fly him out.
Cancel him and let him go!
Yea, sister!

I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
And send him on his way.

If a man don't understand you,
If you fly on separate beams,
Waste no time, make a change;
Ride that man right off your range.
Rub him out of the roll call
And drum him out of your dreams.

O ho! If you laugh at different comics,
If you root for different teams,
Waste no time, weep no more,
Show him what the door is for.
Rub him out of the roll call
And drum him out of your dreams.

You can't light a fire when the wood's all wet,
You can't make a butterfly strong,
You can't fix an egg when it ain't quite good,
And you can't fix a man when he's wrong!

You can't put back a petal when it falls from a flower,
Or sweeten up a fellow when he starts turnin' sour –
Oh no! Oh no!

I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
And send him on his way.

I'm gonna wave that man right outta my arms,
I'm gonna wave that man right outta my arms,
I'm gonna wave that man right outta my arms,
And send him on his way.

Don't try to patch it up –
Tear it up, tear it up!
Wash him out, dry him out,
Push him out, fly him out,
Cancel him and let him go!
Yea, sister!

I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair,
And send him on his way.

(I have to admit this is one ambitious little number. Very clever. And Jo is always good on the slangy and also slyly humorous things. I'm kind of surprised that Capitol gave this to both her and Peggy Lee. ... Rub him out of the roll call!)

I'm Your Girl
Music by Richard Rodgers,
Words by Oscar Hammerstein II
Recorded by Jo Stafford
with Paul Weston and His Orchestra 5/25/53

I'm your girl – it's time you knew;
All I am belongs to you.
Any time you're out of luck,
I'm unlucky, too.

I'm your partner, your lover, your wife, your friend;
I'll be walking beside you 'til journey's end.
With your arm around me, I'll be yours alone.
I'm the girl you own.

(I can think of no one besides Jo Stafford who could sing the line, "I'm the girl you own," and sound like a pillar rather than a satellite. Though she's, as Will Friedwald said, "always feminine," she, significantly in a '40's and '50's context, never projects a "weaker sex" subservience. She's matter-of-fact here and at the same time intensely romantic. Her "With your arm around me," both the first and the reprised, is breathtaking.)

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