Good Old Desk

And now for something completely different. Harry Nilsson serenading Hugh Hefner with a children’s song. Everything about this is so 60’s. It was, after all, the moment when Hugh Hefner and his stable of floozies were right with the times, not an anachronistic and increasingly creepy throwback to old-school chauvinism. Harry Nilsson, for his part, was always viewed as a bit of a novelty. Though he was a master of the pop melody and had a voice that could flit easily between many musical styles, he was always unabashedly and unhiply in love with the romantic, occasionally schmaltzy magic of movie music and the standards. He was making a living selling tunes to popular acts like The Monkees and Three Dog Night, but his heart lay not in the pop charts. He was influenced by the tunes crooned by singing lovers in Hollywood musicals from decades before his time. A thoroughly uncool field of interest in the 60’s. Doing covers at the time was considered a sign of failure – you weren’t on a very high level artistically if you couldn’t come up with your own material. It wasn’t until the early seventies that high level artists like David Bowie and Bryan Ferry cautiously introduced the idea of interpretive covers as their own artistic achievement. But those two were working firmly in the pop canon, mining hits from only a few years before. Nilsson went straight for the real deal in 1973, recording an album of Irving Berlin and Kalmar/Ruby covers. There wasn’t much of an audience for  those songs then, and Harry’s efforts went unsung by critics and buyers. It’s only recently that everyone and their cousin’s dog has decided they need to try Sinatra’s shoes on for size. Harry Nilsson was always not quite with his times, and he always just missed the acclaim and success he richly deserved.