Today in Non Sequitur: Arrangements are Hard

While working on an upcoming piece on the subject of Jo Stafford's singing, I noticed that she recorded a number of songs more than once, with some years in between.  I was struck by how different the aural experience of the given song when treated with a new arrangement. To wit:

I will be arguing (brilliantly, I'm sure) that while the aural experience of the two versions is quite different, the technical singing is substantively the same. But off that topic, while listening I began to consider my upcoming set. Doing It For Defense will consist of about half standards, which present a particular challenge -- one has to ask, when singing tunes as oft-recorded as That Old Black Magic, The Nearness of You and You Go To My Head, what can I bring? Why should people come to hear my versions, when Frank, Ella, Peggy, Dinah and Jo, and so many others, have done the artistic heavy lifting, and brought the songs to such heights?

For the first set Frank Ponzio and I did together -- Playing Hard to Get, we faced this precise problem with a pair of Billie Holiday songs.  The songs I came to love because of Billie's performances were also recorded by other truly great artists (including Carmen McRae and Anita O’Day). The Moon Looks Down and Laughs is a gorgeous Bert Kalmar song, and If the Moon Turns Green a lovely example of the great bandleader and composer Paul Whiteman’s style. Emotional, evocative and graceful, the versions offered by Billie, Carmen and Anita tower over me. 

In the shadow of the greats, I required an expert, and left it to Frank to take on the arranging job for the two songs.  Listening to his work, I'm very pleased. He found something that is our own, and suitable for a trio.

In an early rehearsal, Frank commented that it's too easy for a singer -- particularly one with an academic bent and a rules-following, 'come scritto', classical viewpoint -- to simply "sing the  record".  He countered the tendency by, for example, altering the time signature or playing a traditional ballad as a rumba. And then putting it back. Unnerving in the extreme, but interesting.

As I work on the (in some cases, ruthlessly) standard selections I will sing in July, I'm finding that I can begin to contribute to the arrangement conversation, and that I'm increasingly interested in doing to. Who knows if I can add anything to the songs, but I do think I've found a way in.

PROJECT V IS FOR VICTORY DISC: DOING IT FOR DEFENSE

A record arrived in the mail, a 6-cd box set of Jo Stafford recordings, arranged in a scholarly ordering of her career phases.  One of the six discs Dad sent was titled 'Wartime "V" Discs...'  I wondered, “hello, what’s that, please?” and began a journey to understand a fascinating footnote in American popular music history. The resultant set's first performances are scheduled for July 25 and August 1.  Over the next couple of months, I will be working with Frank Ponzio and the band on arrangements of a collection that includes many of the standards we love, along with a number of rarities awaiting excavation.

VICTORY DISCS... IT'S A GREAT STORY

In 1942, Robert Vincent was assigned to the Army’s Morale Branch, Radio Section. He was a friend of the son of Thomas Edison, would be known as a pioneer in sound recording, help to establish Armed Forces Radio and, later, serve as a sound engineer on the Nürnberg Trials.  The Army had been sending entertainment to overseas personnel since the establishment of the Morale Branch in 1940, but in 1942, two major musicians unions, engaged in a strike against all four U.S. record companies, imposed a recording ban that was to last until 1944.  In pretty short order, the supply of music available to send to the soldiers dried up and shipments slowed to a crawl. Our hero, Lt. Vincent, visited the Pentagon ... SEE MORE

Today in Non Sequitur: Trial by Debussy

I spent the weekend working on Les Chanson de Bilitis of Claude Debussy, who set three of the Sapphic erotica of Pierre Louÿs. They're hard -- delicate, exposed, fragile things, and beautiful.  I was introduced to the songs by pianist Mark Cogley some time ago (Mark is something of a Debussy expert -- check out his wonderful recording The Young Debussy, with Tenor Darren Chase).   They are a work in progress for me; I keep coming back to them, sort of poking at them with a stick.  So far, I'm (reasonably) happy with No. 1: La flûte de Pan...

The poem:

Sappho and Alcaeus: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1870

The Pan Pipes
For the festival of Hyacinthus
he gave me a syrinx,
a set of pipes
made from well-cut reeds
joined with the white wax that is sweet to my lips like honey.
He is teaching me to play,
as I sit on his knees;
but I tremble a little.
He plays it after me,
so softly that I can scarcely hear it.
We are so close that we have nothing to say to one another;
but our songs want to converse,
and our mouths are joined as they take turns on the pipes.
It is late: here comes the chant of the green frogs,
which begins at dusk.
My mother will never believe I spent so long
searching for my lost waistband.

Nos. 2 and 3, La Chevelure and Le Tombeau des Naïades require more work on my part before I can post my versions... For now, take a listen to the role models: Regine Crespin (with John Wustman) and Irene Joachim (with Jane Bathori) show me how it's done.

The Story:

"Les Chansons de Bilitis is a collection of erotic poetry by Pierre Louÿs published in Paris in 1894,The sensual poems are in the manner of Sappho; the introduction claims they were found on the walls of a tomb in Cyprus, written by a woman of Ancient Greece called Bilitis, a courtesan and contemporary of Sappho. On publication, the volume deceived even the most expert of scholars. Though the poems were actually clever fabulations, authored by Louÿs himself, they are still considered important literature. Although for the most part The Songs of Bilitis is original work, many of the poems in the collection were reworked epigrams from the Palatine Anthology, and Louÿs even borrowed some verses from Sappho herself. The poems themselves are a blend of mellow sensuality and polished style in the manner of the Parnassian school, but underneath run subtle Gallic undertones which Louÿs could never escape. The poems were eventually exposed as a literary fraud. This did little to taint their literary value in the eyes of the readers, however, and Louÿs' open and sympathetic celebration of lesbian sexuality earned him sensation and historic significance." (wikipedia.org)

PROJECT PLAYING HARD TO GET

Over the years, on public radio, public television and sundry online locales, I heard great singers singing songs which surprised me and lingered in my memory. Too often, I went looking for sheet music only to find it unavailable; my favorites were inevitably out of print. Having accumulated a list of orphan songs, I decided to take them down from the recordings and arrange them -- getting help early and often from friends and, after the charts were made, turning to the band for advice and expertise. In many cases, significant reductions were needed; many of the songs had to be entirely re-conceived. But after a yeoman's work, we had a set of the unknown jewels and neglected gems of Jo Stafford, Julia Lee, Billy Holiday and Betty Hutton, all arranged for single voice and trio. Hence the name of the set; Playing Hard to Get -- a sheet music joke.  SEE MORE

Today in Non Sequitur: Joni Mitchell is a breathtaking songwriter

Sheldon Forrest and I tried to to her justice in this version of A Case of You...high bar to meet, but we tried.

On Dirty Blues' Granddaddy

When I decided to sing Dirty Blues, the required reading took me directly into the rich vein of history that is the Minstrel Show.  

Those blackface variety shows, looked upon by modern audiences with horror, are simultaneously revolting, mysterious and frightening. The reading is, however, worth the effort.  Go down the rabbit hole of links to essays, books, articles -- plus God only knows how much stuff.  You may, as I did, realize you missed lunch entirely and, actually, you just missed your train not looking up. Who knows when another B will come, argh.

Hans Nathan; “Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy”; 1977; (Mungo, a character in The Padlock ); commons.wikipedia.org

Art is always either derivative or reactionary, usually both, and in any event, everything comes from somewhere. All things have been drawn from a well. Many times, deciding upon the impetus or knowing what was adapted, conflated or turned on its head to make something "new", is not so difficult.  But when something has an aspect that is arguably unique, one follows a less direct line looking for its parent. To say, as I was told, that "minstrelsy is the United States’ first indigenous musical theater performance art", brings with it a challenge.  What happened that this flowered? Why this, particularly? Why then? Context, as always, is everything.  SEE MORE

Today: Published in the New York Sheet Music Society Newsletter!

New York Sheet Music Society Newsletter, April, 2013

Starting on page 4, an excerpt from my essay on Jo Stafford...

On DIRTY BLUES

Julia Lee

Julia Lee has been my mother's earworm all my life, leaving mom helpless, singing ad (sorry, Mom) nauseam, “I didn't like it the first time, but ooooooooh, how it grew on meeeeee!” under her breath.  Periodically, she’d nudge, “You should do the Spinach Song!”  The tune was a favorite of her parents; my grandparents were known to roll up the rug in the living room and dance the night away. I gave in, took a look at it and ...

The Spinach Song, or “I Didn’t Like it the First Time” turns out to be an example of a whole sub-genre of Blues: There were dozens of these “Dirty Blues”, which typically performed live or heard on jukeboxes; they were mostly banned from radio (admittedly, for cause). Dirty Blues would have first been heard as Hokum, in the context of Minstrel Shows...SEE MORE

On Jo Stafford

Jo Stafford; circa 1955; New York Sun; (Photo by Metronome)

“I had four or five years in school training as a soprano. I fell into pop singing because of economics. I got out of high school and had to go work, and they weren't hiring opera singers.” - Jo Stafford

Jo Stafford was born in 1917, just ten years after the Panic of 1907, which started with -- what else? -- a stock manipulation scheme. The Stock Exchange fell 50% from the previous year, and state and local banks began to fail. Then came the runs on banks, and the US did not yet a central bank to manage the situation, which was spinning out of control... SEE MORE

We're on the calendar at Stage72

Stage72 has updated the calendar to include the debut performances of V is for Victory Disc: Doing it for Defense! Tickets can be got there or also at Brown Paper Tickets.

The Advert:
Join Kathryn Allyn and Trio, led by jazz pianist and musical director Frank Ponzio, for an evening of WWII-era light jazz and swing:

During the war, the US Army waded into a musicians’ strike to produce morale-boosting records for the troops. Ultimately, the great acts of the day — Hoagy, Louie, Glenn, Dinah, Peggy, Frank, Jo, Ella, Tommy, Martha, Betty, everybody who was anybody — laid down tracks for the Army. In all, the government recorded, pressed and shipped 8,000,000 records to soldiers scattered all over three continents...