About a thousand years ago, before the earth’s crust had cooled and when dinosaurs were just a glimmer in God’s eye, I was a child. Now being a child back then was different than it is from being a child these days. If you disobeyed your parents the consequences were swift and certain, but never lasting and if in so disobeying you left the safety of home, the worst that could happen was a missed meal.
It took a lot more creative effort to have a life altering experience in those far off days.
But I did.
We had a stand-up Zenith radio record player combination. It was just a bit larger than the standard Kenmore refrigerator and a lot more fun. If you listened with all of your heart you could hear the Shadow cloud men’s minds and see that fiery horse with the speed of light. The talking train, which led to the squeaking door which opened to the Inner Sanctum, was more than just a plug for Bromo Seltzer.
In fact late at night, say when all the lights were out and all good children were fast asleep in their beds, you could, if you weren’t a good children, hear Ole Jim Lowe and the Cat’s Caravan show, “How Blue Can You Get?” Why they played exotic, forbidden music, jazz, not only jazz but Blues, now that’s baaaaaaaaaaaaad!
It was listening to that show, (I could get away with it cause WRR played classical music all day and only switched to subversive jazz after ten o’clock.), that taught me all about jazz and the folks who sing it. I heard, Etta James, Sarah Vaughn, Peggy Lee, Keely Smith and of course Ella Fitzgerald.
Now that was an eye opener. Why the lady could sing and then she’d do a thing, (I didn’t have a clue what it was called then), where she would harmonize with the musicians, but without singing, just notes of music made by her voice! She sang a song called You’ll Have To Swing it and I was doomed. No more rock and roll for me.
Fifty years and a few white hairs later I haven’t lost interest in the wonderful people who can make a simple song into a full length film with just their voice and a few instruments. There are some good ones, Teirney Sutton, Janis Seigel, Jane Monhiedt, Diana Krall, especially the Girl in The Other Room CD, and one you haven’t heard of, but know if you’ve ever watched TV or listened to other singers, Ann Hampton Callaway.
Ann is a New York jazz singer; she haunts smoke-filled clubs and makes an appearance on late night television every now and then. And she can blow! Lord, can she blow.
On her CD To Ella With Love, a very ambitious title for a young, white, contemporary singer to cover the immortal Ella, some chutzpah! And it would be if all she did was cover the songs of the First Lady of Song. But she doesn’t, she makes them her own in that special way she has, which is too cute for its own good.
You know she wrote the theme for the Nanny. Clever words from a clever girl and that is why you might not have heard of her. She‘s so hip she seldom gets out of New York and when she does she needs a special audience. Just listen to the scat, (Yes that’s what they call it when you vocalize without words), on How High the Moon. Sure that was the first tune Ella broke into scat on and the first time a shocked mainstream audience heard what had been hidden in Harlem clubs and when Ann does her turn she acknowledges Ella with a line only a pretty cute, clever girl could come up with…”I wanna be taught, I wanna know the score, I want to be an Ella Astronught when I soar.”
Now that the weather has become Oregon weather and the days are getting shorter, go by Off The Record, (They support the arts community so you ought to throw your CD business their way) and pick up one of Annie’s CDs. It will make spending time in the studio more fun, your friends will be amazed and try this just for fun, slip it in your car CD player, drive down Newmark and when you get stopped at a light roll down your window and blast the sound. It’s only fair; the kid in the next car with the skunk Mohawk and the battered CD of Gaga has been sharing with you, so return the favor!
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