Stardust Melodies

With more than 1500 recordings, Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" is one of the most recorded songs in the history of recorded music.  Inspired by Bix Beiderbecke, Carmichael wrote the song as a medium-to-up tempo instrumental, and he first recorded "Star Dust," as the title was written then, in 1927.  Mills Music published the music as "Stardust," in January, 1929.  The publishing house subsequently contracted Mitchell Parish to add lyrics and published this version later that year.

The first commercially-successful recording of "Stardust," that of Louis Armstrong in 1931, remains one of the most well-known and popular.  Ken Burns featured this recording prominently in his documentary, Jazz, and Armstrong biographer, James Lincoln Collier described it as "... the epitome of pop songs in a great age of pop songs."




"Stardust" was frequently recorded during the big band era.  I am aware of two versions by the Benny Goodman orchestra, one up-tempo along with a slower version.  The flip side of the 1936 Goodman version presented below is a Tommy Dorsey version of the same song. Goodman also recorded it in a small group session featuring electric guitar pioneer, Charlie Christian.  Arguably the definitive big band recording is the one that Artie Shaw made in 1940.





"Stardust" continued to be a popular choice for the "crooners," both male and female, of the '50s & '60s.  Nat King Cole made a hit recording in 1956, and Frank Sinatra recorded a remarkable version in 1961.  Sinatra's version is unusual because the introduction supplies few hints of the song's melody and he sings only the verse of the song and omits the chorus altogether.





The lyrics of "Stardust" include the phrase "leaving me a song that will not die."  It's doubtful that Mitchell Parish realized that those words would come to characterize his lyrics and the music for which he wrote them.  Although composed over 80 years ago, "Stardust" continues to be recorded by artists from all sorts of genres as well as artists who weren't even gleams in their grandfather's eyes when the song was written. 

Although usually considered a pop or jazz song, Willie Nelson countrified "Stardust" up a bit in the late '70s. The final video is crooner reincarnate, Michael Buble'.  





If you wish to learn more about Hoagy Carmichael and all the other wonderful songs he wrote, check out the fine Hoagy Carmichael biography, Stardust Melody, by Richard Sudhalter.
In the early '90s the Indiana Historical Society in collaboration with the Smithsonian released The Classic Hoagy Carmichael, a 3-CD set with booklet of recordings of many of Carmichael's songs recorded over the years by various artists.  Although currently out of print, used copies can be found easily enough.  The 3 CDs contain six versions of "Stardust."

Survivor: Anita O'Day

As she had plenty of both during her life and musical career, Anita O'Day appropriately titled her memoir, High Times, Hard Times.  Born Anita Belle Colton in Chicago in 1919, she had a tough childhood: an absentee father, a physically proximate, but emotional distant mother, and the poverty endemic during the Depression years.  She left school early and got her start singing for audiences via the dance marathon/walkathon circuits so popular during the Depression.  At some point during this period she changed her name to O'Day (one story is that O'Day is pig latin for what she hoped to make lots of: dough).  She was eventually hired on as the girl singer for the Gene Krupa big band and achieved considerable popular, if not financial success (although the song was a million seller, O'Day was payed a flat fee for her performance, and received no royalties),  with "Let Me Off Uptown."  The song was also a something of a cultural landmark as it paired her with African American trumpeter Roy Eldridge, a controversial move during the Jim Crow years.





Following her stint with Krupa, O'Day also sang with Woody Herman and Stan Kenton.  With the later she recorded another million seller, "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine.  As the big band era waned Anita went solo and had up and down levels of success through the late '40's and early '50's.  In 1956, she signed with jazz  impresario,  Norman Granz's new Verve label.  During this period O'Day achieved some of her greatest musical successes. Granz recorded her with both large and small combos.  Among her notable albums on Verve for Granz were Anita Sings the Most, which paired her with the Oscar Peterson Trio along with her long-time drummer/collaborator/drug supplier, John Poole.  Retitled Sings for Oscar, this album has been re-released on one disc with Pick Yourself Up, which the authors of the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings deem O'Days "iconic" album. 



 Anita received lots of attention in 1958 with the release of Jazz on a Summer's Day, a documentary about the previous year's Newport Jazz Festival that captured (unbeknownst to the singer) her take on Sweet Georgia Brown and Tea for Two.  Although not as widely acclaimed as some of her contemporaries, this performance demonstrated O'Day's creativity, swing, and energy were on par with anyone's.  Throughout her memoirs, O'Day consistently refers to herself as a song stylist rather than a singer.  This performance makes obvious what she meant.







 There were lots of high times of another sort, as it was during the 1950's that she developed a heroin addiction that would plague her for 14 years.  O'Day recounted her ups and downs in her autobiography, High Times, Hard Times, which was first published in 1981.  It is a "tell all" account, and although there are some less than kind comments about others, most of the dirt that is dug is about the author.














If you want to know more about Anita O'Day, but don't want to take the time read her autobiography, she was the subject of a biographical film, Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer released in 2009.
O'Day continued to perform and record almost to the day of her death in 2006.  Her last album was released in 2007 and was fittingly titled, Indestructible.

RIP Abbey Lincoln

Maybe not a giant, but the jazz world lost a pretty large figure last month in the passing of Abbey Lincoln.  Born Anna Marie Woolridge in Chicago in 1930 and reared in rural Michigan,  Anna Marie moved to L.A. to begin her professional career as a lounge singer.  Around 1955 she changed her name to Abbey Lincoln, and during that year she released her debut album, “Abbey Lincoln's Affair. A Story of a Girl in Love.”  Along with Julie London, featured previously, in this blog, Lincoln appeared in the Jayne Mansfield/rock 'n roll vehicle, The Girl Can't Help It. Unlike Julie London, whose style didn't change much over the course of her recording career, Abbey Lincoln's music varied greatly through the years.

The video below is from The Girl Can't Help It, and features Abbey in a gown previously worn by Marilyn Monroe.



Later in the 1950s Lincoln  began to collaborate with legendary drummer Max Roach (whom she later married) and moved in a much "jazzier" direction.  One of her important albums of this period was Abbey is Blue, which featured, in addition to Roach, other prominent jazz musicians of the time, including Stanley Turrentine, Wynton Kelly, and Philly Joe Jones.  Although the album included some "standards," e.g., "Lost in the Stars" (Kurt Weill & Maxwell Anderson) & "Come Sunday," (Duke Ellington) this is not a pop album.  

Abbey singing "Come Sunday" from Abbey is Blue:






In 1960 Lincoln and Roach collaborated the groundbreaking jazz and civil rights album, “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite”, but during the rest of that decade she concentrated on a semi-successful acting career.  After divorcing Roach in 1970, she spent most of the '70's honing her songwriting skills and did not release another album in the U.S. until 1979's People in Me."  Her profile remained low during the 1980s until she signed with Verve in the early 1990s, where she remained for the rest of her recording career.  Her last album for Verve, Abbey Sings Abbey, released in 2007, was a retrospective and reworking of some of her earlier recordings.


The next two videos are from Abbey's Verve period. The first is her composition, "Down Here Below," from A Turtle's Dream, and features Kenny Barron on piano and Charlie Haden on bass subtly supplemented by strings.  The second video is "Windmills of your Mind" from her next to last album, Over the Years, which the Amazon reviewer suggested might have been the best album of her career.  This song features her rhythm section: Brandon McCune (p), John Ormond (b), and Jaz Sawyer (d) plus Joe Lovano on tenor.

The Problem with Categories: Madeleine Peyroux

Probably no one personifies the difficulties in trying to categorize music more than Madeleine Peyroux (pronounced like the country).  Her voice has been compared to Billie Holiday.  She co-wrote most of the songs on her latest album, but she has covered songs written or popularized by everyone from Hank Williams to Frank Sinatra to Leonard Cohen to Bessie Smith and covered Edith Piaff in French.  She is profiled on AllAboutJazz.com, but records for a label mostly known for bluegrass and "roots" music.  She's even been know to sport a top hat.

Peyroux's background is as varied as her music. Born in Athens, GA, she spent her early years in Brooklyn, Southern California, & Paris.  Her music career began on the streets of the French capital, and she later toured Europe with the Lost Wandering Blues & Jazz Band.  

Her debut album, Dreamland, released in the U.S. in 1996 sold an impressive 200,000 copies and was received with critical acclaim as well.  In the wake of the success of Dreamland, Peyroux was in great demand on the festival circuit and as an opening act for some big-name artists.  Rather than rushing back into the recording studio, however, she waited until 2004 to release her next album, Careless Love.  In subsequent years, she has released two more albums for Rounder Records, Half the Perfect World and Bare Bones.  All three of these Rounder albums were produced by veteran Larry Klein, perhaps best known as Joni Mitchell's producer and ex-husband.  Although Peyroux's music is difficult to pigeonhole, one thing for certain is that she is a song stylist; she applies her own unique stamp to all her songs, even ones that have been recorded many times before.  One of my favorite songs on Careless Love is Hank Williams' "Weary Blues."  She changes the phrasing, slows down the tempo, and gives the song a "bluesier" feel.  If you heard the two versions and didn't pay attention to the lyrics, you might not recognize them as the same songs.





This next video is an old one, featuring Madeleine covering Billie Holiday in her street musician days with the Lost Wandering Blues & Jazz Band.  The song appears in a little more polished version on Dreamland.

Less is More, Pt. 1: Julie London

Julie London's biographical sketch at allaboutjazz.com begins with her describing her voice to Life magazine in 1957 as "...only a thimbleful of a voice ... But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate."  The same sketch also uses the following to describe her vocal qualities: sultry, sexy, “come-hither”, intimate, breathy, warm, smoky, haunting, husky, sullen, sad, suggestive and seductive.  As you can see from the above image, the sound matched the look.

London began her show business career on screen in the late 1940's.  During this period she married Jack Webb (Sgt. Joe Friday of Dragnet fame).  Shortly after this marriage broke up in 1953, London met Bobby Troup, musician and song writer best known for composing the now-standard "Route 66."  He would shepherd her into a singing career and become her husband in 1959.  Julie released her first album, Julie is Her Name in 1955.  I chose the "Less is More" title for this post for two reasons.  First, London's "thimbleful" of a voice was not comparable to the room-filling pipes of Ella Fitzgerald or Anita O'Day.  Second, on this first album the singer was accompanied only by Barney Kessel on guitar (you may not recognize the name, but Kessel was almost ubiquitous as a sideman and studio musician for many years) and Ray Leatherwood on bass, an unusual arrangement both for the small size and lack of piano.  These three musicians, however, create a whole lot of sound.


Julie is Her Name became a huge hit, remaining on the album charts for 20 weeks and reaching as high as No. 2. The first single from the album, "Cry Me a River" became London's biggest hit and peaked at No. 9 while remaining on the charts for 13 weeks.  The success of this album was not a foreordained conclusion.  The quality of Julie's voice and the instrumentation were both out of the ordinary, and the subdued, unassuming nature of the recording contrasted sharply with the rock 'n roll that was beginning to dominate the airwaves.  Interestingly, Julie & her laid-back song were featured in the 1956 movie that showcased Little Richard, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, and other upcoming rock 'n rollers, The Girl Can't Help It.  The video below, while not the best version of "Cry Me a River" on YouTube, is the clip from the movie.  You might recognize Tom Ewell as the married man smitten with Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch.



Julie London continued to record regularly until the late '60s.  She would record with a variety of orchestrations and arrangements, but would return to the guitar (Howard Roberts) and bass (Red Mitchell) accompaniment for Julie is Her Name, Vol. 2 in 1958.  London was one of the pioneers of the "concept" album.  Some of her themed albums included: Your Number Please (covers of songs made popular by male singers of the day); Calendar Girl (a set of 13 songs, 12 with the name of a month of the year in the title, plus "The Thirteenth Month"); Julie...At Home (recorded with a small combo in Julie's living room); and Around Midnight (songs with late lonely, late night themes).  Although Julie London may not be as well known today as some of her contemporaries, she was distinguished as Billboard magazine's most popular female vocalist three years running, 1955-57.


"Black Coffee" featured in the first video below is the version that was included on Around Midnight.  You can probably tell from the photo montage that Julie's publicists were not loath to take the "sex sells" approach when it came to marketing her and her music.  Although "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" was featured on  Julie...At Home, the live version presented below was played at a faster tempo and demonstrated Julie's jazz chops.

Fine and Mellow Music 1

About this Blog 

I've named my blog after a particular song (after a particular rendition of a song, actually), but it also represents a type of music I hope to write about and showcase.  Most of it will fall under the broad umbrella of jazz, but there are so many kinds of jazz and music is so notoriously difficult to categorize.  You will find music here that you might label as cool jazz, mellow jazz, vocal jazz/pop, the Great American Songbook, and maybe even Easy Listening.  In recent years a number of cd's and internet radio stations have cropped up presenting what they call Lounge Music; some of what you encounter here will fit into that category.  What will the music have in common?  Most of it will have been recorded since the early 1950's.  In fact, much of it will be from the 50's & early 60's.  There will be lots of vocals, probably more female than male vocals.  There will be a bias toward small combos rather than larger ensembles.  Finally, with a few exceptions, there won't be a lot of up tempo stuff.  You know, music that's mellow, and fine.

I've always been one to read the liner notes of my albums and I want to know who the players are and a little of the backstory.  What I hope to do with this blog is share some music videos from you tube that I like and provide a little background about the songs &/or the videos.

 Fine & Mellow Billie

The video below is the source of my blog's title.  It is from a 1957 CBS special, The Sound of Jazz.  As was most all TV in 1957, it was broadcast live and featured 32 musicians representing the various eras of jazz history.  Fine & Mellow was written by Billie Holiday and was one of the few straight blues numbers in her repertoire.  She is backed/accompanied by an all-star combo, which consisted of a combination of veterans and youngbloods: Lester Young (ts), Ben Webster (ts), Coleman Hawkins (ts), Roy Eldridge (t), Doc Cheatham (t), Vic Dickenson (tb), Gerry Mulligan (bars), Danny Barker (g), Mal Waldron (p), Milt Hinton (b), Osie Johnson (d).  All of the solos are outstanding, but the most poignant is the 2nd tenor solo, which was performed by Billie's long-time collaborator from whom she had become estranged, Lester Young.  Ken Burn's featured this presentation in his Jazz series (Disc 9: The Adventure).  Jazz critic, Nat Hentoff, who was a consultant for the original broadcast, described the moment this way: "Lester got up, and he played the purest blues I have ever heard, and [he and Holiday] were looking at each other, their eyes were sort of interlocked, and she was sort of nodding and half–smiling. It was as if they were both remembering what had been—whatever that was.  And in the control room we were all crying.  When the show was over they went their separate ways."  Some have argued that by 1957 (only 2 years before the premature deaths of both Billie and Lester), Billie's voice had suffered too much from years of abuse.  While her instrument may not have been what it once was, this performance demonstrated that she could do so much with what was  left.