Don’t make the assumption that all jazz is sad. Just because I’ve been inundating you with depressing Billie Holiday weepers doesn’t mean that’s all jazz is, or that’s all the jazz I like or know about. Not every jazz singer is as much of a downer as Billie was. Not all of them had as shitty a life as she, or did as much heroin. Ella Fitzgerald was a cheerier sort, for one. She sang plenty of torch songs, for sure, and of courses had her own troubles in life. But she projected an upbeat image throughout her career. She wasn’t exactly a glamorous figure; all of her glamour was in her music. I see her as a great example of a strong, dignified woman who lived by her talent. Her work isn’t haunted by personal drama or overshadowed by glitzy image. I don’t know enough about her life to judge her personality or who she was, but I do get the impression that she was a positive person. This is certainly a positive song.
Let’s have a moment of beautiful sad music. Billie Holiday is the mother of all deliciously depressing singers. She makes sadness glorious. It’s the job on the artist to elevate the human. Holiday was a master of channeling something from her own life, which was hardly a happy one, into music in which anyone could see their own reflection. I think this power that music has cannot be underestimated in importance. Because sometimes we feel trapped and alone with our inner struggles, and too ashamed or too shy to reveal them. It soothes the soul, truly, to hear a voice that reminds us we’re not the only ones.
A piece of the great American songbook, done many times, but never better than by Billie Holiday. The second most famous version of Good Morning Heartache is by Diana Ross, who played Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. Ross’s voice is, if anything, too beautiful and her delivery to perfect to do the song justice. Her performance is impeccable but short on soul. Ross doesn’t allow her voice to crack with sorrow the way Holiday does. Billie Holiday truly sounds like she’s been drinking coffee and crying all night. She’s in control now, but in a moment she may break down in tears again. Diana Ross is simply the wrong artist to tackle such emotional material; she’s too much of a glitzy star, one who seems to have forgotten her rough beginnings and got used to being Berry Gordy’s overgroomed poodle. This song is for artists like Holiday and Etta James, who never stopped being haunted by their own heartaches and mistakes.
I love to hear old songs that are about something besides love. The love songs are great, and timeless, of course. But it’s more thrilling to hear about real, dark sides of life. We know that the 30′s and 40′s were just as awash in sex, drugs and alcohol as any other time, but we don’t expect the entertainment of the time to be honest about those things. What today would be a hookup song, would be disguised as something about love. We think that writing openly and truthfully about suffering, addiction, and sexuality was invented sometime in the 60′s. But that’s a misconception. There were plenty of bawdy drinking songs, and sad paeans to ruinous addiction in the old days. They just used more euphemistic language. It was especially true of what was then known as ‘race music’ -blues and jazz recordings by black artists could get away with a level of honesty that mainstream white artists couldn’t dream of. This song isn’t particularly racy, but it’s not wholesome either. It’s a slice of life in a neighborhood bar, written in 1933 by Wesley Wilson for Bessie Smith. Smith, and later Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, sings about getting comfy at the bar, listening to music and drowning in her sin. (Of course, Billie Holiday’s sin was a lot worse that a bottle of beer, or even gin.) In ’33 it wasn’t exactly respectable for a lady to eat dinner alone at a corner bar, unless it was up in Harlem. The song is a window on a specific time and place, life in 30′s Harlem, its own society.
“… Never wanted to/what am I to do?/ I can’t help it.”
So goes one of the most famous songs of all time. It springs, in its most known iteration, from the 1930 German film The Blue Angel, from which also sprang its singer Marlene Dietrich. In the movie Dietrich is a sexy cabaret girl who seduces, marries and thoroughly emasculates a priggish professor. It was a bit racy, from Dietrich’s miles-of-leg-showing costumes to her maneater persona. The song is also quite racy, for when she sings offhandedly about flitting from one love to another, it is in the roundabout parlance of the times the clearest declaration of sexual independence she could be allowed. Back then, in nifty prude doublespeak all things carnal were disguised as love and romance. To sing about having an endless parade of loves is to sing about having an endless parade of lovers. Which Dietrich did with a vengeance – she took down half of Hollywood, male and female.
Since Marlene Dietrich made Falling In Love Again a splash, it’s been covered by all the usual suspects; from Billie Holiday in the forties, to Doris Day and Nina Simone in the sixties, to big shooters like Christina Aguilera more recently. The Beatles used to play it in concert, back when they could still play audible concerts. There’s a recording of William S. Burroughs croaking it in the original German. Bryan Ferry and Marianne Faithfull covered it, because that stuff is catnip to them both. All those versions are honorable – it’s hard to screw up such a classic piece of songwriting. Even Xtina’s version is unexpectedly good. But for me, the definitive Falling In Love Again will always be Klaus Nomi’s. Who but a Nomi would know that an age-old slice of Weimar was meant to be reborn as a disco homage to an entirely different Sodom and Gomorrah, worlds away?
I like the contrast in this song between the dramatic opening notes and Billie Holiday’s mellow voice. The piercing violins at the beginning would, in a movie, be a signal of dramatic tension (or Dramatic Gopher, online). But Lady Day’s singing is anything but melodramatic. She knew her drama all right, but she never an overstated performer.
Not to be confused with Bananarama’s Cruel Summer (which is pretty sweet too.) This is another one from Karen Elson’s debut album. Karen Elson, as you may already know, is one of my heroes. She has been, for a long time, an outstanding supermodel, and I loved her for that (and her red hair.) I was happy when my favorite model married my favorite rock star, and even more happy when she decided to make a leap at making music, and more that anything, thrilled that her music is so fucking good. That is surprising, because we all know the old stereotype that models suck at anything besides looking pretty, but not really surprising either, because if Jack White decides to produce your album and put it out on Third Man you know you’re some pretty hot shit.
There’s some buzz flying around, in circles of people who care about such things, that this song somehow refers to personal things. As in, Jack’s relations with that raven-haired temptress Allison Mosshart. Yes, Allison is very hot, she and Jack have high caliber chemistry onstage, and they do spend a lot of unsupervised time together. But, seriously! Don’t be so prurient. I’m sure Karen Elson is a class above this. She’s only the most beautiful woman in the world. Why would she write songs about being jealous of her man’s coworkers? For god’s sakes, she gave her children her husband’s ex-wife’s last name. And her husband’s ex-wife’s husband plays in her band. I have every confidence that Karen and Jack are completely above such petty things as jealousy. The song is, however, a total rewrite of Patsy Cline’s Tennessee Waltz*. Which is not a bad thing because, 1) the young ‘uns don’t remember Tennessee Waltz and want reminding, and 2) the original song Tennessee Waltz was written by men and sung by women, this similar song was actually written by the woman singing it. I think a fresh take on a classic theme is wonderful.
*Turns out, the Tennessee Waltz Wikipedia page doesn’t even mention Patsy Cline’s version. Evidently, Patti Page’s version is the most famous. And we already know how Jack likes Patti. Nice how everything at Third Man is so intricately referential.
It appears that in the 1940s there was a shortage of songs being written. Everytime someone wrote a good one a dozen artists would jump in and record it. Come Rain Or Come Shine was recorded five times in 1946, the year it was written. Since then it’s been covered by every one of the usual suspects: Holiday, Fitzgerald, Vaughan, Garland, Sinatra, Minnelli, er, Jack Kerouac…all have covered it. With the extreme songwriting drought going on, there must have been terrible catfights over who got to record new material first. It’s a well known rumour that Ol’ Blue Eyes, for one, was involved in clandestine black market song smuggling.
Blues In the Night, music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, written 1941. Originally written for a film of the same name, Blues In the Night has since been recorded by nearly every jazz singer our there, including Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day, Dinah Shore, Artie Shaw, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland and many many others.
Lucky for us the great Ella lived well into the television age, and we can see her in full color.
Cab Calloway’s version, complete with funny business. Besides leading his popular orchestra, Calloway appeared in a series of musical films in the 30′s and 40′s, most of them now forgotten. Judging from this performance, he had quite a gift for comedy.
Cab and Ella are all well and good, but the definitive version of this song is and always will be Daffy Duck’s.
_01.jpg)
Recent Comments