Old Friends

Greg Brown Freak Flag Album Cover | Greg Brown Album Covers

My approach to following music is to basically find a performer I like and then stick with him or her. Sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of this approach because (let's be honest) any performer has a limited bag of tricks that, once you're familiar with it, they will keep repeating from recording to recording. Paul Simon will always be acoustic with some interesting rhythm, for example. His lyrics will always be humorous.

Why do I keep purchasing the work of someone who I've followed for decades? Is it some obsessive-compulsive need to collect a history?

In the case of Paul Simon, when I hear a new work I always feel like I'm checking in on an old friend. His words and outlook have been in my head all those decades; there's a weird kind of conversation that's been going on. Sure, I wish it weren't one-way. I'd love to sit and chat with him. But it would be on a level quite different from his polished communication in song. Perhaps less satisfying.

So I've got shelves full of friends: singer/songwriters, some of whom I've followed very intently, others who I've attended to with half a mind. Greg Brown fits in the latter category.

I "invested" in Greg Brown years ago because of his bold difference. I mean, someone who dedicates an album to putting William Blake's lyrics to music has my attention. That's when I first checked him out.

In 1986 he was already 4 albums into his career. He'd founded his own record label (Red House) and appeared on The Prairie Home Companion.

The William Blake album didn't grip me, but I gave him another chance, and took a shine to 1992's In the Dark with You, which features the catchy "Good Morning Coffee" song.

I will bring you your good mornin coffee, will you smile
If not now then have a sip or two and maybe in a while
I love you I love you in the good mornin and in the night
Every day I wait with you wherever we are it's all right
Here's your coffee, it may still be too hot, it is freshly brewed
I'll just pour myself a cup and then I will crawl in with you

There's no one quite like Greg Brown. He's got a low drawl of a voice, but it's quite supple. He swings, he slurs, and he can glide into a falsetto--whenever the mood hits him. He's a true "Americana" artist: you'll find all the classic forms on display in his catalog (blues, jazz, gospel, country, straight-ahead folk).

His lyrics are fabulous too. I must confess that I'm unable to commit them to memory, but whenever I listen to his work I find myself thinking about how simple and direct they are.

My wife and I think of Greg Brown fondly because we saw him in concert several times when we started dating. He's a good storyteller in person, and the music is always engaging. He usually tours with guitarist Bo Ramsey, who has produced or co-produced and played and vocalized on practically half of Greg Brown's recorded output. (He's presently married to Greg Brown's daughter Pieta, 22 years his junior, which I find a little creepy.)

In the late 1990s Greg Brown began to tour less, and my interest fell off. I would dutifully continue buying his work, but didn't listen to it much. At some point I stopped--even obsessive-compulsive music buffs have their limits!

But here's the great advantage of being a collector. I took a chance and recently purchased his new CD, Freak Flag, and I absolutely love it. It displays all of the attributes that diehard fans love: a complete command of musical vocabulary, a rich voice that seems to shift with every song, and lyrics that are so arresting that they ARE staying in my mind.

Now I'm back playing my Greg Brown records and admiring his talent. It's definitely a pleasure that will endure. I'm glad Freak Flag reactivated my interest.

There's a nice description of the CD on his label's website, so check it out and then give some of my choice YouTube cuts a look and listen. Then get out there and support one of this country's great songwriters!

For a nice interview with Greg Brown, click here.

Here Greg Brown talks to Performing Songwriter about Freak Flag.

You Tube links: "Blue Car";"Who Woulda Thunk It";"Canned Goods";"You Drive Me Crazy"

Blood on the Tracks

My journey to appreciating Bob Dylan was interesting. When I first began formulating my musical taste in the early '70s, I clung fast to singers with a real pop sensibility. I loved John Denver and Peter, Paul, and Mary. I always read who wrote the songs that I enjoyed, and I loved the Dylan songs that P, P, & M performed, but I simply could not get into Dylan's sound.

Plus there was the way that critics were declaring him a genius. I just thought a lot of his rhymes were nonsensical and that secretly Dylan must have been laughing at people for taking him so seriously.

Still, being my earnest self, I recall going to the library and reading up on Dylan--even taking notes on what were considered his major songs! Yep, a geek before the word had even been coined!

Anyway a complete change of heart came over with Dylan's Blood on the Tracks in 1974. Wow, did this album have distinctive songs, and his singing was intelligible and even arresting. The lyrics made sense--they told stories I could understand.



After this album, I was all set regarding Dylan. I've enjoyed his work ever since. Recently I watched a fantastic DVD on Blood on the Tracks. The critics (all British) provide a terrific context for understanding how this album fits in the Dylan canon. The stock footage of Dylan at this time is fantastic. Check it out!

And--oh yeah--Happy 70th, Bob!

Moon Tunes

As a teacher, I like to start my day by commemorating "this day in history." I always share an anniversary with my students and then tie in some video. This week marked the 50th anniversary of JFK's address to Congress in which he challenged the American people to make it to the moon by the end of the decade.

Funny thing was, I was listening simultaneously to a collection of moon songs that Mel Torme recorded only a year previously to JFK's address. I have been grooving on this CD much more deeply since, and I'd like to share my enthusiasm for this project as well as for Frank Sinatra's 1965 effort on the same theme.

First to Mel Torme. I admire him so much as a singer. My word, how this guy put it together! Besides being as supple a song interpreter, he was also a terrific drummer in his own right. (He was good friends with Buddy Rich.) Mel loved to swing, and never is it more evident than in this effervescent collection.

Torme was a songwriter too (you know, "chesnuts roasting on an open fire"?), so the man appreciated clever wordplay. He kicks off this set with his own composition, "Swingin' on the Moon". All I can say is, dig these lyrics!

Are you tired of summer nights in Maine?
Do you yawn when they speak of sunny Spain?
Could you live without seeing old Rangoon?
Then come with me, and let's go swingin' on the moon

Have you had enough of London fog?
New York snow and California smog?
Would you say arrivederci to Rome in June?
Then fly with me and let's go swingin' on the moon

Let's have a honeymoon on the moon, honey
Far from the bustle of the crowd
And if your mother asks "why the moon, honey?"
Just tell her your feller has gone interstellar

Grab your hat and we'll head up in the blue
In a little rocket built for two
Baby we're goin' to blast off and before we're through
We'll leave the cares that we know
On terra firma below
While we go singin' and swingin' on the moon

Let's have a honeymoon on the moon, honey
Far from that noisy Earth below
And if your folks ask about our house, honey
Tell mater and pater we live in a crater

We're really going to enjoy a life of ease
Livin' on moonlight cocktails and green cheese
Mr. and Mrs. Space Commuter, if you please
And in a few years we might
produce our own satellite
while we go singin' and swingin' on the moon

As the song closes, Torme fades out by singing out every song title on the album to follow. Ah, the virtuosity! Then it's on to another song redolent of Mad Men and the spirit of that specific period of time. It's called "Moonlight Cocktail", and it's a dandy. Sit back and enjoy these lyrics. It's love 1960-style, baby! Roll out that cocktail wagon!

Couple of jiggers of moonlight
add a star
Pour in the blue of a June night
and one guitar
Mix in a couple of dreamers
And there you are
Lovers hail the moonlight cocktail

Now add a couple of flowers
A drop of dew
Stir for a couple of hours
Till dreams come true
As for the number the number of kisses
It's up to you
Moonlight cocktails

Cool it in the summer breeze
Serve it in the starlight underneath the trees
You'll discover tricks like these
Are sure to make your moonlight cocktail please

Follow the simple directions
And they will bring
Life of another complexion
where you'll be king
You'll awake in the morning
and start to sing
"Moonlight cocktails are the thing!"

The liner notes to this collection by Benny Green are precious. He rhapsodizes about the moon, citing sources as varied as Shelley, Byron, and Debussy. "The day that first rocket lands (on the moon)," writes Green, "these songs will become sociological curiosities. But I believe Torme's great skill in interpreting them will always commend them!"

Why, of course! But I can't agree on the songs. Much more than curiosities--as Will Friedwald recounts in Sinatra! The Song Is You, these songs have a rich pedigree. In his account of Sinatra's penultimate recording session with Nelson Riddle, 1965's Moonlight Sinatra, the author points out that many of the moon songs originated in Bing Crosby's catalog. ("Moonlight Becomes You", "I Wished on the Moon", "The Moon Got in My Eyes", and "The Moon Was Yellow")



On this 10-song set, Frank overlaps Mel four times. His additions to the theme are masterful: the album opens with his voice soaring as he renders the opening lines to "Moonlight Becomes You":

You're all dressed up to go dreaming
Now don't tell me I'm wrong
And what a night to go dreaming
Mind if I tag along?

Yep, you as a listener are gripped immediately as you tag along and nestle in the sumptuous Riddle arrangements and Frank's rich and warm baritone. I have sung along to the songs on this collection for years. It's a proverbial overlooked gem in the Sinatra oeuvre. A highlight includes lovely lyrics to Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade". Such beauty!

It's depressing to read in Friedwald's account how the relationship between Riddle and Sinatra degenerated after this project. Nelson still had around twenty years left in his career after Moonlight Sinatra but, after following it with Strangers in the Night the next year, he was done with his most famous collaborator. Although he and Frank worked again intermittently, they never released another complete project.

You can sense Friedwald's disappointment. I share the sentiment. Don't miss this account in his fine book, an indispensable reference book for any Sinatra lover.

If you'd like to luxuriate in some of the finest pop and jazz singing from the last half century, you are hereby encouraged to purchase these two outstanding collections. I promise that you'll be as moonstruck as yours truly!

Ron Sexsmith faces his doubts - Music Features - Providence Phoenix

Ron Sexsmith faces his doubts - Music Features - Providence Phoenix

Here's a terrific portrait of a singer-songwriter who deserves to be more widely known. I've admired his work for years. I recall his appearance on Elvis Costello's Spectacle show on the Sundance Channel. Check Ron Sexsmith out!

YouTube segments:

Ron performs his lovely ballad "Secret Heart"

Ron performs Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells" with Elvis Costello and Sheryl Crow

The Perfect Ending

If you have HBO, don't miss Eugene Jarecki's documentary on the occasion of Dutch's 100th birthday.

It's got wonderful clips of Reagan's movies interlaced with the talk of politics. His son Ron is at poolside in Dixon, IL to provide commentary on his father. Very interesting to hear his take on some of his father's actions in office.

Anyway, I always listen for the soundtrack, and this film has a good one. It went from good to great on the closing credits, though, when they played "Seasons in the Sun"--as performed by the Ray Conniff Singers!

First of all, very clever--the link between "morning in America" and this song title. But even more so, picture perfect--the link between the Ray Conniff Singers and a view of the world that is dismissive of any harsh reality.

I know the Ray Conniff Singers so well from my childhood. How my father loved to play them--it must have been the perfect antidote to all the cultural upheaval occuring during the 1960s.

Groups like Ray Conniff's don't exist anymore, to the best of my knowledge, although I'm sure the need to trip out on soporific harmonizing is still completely present. Wonder what folks turn to these days...

George Shearing

A major figure in jazz died recently at 91. George Shearing was a blind piano player known for "the Shearing touch". How should I describe it? I don't play the piano, so I'm not comfortable talking about the block chords that are brought up in his obituaries. No, I associate it with elegance and nuance and sophistication. Sir George invented cool in the midst of the bebop era. He integrated vibes in his most famous composition, 1952's "Lullaby of Birdland" and was always a treat for the careful listener.

I value his work with great singers like Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee and (most memorably) Mel Torme. But there are two other singers who recorded with him memorably. I'd like to recommend these works to you.



First, in 1980 Carmen McRae recorded Two for the Road with Shearing. What a delicious set!--just that wonderful smooth deep voice cradled by warm piano on top-notch songs like "More Than You Know" and "What Is There to Say" as well as lesser-known gems like "Ghost of Yesterday" and the title track. Why, we're even treated to George singing on "Cloudy Morning"--the man was as smooth singing as he was playing!



Over two decades later, in one of his last works, Shearing worked with Michael Feinstein on a collection of Harry Warren songs, Hopeless Romantics. It is a constant joy to listen to if you're a singer and, if you're not, it will bring you endless peace as you go about your daily toil.

Boy, this has been a tough year--first Margaret Whiting, and now George Shearing! But both artists leave behind a rich catalog for listeners to mine.

Click here for George with Gerry Mulligan and Mel Torme

Click here for George and Carmen McRae performing "My Gentleman Friend"

Wilfrid Sheed

Last month Wilfrid Sheed died. He was the writerly equivalent of my kind of singer-songwriter: his work isn't easily classifiable. I was drawn to his last work The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty. After reading in his obituary that Sheed wanted the following etched on his gravestone:

He wrote some good sentences.

I decided to go back to his book and find some, which I easily did in his essay on Indiana's Hoagy Carmichael.("...a geographical anomaly who just seemed to write generic American that sounded just right regardless of where you were--even in New York.")



Sheed fixes on Carmichael's wandering spirit, and the way he stayed balanced between worlds of the hip and square. Here are some of his prose gems on this point.

Hoagy Carmichael was, like many Americans, a divided soul, part nomad and part homebody, who seemed a little bit at home everywhere, but was probably more so someplace else, if you could just find it. In fact, you'll still see him on Greyhound buses, either hoping to change his luck in the next county or heading back after failing to...

Hoagy was bewitched by the currents of jazz that carried out to Indiana over his radio in the 1920s. It was

...a force at large now that could take him a million miles away anytime he wanted it to, while--and this was the curious part--leaving him back home when it was done.

Yes! This sense of "home" is what informs so many Hoagy songs that I love: "Memphis in June" and "Rockin'Chair" being my favorites in this regard. (Let's also not forget "Georgia on My Mind" of course). But also there is that wandering that Sheed alludes to that informs other great songs in his catalog: "Stardust" and "Hong Kong Blues" come to mind immediately here.

Carmichael, a Midwesterner, straddled two worlds in popular music.

...part of him would stubbornly remain a square in the world of Hip...we would find him actually squaring off, in the other sense, with Humphrey Bogart over a matter of politics, an Indiana Republican versus a Hollywood liberal, 'Put up your dukes.' (Fortunately their womenfolk easily restrained the two bantamweights.)

Sheed is excellent in describing how Hoagy developed as a songwriter. "Stardust" was his first composition, and it failed at first as a jazz song. But it was written when popular music was pivoting from "hot jazz" to a more contemplative, less dance-oriented style of jazz. Irving Mills, Hoagy's publisher, advised him to slow down the song, and paired him with Mitchell Parish, who wrote the dreamy immortal lyrics.

Sheed writes:

And just like that "Stardust" would prove that Hoagy could actually make money being himself, keep his integrity, and eat his cake too. With one song, Hoagy became both our most and least commercial composer. And meanwhile, he had become too set in his ways to sell out, even if he'd wanted to. Before he had a hit, he had a style.

And what a style! It is so singable, so hummable. "How Little We Know", "My Resistance Is Low", "I Get Along Without You Very Well", "Lazy River", "Lazy Bones", "Two Sleepy People" and "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening", of which Sheed writes.

To my mind he clinched the title 'the great American songwriter' (if there is such a creature) once and for all with "The Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening"...the whole laid-back essence of this country can be found in the multiple cool of this song.

Take up Wilfrid Sheed in this terrific collection on our great songwriters. You will be in your easy chair listening and humming for hours!

Click here to watch Hoagy sing "Hong Kong Blues" in the 1939 film To Have and Have Not