Rich-ley Talented

Kim Richey is among the best singer-songwriters working today. I pride myself on discovering new songwriting talent, and one lesson I’ve learned from the search is that talent must stand the test of time. My collection has many songwriters who caught my interest initially, but lost it after release upon release revealed the same stylistic tendencies over and over again.

I must admit, few make it to a magic level where I feel as if I’m 16 again, waiting for the newest Don McLean or Paul Simon record. Kim gets this response from my discriminating ear.

Richey broke onto the ever-crowded country stage in the mid ’90s. The problem was that she was only just “a little bit country.” Yes, her songs were about disappointment and loneliness, but she eschewed instrumentation like the fiddle and banjo in favor of a light, rhythmic acoustic-driven sound that swelled majestically by song’s end. Her early songs typically ended with an anthem-like hook that carried you blissfully away.

I’m sure Mercury Records was hoping she’d be the next Faith Hill or something, but Kim just didn’t fit the mold. She is tall and thin—a striking presence, but not glamorous. Her wispy blonde locks fall over her eyes but not in a coquetteish manner. She’s more like one of the guys. When you watch her play and interact with her band, you can see that she’s totally focused on the music. It’s cerebral, and often joyous.

Occasionally my wife and I list memorable concerts that we’ve attended over the years. Hearing Kim Richey at a supper club remains one of our favorites. What a night! This club had an open floor in front of the band, and Kim and her group rocked so terrifically and created such energy that we just stood and swayed and allowed the pulse to enter our bodies. I’ll never forget leaving the club and walking past a window where I spied the band decompressing after coming offstage. The excitement they felt—and my connection to her music—was very palpable.

Anyway, Kim has never scored a hit, but I know that she’s highly respected in Nashville—no small compliment when you consider the number of songwriters there per square yard. I imagine that some singers at the Faith Hill level have recorded her, and I know that she’s co-written many songs with other highly respected writers. You can get all this information at her website and MySpace page.

These sites are also where you can sample her most accomplished CD thus far—Chinese Boxes. This work marks a refinement in her style, a subtle pleasurable turn on an established winning approach. Perhaps it was writing and creating this work away from Nashville that inspired Richey. Maybe it was working with Giles Martin—the son of Sir George Martin, legendary Beatles producer. It could also be that it’s been almost five years since the last CD, so that she benefited from all that reflection. (See her interviewed about this time here.)

Whatever the case, I was taken immediately with her melodic skill in the title track. But, oh, the clever lyrics too! Let me share the opening chorus and first stanza.

You’re like Chinese boxes
One inside the other
Inside the other
One inside the other one

You’re smoke and mirrors—plastic flowers
Magic spells, misdirection
Smoke and mirrors—plastic flowers.

This tune feels like an incantation: she’s trying to summon her love, but can’t locate the essence.

The other song that especially knocks me out is “Something to Say.” It’s a meditation on the “cobwebs” that entrap us and prevent us from accessing our joy. She is speaking so directly here, and I’m mesmerized because this is exactly how I feel in my moments of reflection.

Some days I look outside my window
Wonder where the time goes
Why I throw it away

One day I’ll tie up all the loose ends
Ring up my best friends
And have something to say
When all the pieces fall into place . . .

Richey delivers these sentiments not in a stark, acoustic-guitar only, navel-gazing way, but in a lovely arrangement with a soft musical cushion provided by drums, percussion, electric guitar, flutes, and even a Rhodes!

It’s hard for me to contain my enthusiasm for Kim Richey, but since I don’t wish to dampen your interest by prattling on, I’ll end here. Download some of her songs, look for her on tour—we need to support artistry like this!

As the Table Turns

I just got my turntable repaired. It wasn’t cheap. Why?

I am not an audiophile. My ear has never been finely tuned to sound quality—my basement full of audio cassettes is testimony to that fact. Years ago, I subscribed to a magazine called Stereo Review and, try as I might, I could never get engaged with the details of a new set of Danish speakers or some German receiver. (Loved the “record” reviews, however.)

Still, my turntable, receiver, and speakers are top-notch thanks to a friend who did appreciate those details. I must admit a frisson of pleasure when an Asian fellow, holding the door for me as I emerged from the shopping plaza with my turntable in hand, spied the name on the lid and remarked, “Ah, Audiophile! A classic.”

Yes, a wise investment when I purchased it used from my friend over twenty years ago. But wait, how can I say that? In this day when you can have your music collection in your hand and your stereo unit on your counter or shelf, how can I believe that I’m still receiving a return?

My storehouse of vinyl, audio cassettes, and CDs raises serious questions for me about my character. If you’re even a quarter of the pack rat that I am, I’m sure that you have some possession that you can gaze at and wonder (like I do), “What if I invested in Apple instead of buying the complete ouevre of Carmen McRae?”

But that raises additional questions—What would I be like if I hadn’t let Carmen into my heart? What riches has she afforded me? Is it worth more than money?

Strangely enough, money does enter into my decision to get my turntable repaired. I have over a thousand records that I’ve lovingly taken care of through the years. I steadfastly refuse to buy a CD or digital version of what I already have. There’s too much new music to reach out for. Anything I buy will be something new, and everything will be playable.

My records have trailed me through all the apartments where I’ve lived—some go back to my teenage years. You know how Method actors were trained to call up an emotion in a character by reaching into their past for a similar feeling? Well, sometimes records are the emotional trigger for me. Put James Taylor’s Walking Man in my hand and I’m back in Pittsburgh, scaling a hill, pondering the Energy Crisis as I trudge through the slush to my nearest record store. “Canada’s rooftops were lovely to see,” James croons and, as I listen, I think about how lovely it was to hear that same voice as I warmed myself after the walk.

Just sitting and listening to music—nothing else—is such a revolutionary act these days. We always have to be doing something, don’t we? You feel this imperative all the more the older that you get, but Lawdy, how it wears on you.

My records are a counterweight to this pressure. My “entertainment unit” (itself an antiquated piece of furniture) sits prominently in the family room, with a couch and a couple comfortable chairs in front of it. It’s the sunniest room in the house. Absolutely perfect for reclining and listening while you hold the jacket in your hand. My time-honored way of finding peace.

My records were collected during many hours spent alone, bopping from one used-music store to another. I was obsessive, and perhaps I only got into that state because I lacked focus in my career and I wasn’t committed to any woman at the time, but this realization doesn’t diminish their value to me. They fed my soul back then, they still do today, and they will in the future.

I am fortunate enough to have married someone who appreciates my passion for music. Lisa prodded me to start this blog. She set it up for me and patiently shows me again and again how to post on it. She allows me to have all that vinyl on the main floor of our home. Heck, she even got me a transmitter that allows my vinyl to be projected throughout the house. (Amazing—this gadget looks like a vacuum cleaner. It picks up the signal from the receiver and carries the sound through other rooms. Oh, how I smile to think of my uncle all those years ago, stringing speaker wire along ceilings, working to achieve the same effect.)

Willie Nelson once wrote a song called “Who’ll Buy My Memories?” Great line. I’ll tell you what, Willie—these vinyl memories are not for sale or for retirement!

Super Curtis

New World Order is a gorgeous testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Curtis Mayfield recorded it six years after being paralyzed when a lighting rig fell on him. He was 54 years old at the time (1996).

It features every attribute that made Mayfield sparkle. For starters, there’s that unforgettable falsetto. A lovely instrument in itself, his voice bounces over his text—and, as always, the lyrics are fantastic. He is one of my favorite songwriters.

Then there’s just the sheer musicality of this album. A part of Mayfield’s legacy is his originality in terms of presentation—he could play guitar, bass, piano, saxophone, and drums. He learned to play guitar by tuning it to the black keys of the piano, and his open F-Sharp tuning became a trademark.

There is such integrity to Mayfield’s work. His résumé as a producer is impressive, but I want to focus on his songwriting.

On New World Order he sings a love duet called “I Believe in You” that is simply delicious. It starts out bold and direct (“I believe in you/and I plan to love you longer”) and unwinds so silky soulfully that you’re drawn in immediately. You will then be spellbound by the exchanges between Curtis and his partner (Sandra St.Victor). Oh, that heartfelt growl as St. Victor prepares to reach her vocal heights. It’s bewitching!

Curtis’s versatility helps his music transcend any easy label. Sure, it’s R&B, but he’s infusing it with other rhythms. There’s a delightful Caribbean drive to “The Got Dang Song,” the sprightly harmonizing on the bridge to “It Was Love That We Needed,” and one of the few songs in my personal collection in which I find rap palatable (“Just a Little Bit of Love”).

Social consciousness is always flickering through his lyrics, and it puts them on such a higher ground. More than just pillow talk here. Witness the title track, of course (“A new world order/a brand new day/a change of mind/for the human race”) and the “message” songs about the dangers of life on the street.

New World Order also includes songs from Mayfield’s catalog—he performs “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue” (1970) and “The Girl I Find Stays On My Mind” (1969). It’s an amazing work—especially when you consider that Curtis was paralyzed and on his back throughout it!

This was Curtis’s last album. Three years later he died. (In the same year that he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Unfortunately he was too sick to attend the ceremonies.)

In the words of Aretha Franklin, “Curtis Mayfield is to soul music what Bach was to the classics and Gershwin and Irving Berlin were to pop music.”

Do yourself a favor and devote some time to learning and admiring his work.

Additional facts about Curtis:

1970: Curtis Mayfield leaves the Impressions to launch a solo career. His debut album, Curtis—released on his own Curtom label—enters the charts in October. It contains frank, topical songs like “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go” and “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue.”

1972: Curtis Mayfield hits #4 with “Freddie’s Dead (Theme from Superfly).”
October 21, 1972: “Superfly” tops the Billboard’s album chart for the first of four weeks. This soundtrack to a film about a Harlem drug dealer’s attempt at a final “big score” delivers two major hits: “Freddie’s Dead” (#2 R&B, #4 pop) and “Superfly” (#5 R&B, #8 pop).

1972: Watch Curtis perform "We Gotta Have Peace."

August 1, 1974: Curtis Mayfield makes the pop Top Forty for the last time with “Kung Fu,” which precedes Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” by two months. However, he’ll crack the R&B Top Forty a dozen more times between 1974 and 1981.

July 1, 1975: One of Curtis Mayfield’s most unflinchingly realistic and downbeat message albums, There’s No Place Like America Today, is released.

October 1, 1982: Honesty, Curtis Mayfield’s strongest album in years, appears to positive reviews.

August 13, 1990: Curtis Mayfield is paralyzed from the neck down after high winds cause a lighting rig to fall on him at a concert in Brooklyn, New York.

1996: He was unable to play guitar, but he wrote, sang and directed the recording of his last album, New World Order. Mayfield's vocals were painstakingly recorded, usually line-by-line whilst lying on his back.

March 15, 1999: Curtis Mayfield is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the fourteenth annual induction dinner.

December 26, 1999: Curtis Mayfield dies in Roswell, Georgia.

Singing Straight, No Chaser

Along with his friend Tony Bennett, Freddy Cole is the one of the most romantic singers practicing today. No wonder, really—I mean, the man is Nat King Cole’s brother!

I recently heard Freddy for the second time, and I marvel at his musical chops. Even at 76, the man can infuse a lyric with verve, and his musical arrangements are classy and immediately pleasurable.

During the set I heard Freddy do this marvelous medley of songs about Paris, drawing the listener in with some familiar Porter (“I Love Paris”), but then shifting to an obscure, clever song (“Where You Are Is Paris”), following with Porter’s underappreciated “I Am in Love,” and ending with “How Do You Say Auf Wiedersehn?” The emotion he created was so tangible that—in the words of another song on his latest CD Music Maestro Please—“You Could Hear a Pin Drop.”

Writer Ted Panken skillfully attempts to summarize what makes Cole unique in the liner notes to Music Maestro Please:

"No conventional virtuoso, Cole with a minimum of affect conveys oceanic emotions on material . . . loosely organized around love and loss and the ambiguities and longueurs therein that would sound bathetic and sentimental in lesser hands. The crooner is a mid-register man, with a voice that neither soars to cathartic heights nor lows through dark subterranean depths. He doesn't scat, doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, never condescends to lyrics with archness or irony. He sings them straight, no chaser, with cool timing that hews to a personal inner clock . . ."

Freddy Cole favors a bossa nova beat in his playing. I never tire of it. I highly recommend Rio De Janeiro Blue for your listening pleasure. It showcases his talents both as a romantic balladeer (“Invitation” will immediately cast a languorous spell upon you) and as an upbeat celebrator of romance itself (“Something Happens to Me” and “Wild Is Love” always rekindle my inner passion!)

By the way, Freddy recently cut a tribute CD to Tony Bennett, and I also urge you to give it a try. At the show I attended he performed “What Are You Afraid Of?” from Bennett’s 1986 comeback album on Columbia. I’m so glad he’s keeping this song in circulation—it’s quite the crowd-pleaser. (Think of another turn on the sentiment expressed in “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and you’ll get the song’s concept.)

Check out Freddy Cole’s discography on his website. He’s been one of the hardest working jazz singers of the last 20 years. Scan his touring schedule and mark your calendar. Treasures like Freddy are worth making an effort to see. Let's end with you enjoying Freddy asserting himself in "I'm Not My Brother, I'm Me."

My Two Ellas

My love for standards was ignited by Ella Fitzgerald. When I first sought out music to call my own, I gravitated to the singer-songwriters. In my youthful self-righteousness I declared them the avatars of emotional sincerity and depth. You want phony? Then try my father’s music. Sinatra, Dean Martin, all those Vegas types. YECCCH!

I bought my first Fitzgerald songbook my junior year in college. I was astounded at the beauty of the lyrics of Rodgers and Hart, and in Ella’s interpretation of them. Now, all these years later, I have a dog named after her.

Like Ella Fitzgerald, this dog is graceful. You should hear her rhythmic clitter-clatter as she glides across our wood floors! I’ve read that Fitzgerald had a little-girl quality about her and here, too, my dog connects with the legend. She is so bright and enthusiastic—Ella is always looking to play.

I won’t discuss scat, because that connection should be apparent.

Let’s see—how else are these two Ellas alike? Well, the singer was a lonely woman—married only once, and that for a short time. (I think this longing really gives her singing much of its power.) One only has to release my Ella from her crate to appreciate how lonely she gets.

The main thing these two Ellas share is the ability to touch my heart. I love both of them deeply. Ella Fitzgerald was the First Lady of Song and my Ella—well, she’ll be my top dog and First Canine Lady for years hence.

You can’t take that away from me!

My heartfelt thanks go out to Julie Zickefoose, a woman with a key eye for beauty in the natural and musical world, and her very own musical, stuffed babeh-killing terrier.

Perfectly Tony

I recently enjoyed an American Masters program on Tony Bennett. What I especially liked about it was that Bennett discussed how he came across some of the musical numbers associated with him.

Singers from Bennett’s generation all dipped into the Great American Songbook—these songs filled out the brunt of the musical program on their albums and gave them a canvas upon which to stamp their particular style. But inevitably a singer was forced to search for original material.

Frank Sinatra was famous enough not to have to search long. But even he had to place his faith in a couple of songwriters—namely Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen—who’d consistently give him fresh material with hit potential. Think of “All the Way,” “High Hopes,” “Call Me Irresponsible,” and “Love and Marriage.”

Sinatra latched onto Nelson Riddle, and their association propelled his career into its Golden Age. Earlier in the ’50s, Sinatra and his label (Columbia Records) had parted ways and one reason—aside from his poor record sales—was that Sinatra deplored working with Mitch Miller. He felt that Miller and the label were offering him only novelty songs (like “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” or “Come on-a My House,” hits for Rosemary Clooney at the time).

A young Tony Bennett was at Columbia at the time, and his association with Miller is warmly recounted in the American Masters special. Turns out that Tony had a burning passion to sing, and since he was younger than Sinatra and unknown, he carried no baggage into his relationship with Miller.

Miller hit upon a salient characteristic of Bennett’s singing at the time—Tony had a lovely warm voice that carried a lyrical line seamlessly from start to finish. He clearly enunciated each vowel and consonant, so the story in the song was well understood upon one listening. Bennett recalled a classical musical singing style called bel canto. Wikipedia tell us that—

Bel canto singing characteristically focuses on perfect evenness throughout the voice, skillful legato, a light upper register, tremendous agility and flexibility, and a certain lyric, "sweet" timbre.

Miller steered Bennett toward material that suited this style, and Tony scored big with songs like “Because of You” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

It was Miller who suggested Hank Williams’s “Cold Cold Heart.” The song is a charming anachronism, and it illustrated Bennett’s greatest talent—his passionate respect for a lyric, wherever it may originate from. This man always had a strong sense of what he wanted to accomplish as a singer.

Bennett soared again in the early ’60s with a little ditty about San Francisco, but his hit-making days for him and his compatriots came to a resounding end soon after John, Paul, George, and Ringo hit the tarmac at JFK.

But that strong knowledge of his own skill would sustain him through the 1960s, and, in the early 1970s when Columbia dropped him from the label, it would lead him to the confirmation that jazz and a simple, direct accompaniment was the next step.

I’ll be writing more about Tony Bennett because his singing is such an inspiration to me. In the meantime, though, may I suggest an album from his oeuvre that has seized my attention recently? It features just Tony and a piano, and I suggest you settle back and listen to those long, lovely, lyrical lines from Perfectly Frank.

It’s a tribute to Sinatra, the other unforgettable pop male vocalist of his generation. Arrivederci!

The Curse of the Versatile

Teresa Brewer died last week at the age of 76. Best known for her novelty song "Music, Music, Music" ("Drop another nickel in/in the nickelodeon . . .") Brewer had great substance as a singer that many people missed.

Perhaps it was because she hit her stride in the 1970s—a time when singers in general were marginalized as rock took complete hold of the popular audience. It was during this period that Brewer recorded a series of songbooks that make a nifty companion to those of Ella Fitzgerald.

She and Fitzgerald both becames sensations because of their novelty songs (Ella's was "A-Tisket, A-Tasket"), but while Ella honed her craft in the realm of jazz, Brewer navigated a variety of forms. Scanning her albums, I appreciate the variety of material she sang—ragtime, blues, pop, and jazz.

When she settled into jazz in the '70s, her artistry blossomed. My favorite album of hers was dedicated to Fats Waller. It was recorded with Earl "Fatha" Hines and features a knockout version of "Black and Blue." If you search for one album by Brewer, this is the one to get.

Brewer also recorded with Count Basie and Stephane Grapelli. She also worked with rock and country musicians into the 1980s and 1990s.

Really, to see a prime example of how to sing with VERVE, give Teresa Brewer a listen! You'll be delighted to add her to your iPod!

Here's a link to a video of Teresa Brewer singing a song called "Willy Burgandy" on YouTube.