Swans in the headphones…

September 11, 2014 //

I’ve seen Swans five times, Angels of Light twice and Michael Gira solo once. My next Swans gig is in two weeks at the Paradiso and there’ll probably be a review here.

I created this playlist to reflect M Gira’s solo gig earlier this year. It leans heavily on the acoustic goodies in the catalogue. Note that Nowness (Warning: Loud autoplayed video) shares the following on the matter of the band’s sound:

Swans’ seemingly endless touring schedule since their resurrection has seen the band’s reputation grow to the point that they are considered one of the most potent rock acts on the planet: The New Yorker’s Sacha Frere-Jones has hailed them as “one of the most fearsome working live bands.”

Swans: DNA Lounge, San Francisco, 1992.
Swans: Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, 1997. (I passed on the 1995 show because I didn’t really like The Great Annihilator. My loss.
Angels of Light: Great American Music Hall, 1999
Angels of Light: Palac Akropolis, Prague, 2005
Swans: Palac Akropolis, Prague, 2010 (I’d already moved to the Netherlands, but there were no NL tour dates announced when the Prague show went on sale. Worth the price of the flight, but Swans always are.)
Swans: I’ll Be Your Mirror, Alexandra Palace London, 2011.
Swans: Patronaat, Haarlem, 2012. My friends Andre, Mike, and Lucie joined for this one. I’m pretty sure The Seer went on for about 45 minutes. This wouldn’t have been uncommon. Lucie and I stepped up to the bar about midway through. After the show, the other three referred to it as “the song that wouldn’t end” which amused me. I think I was the only one prepared for that.
Michael Gira: MC Theatre, Amsterdam, 2014. Brilliant solo acoustic outing.

Looked up the set lists for the current tour – Already new songs, including this goodie with which they’re opening.

Tags Swans

Categories Music, Rock

Joe’s History of Rock and Roll 01 – Origins

September 9, 2014 //

A storm coming together of the blaring horns of swing music, the development of the electric guitar by the late great Les Paul, electric blues out of Chicago, country boogie woogie, independent record labels like Atlantic, Chess (Leonard and Phil Chess – nice Jewish Boys), and Sam Phillips’ Sun Records (home of Jerry Lee Lewis and first label of Elvis Presley before Phillips sold Presley’s contract to RCA). Specialty Records another early big one. This stuff all comes in the 50s.

There are arguments to be made, however, that the origins of rock and roll date back at least to the 30s. I’ve chosen fourteen songs from the Wikipedia early rock and roll page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_rock_and_roll) as examples of nascent rock music.

The songs that were the first rock and roll hits came in the early 50s, but, as noted, there were sounds coming from all over that contributed to the rock and roll sound. And the earliest influences, by some accounts, were recorded in the 20s. The thing to keep in mind, as the article states, is that every opinion is based on the person’s own criteria – there’s no real standard.

Wynonie Harris’ version of Good Rockin’ Tonight, Louis Jordan’s Caldonia, Jimmy Preston’s Rock This Joint are all early moves from swing and R&B to what rock and roll would sound like when polished by people like Sam Philips (founder of Sun Records – we’ll get to him in the next Rock lesson).

It’s hard to discuss early rock and roll without noting that the term often refers to both dancing and sex (which, some have noted, is also true of the term ‘jazz’), but the phrase also has a gospel sense. Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Rock Me is a spiritual:

You hold me in the bosom / Till the storms of life is over
Rock me in the cradle of our love / Only feed me till I want no more
Then you take me to your blessed home above

(Much later, Jackson Browne’s Rock Me On The Water had a similar usage.)

While Wynonie Harris’ version of Good Rockin’ Tonight definitely has the non-spiritual sense to it, in several stanzas he uses the phrase ‘heard the news’ which is a traditional reference to the gospels.

This weaving together of the sacred and the profane finds its way into many different corners of the rock landscape. Doo Wop and R&B always had the church choir influence – this is where many rock/R&B/soul singers learned to harmonize. Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, and Whitney Houston all had gospel backgrounds.

Country blues (also known as folk blues) music has a slightly different feel than the blues we’ve covered in the jazz lessons. It tends to be performed with solo acoustic guitar (and occasionally harmonica). I’ve included Jim Johnson’s Kansas City Blues because you can trace his style down through Hank Williams (the first, not to be confused with country star Hank Williams Jr. and Hank III, his son and grandson) and in one direction to Bob Dylan and the late 50s/early 60s folk scene and on to the boogie of ZZ Top and others in the ‘southern fried rock’ bands of the 70s (April Wine, .38 Special, etc.).

Clarence ‘Pinetop’ Smith’s Pinetop Boogie Woogie has a stride piano base, and mostly has for lyrics instructions to the band to do various things. This format can be heard much later in Ray Bryant’s Madison Time (with which I’m pretty sure you’re familiar) and a whole lot of James Brown (“Can I hit it and quit it?” from Sex Machine, for example).

The Washboard Rhythm Kings’ version of Tiger Rag is notable for being thoroughly unhinged. Note that the music of the jug band tradition (that of turning household objects into cheap musical instruments) would influence musicians in the small folk clubs of the early 60s. In Palo Alto, there was Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions who would soon change their name to the Warlocks and finally to the Grateful Dead.

And here’s an earlier, equally off the hook version of Tiger Rag: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWSnT62X8uA

And a much more recent version, I think from a Les Paul tribute concert featuring Jeff Beck and Imelda May: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy3P7Ry94cQ

Delta blues legend Robert Johnson’s relatively small body of recorded work was mostly unrecognized while he was alive. He died in 1938, and might be the first member of the 27 club, about which more later. Johnson’s complete recordings comprise only 42 recordings (including alternate takes) and fit on two CDs. However, the 1961 reissue, Columbia’s King of the Delta Blues Singers influenced a whole load of musicians including B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, and Robert Plant. (Yeah, four of those are white English boys. In a few months I’ll do a lesson on the American Invasion of Britain that predates the British Invasion.)

On these solo blues recordings you can hear what became the twin-guitar approach of four-person rock and roll bands. On I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom, Johnson alternates between playing chords and more rapid individual notes. In most folk/folk blues you generally just get the chords.

It’s not just Johnson’s guitar technique that was influential. The songs themselves were covered by groups across the rock and roll spectrum and have become blues and rock standards.

The rhythms of Bob Willis’ Ida Red would find their way into Chuck Berry’s late 50s hits for Specialty including Maybelline.

To illustrate how swing threads its way into rock and roll, I’ve added two versions of Louis Jordan’s fantastic Caldonia. The first is a piano-based boogie woogie, the second featuring electric guitar. I’ve also included the full version of his 1949 Saturday Night Fish Fry which includes the chorus:

It was rocking / It was rocking
You never seen such scufflin’ and shufflin’
Til the break of dawn

(I think this is an editing together of both sides of the original 78. Not sure.) Of course, using the word rocking in the refrain helps identify it as an early rock record (and was noted as such by Chuck Berry), but that phrase “til the break of dawn” would later haunt more cut-rate hip-hop songs than you can shake a tail feather at.

Arthur Big Boy Crudup’s That’s All Right Mamma was later covered by Elvis Presley for his first single, though Rock Me Mama was originally Crudup’s bigger hit.

You met Nat “King” Cole, in the last jazz lesson. His rendition of Bobby Troup’s Route 66 was a hit in 1946 and was later covered by numerous rock bands including the Rolling Stones (in 1963, I think) and the Replacements (in 1987). Another argument made about rock and roll is that it has two subjects: cars and girls. What made the car part of the argument possible was the post-war expansion of the US highway system. A single highway from Chicago to Los Angeles was well worth singing about.

And finally, we’ve got Jimmy Preston’s Rock This Joint (1949). Like Good Rockin’ Tonight, it has that repeating reference to secular rocking. One story is that this was the track that led Cleveland DJ Alan Freed to apply the term rock and roll to rhythm and blues music as early as 1951. A lot of late 40s R&B which would have been termed race music for the purposes of record charts would also have been unheard by most white audiences until Freed started playing it on his radio show. Of this, more in the next report.

Oh, and there’s one other thing. Teenagers. With America’s post-war affluence and growing middle class, due in part to the GI bill, strong unions, and a very strong economy, young people for the first time had a disposable income and corporations of many kinds were keen to exploit it. This will be a recurring theme as rock and roll becomes a commodity.

Next up: The Labels

Tags cars, girls, gospel, Jerry Lee Lewis, Les Paul, soul

Categories Rock

Facebook blues.

September 9, 2014 //

It’s an old story and one I’m reading a lot these days. Several people recently have gone off Facebook in part or in whole for reasons that have mostly to do with the hatred and inanity of what passes for commentary.

For my part, it’s more a matter of how much time it takes up. I don’t drink much or take drugs, but I’m pretty sure FB is my addiction and I’m keen for it to take up less of my life.

And really, what do I do over there? I share posts other people write or goofy images other people create. And lists of the tunes that I’ve listened to whilst I run. I can do that over here, too, but am required, perhaps, to write something cogent about the matters rather than just say, read this thing I just read. It’s cool.

And don’t get me started about the massive amounts of click bait.

Occasionally I write something of my own, but I’m not nearly as prolific as I would like to be – FB makes things much easier than LiveJournal ever did. I’d like for my online presence to be much more about the writing skills I actually possess. These have been mostly geared to writing about music for my nieces, and not nearly enough fiction, though that’s what I really enjoy writing when I sit down to do it.

While on holiday recently, I started writing stories that may end up being the introduction to a novel. Note please that I have bits of perhaps a dozen unfinished novels in my files, so I don’t have high hopes. Yet. Usually I write the first bits by hand and run into contradictions and inconsistencies which I iron out once I put the notes into an editable format. And then I fiddle around with them for a bit and eventually get bored and start writing something else.

Well, I’m mostly done transcribing and should really get down to business with it, especially as my writing group will be meeting shortly. (I’m currently well amused with HanxWriter and am doing much of my Facebook blues. with it and copying into other files so that I can do something useful with the texts, as it only exports to PDF. I’m using it even as I write this. I like the old typewriter sounds and the output is pretty cool.)

It used to be that I accompanied my blog posts with a notation of the music played during the writing. This evening it was Pat Metheny’s Tap: Book of Angels Vol. 20. (Book of Angels is a series of compositions by John Zorn recorded by a number of different artists. Metheny’s is sublime.)

Tags social networking

Categories Uncategorized

Billie’s Blues – Part 2

July 20, 2014 //

Here I look at Lady Day’s final years. She was madly prolific, and along with dozens of classic tracks, recorded two of vocal jazz’s definitive albums: Lady Sings the Blues and Lady in Satin.
Billie’s Blues – Part 1

http://open.spotify.com/user/bishopjoey/playlist/2isTukXm4f9hIU4y6kPGvn

1955 Music for Torching (Clef) /
1956 Velvet Mood (Clef)
Recorded: August 23 & August 25, 1955

Recorded only six months after Stay with Me, you can hear Billie’s voice start to falter in front of this tight combo.

Donald Clarke, in his biography of Lady Day, Wishing on the Moon, (2000) indicates that Billie was in general in a bad way in these years – the 1954 sessions were contentious due to various hangers on and alcohol. The man she was with, a “mafia enforcer” (according to Wikipedia) and pimp named Louis McKay, who took all the money she made and kept her in a state of malnutrition.

This collection very much adheres to the themes of unrequited love suggested by the title, and her phrasing is still pretty tight. On a JATP bill she shared with Ella Fitzgerald during this period, the second half of her set was a bit of a mess – something she blamed on Oscar Peterson (with whom she never worked again), though one guesses it was the drugs. I’m not sure whether this is the show that was released as Live at JATP. In ’54 she cleaned up briefly, but by the end of the year was using again.

Clarke (who isn’t exactly objective in his writing) states that the combo on Music for Torching is “one of the best line-ups Lady ever had.” The subject matter is, as always, love, about equally balanced between requited and not. Come Rain or Come Shine, A Fine Romance, I Get a Kick out of You, and Isn’t This a Lovely Day fall in the first category, though you can hear the longing in them. Isn’t This a Lovely Day, which closes side two, is especially poignant, with her voice playing off the Benny Carter’s alto sex just before a beautiful trumpet solo from Harry “Sweets” Edison.

On the other hand, Gone with the Wind, I Don’t Want to Cry Anymore and I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You really point up the album’s title – these are songs about carrying a torch for a love that’s gone. Her phrasing is still the top, but the range is further diminished.

What’s interesting here is the production. Carter and Edison feel far from the microphones, giving the impression she’s singing in an empty room. When the guitar (Barney Kessel again) comes in, and then the piano, they’re much closer, as though replying to the one she’s addressing – the ghost made flesh – in the refrain: “If you’d surrender, just for a kiss or two, you might discover that I’m the lover meant for you, and I’ll be true. But what’s the good of scheming; I know I must be dreaming, for I don’t stand a ghost of a chance with you.” The piano solo (Jimmy Rowles, a graduate of Lester Young, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey among others, replacing Peterson) might be the reply the singer longs for, but the repeated refrain after the solo returns to the echoing horns.

Velvet Mood leans more towards the melancholy and the arrangements/production put the Billie’s voice more to the front and most of the tracks. The only up-tempo pieces are Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone (weird, given the lyrical content of the piece, though other arrangements are similarly upbeat) and Nice Work If You Can Get It.

I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues is, in many ways, an extended showcase for Kessel whose solo takes up the middle third of this six-minute track and is almost a blues sermon on its own.

1956 Lady Sings the Blues (Clef)
Recorded: June 6 & 7, 1956, September 3, 1954

Before you read further, listen to Strange Fruit. If you haven’t before, listen carefully. This had been one of Holiday’s signature tunes since its composition in the 1930s. There were times she was forbidden by club owners to sing it.

Around 1998, I took a three or 4-hour drive with a girl who acted and sang in musical theatre and had wide-ranging musical tastes. I had a few tapes in her car, including Live at JATP. At that late date, Strange Fruit still shocked on first listen.

That said, this album was my intro to Lady Day. I bought a Japanese cassette of it in 1986 and it spent a lot of time in my tape player. I’m not sure who recommended it to me – it’s nothing like anything I was listening to at the time, but from Chalie Shaver’s opening trumpet blast on the title track, I was hooked.

For this album, Holiday re-recorded eight earlier hits and four new songs (the title track, Too Marvelous for Words, Willow Weep for Me, and I Thought About You) to coincide with the release of her ghost-written autobiography. The arrangements reflect those of the earlier Clef albums. Songs of love and loss are punctuated by God Bless The Child, (for which, like the title track, Holiday shares a writing credit) about the importance of self-reliance, and Strange Fruit. Strange Fruit, an absolutely chilling song about lynching in the South, had been in Holiday’s repertoire since its composition in the late 1930s. The song and its writer, Abel Meeropol, have a very interesting history. A socialist, Meeropol later adopted the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets at the start of the Cold War. You can find a brief history of the song (and a long digression on the connections between Stalinism and the US Democratic party) here.

In terms of the arrangement of the album and the arrangements of the songs, it’s always struck me that the title track and Strange Fruit have these crazy trumpet blasts. Donald Clarke complains “the only studio recording of ‘Lady Sings the Blues’ has an introduction and a finish with a drum-roll and open trumpet, sounding like bullfight music. ‘Strange Fruit’ also gets open horn, and for once Shavers indeed sounds overbearing, partly because of the recording quality.”

Despite having been recorded in three different sessions (tracks 1-8 being the July, 1958 dates in New York, 9-12 coming from 1954 dates in California with no overlapping players), it comes off to me as being a unified whole. Again, this was my intro to her and I’d never heard anything like it. Critical dismissal of this or that aspect of it doesn’t really hit me. These are the versions I know best – earlier recordings, even though she’s in better voice, don’t sound as good to my ear.

1957 Songs for Distingué Lovers (Verve)
Recorded: January 3, 4, 7, & 8, 1957

Originally only six tracks, all from what’s become known as the American Songbook. The album includes one Rogers/Hart, two Johnny Mercers, a Gershwin brothers, and a Porter, rounded out by the Parrish/Perkins composition Stars Fell on Alabama. It continues the small group work she’d been doing in the 50s on Verve. The group includes several who are on the earlier sessions including Edison Webster, Kessel, and Red Mitchell.

And as had been usual at this point, the voices of the musicians seem to outshine Holiday’s own declining vocal talents, but again, her phrasing is still impeccable. She and Webster almost have a duet going on Mercer/Allen’s One For My Baby (And One More for the Road), a song that Frank Sinatra recorded for three different albums in the 50s, notably Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely the following year. (His 1947 version is much more upbeat, while the ’58 is much closer to Billie’s.)

I think this late version of Porter’s Just One of Those Things feels a little forced vocally, but it has several fantastic solos. Kessel, Edison, and Webster each provide beautiful solos that flow with the seemingly effortless playing they always displayed.

The closing I Didn’t Know What Time It Was has the vocal regret the lyrics seem to demand, when she sings “Yes I’m wise and I know what time it is now,” it’s sounds clear that she does.

1958 All or Nothing at All (Verve)
Recorded: August 14 & 18, 1956, January 3, 7, & 8, 1957

From the same sessions that produced Songs for Distingué Lovers, you can hear the same diminishing voice, but excellent phrasing and the accompaniment is spot on. There’s not much to distinguish these last two albums from one another – it’s mostly a matter, I’m guessing, of what Verve chose to release. I don’t know if she was at the end of her contract (much as Miles was with Prestige) and met her obligations by letting them take what was useful from the sessions. In keeping with the album’s title, the songs alternate between those that deal in love and those that suggest love’s ending.

Weill and Nash’s Speak Low seems prescient, “Love is pure gold and time a thief / We’re late, darling, we’re late / The curtain descends, ev’rything ends too soon, too soon” and she handles it with the sadness and resignation the song demands.

Another interesting item is I Wished on the Moon, an unlikely song of requited love both because Billie seems rarely sang any so straight up romantic as this one, and because its lyricist, Dorothy Parker, was known for her caustic wit. (Compare the lyrics to I Wished on the Moon to Parker’s poem One Perfect Rose.)

Well, the romance doesn’t last long. I Wished on the Moon is followed by the Gershwin’s But Not For Me, in an upbeat, swinging arrangement. The fact remains, that this one is about the love others seem to have that the singer does not.

Berlin’s Say It Isn’t So begins with only Jimmy Rowles’ sparse piano for accompaniment. At the bridge Edison and Alvin Stoller join on trumpet and lightly brushed drums. Webster’s saxophone comes in for the final verse, bringing the mood up a little, but the retaining the song’s air of despair. Finally, the Gershwins’ Our Love Is Here to Stay brings the All back.

1958 Lady in Satin (Columbia)
Recorded: February 19, 20, & 21, 1958

Lady Day’s final album was in fact the first of her music I heard. Either my mother or my sister bought the album in ’81 or so. I wasn’t sure what to make of Ray Ellis’ orchestral arrangements. I first heard these songs before Linda Ronstadt brought fully orchestrated music back to the top 40 with her Nelson Riddle collaborations (What’s New, 1983; Lush Life, 1984; For Sentimental Reasons, 1986), and was mostly listening to rock and new wave at the time anyway.

On a certain level, one can accept the Penguin Guide’s comment that this album is “a voyeuristic look at a beaten woman,” but that’s rather unfair. Despite the complete loss of her upper range, the production keeps her vocals at the forefront of the music. Unlike the small sessions on Verve, the orchestra often act as more of a wall of sound behind the voice.

Hoagy Carmichael’s I Get Along Without You Very Well is oddly well served by its slightly broken vocals. I’ve forgotten you just like I should / What a fool am I to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

For me, the standout track is Violets for Your Furs. The simple bass line carries Holiday’s voice though distant violin blizzards. The bridge features a beautiful interplay of strings and trombone (there are four on the album – not sure who plays that section) that evoke the winter day blue sky that she sings of.

It seems there were initially two editions of the album – the stereo version had eleven tracks and closed with I’ll Be Around. The mono version closed with The End of a Love Affair. The narrator of I’ll Be Around carries the same lyrical torch as that of I Get Along Without You Very Well – one that indicates, you know when you’re done with that floozy who’s caught your eye, I’ll still be there. It fits with the album, but it’s an odd note to close on.

The End of a Love Affair (which oddly has a stereo mix which is available on a 1997 reissue) seems to be tacked on as well. It’s a beautiful evocation of what the jilted lover feels. The instrumentalists are more the spotlight of the song as well, almost overpowering the vocals. The combination of songs and arrangements is wonderful, but when it came time to put the album together, the producers didn’t quite know what to do. But Beautiful or For All We Know might have been better choices, but they didn’t have me to make the perfect track listing.

After Lady In Satin, Holiday, Ellis, and a smaller group (fewer strings, no choir, but Harry Edison in the group) convened for sessions on which she said she wanted “to sound like Sinatra.” The recordings were completed in March, 1959. In July, her excesses took their final toll and she died at the age of 44. MGM released the album with the title Last Recordings, but I think they were just cashing in. It certainly swings with songs that she might have done justice to earlier in her career, but her voice is positively shot. It’s not so fitting a coda to her career as theprevious, but she takes chances with the selection. While You Took Advantage of Me and Baby Won’t You Please Come Home come off as a little bit embarrassing, Just One More Chance is really quite poignant, and All the Way showcases her phrasing and style. Alas, Ellis himself took over the production tasks and didn’t have the chops that Irving Townshend brought to Lady In Satin.

Tags billie holiday, columbia, harry edison, ray ellis, verve

Categories Jazz

Billie’s Blues – Part 1

June 23, 2014 //

Prior to the 1950s, Billie Holiday recorded primarily singles. From 1952 until her death at the age of 44 in 1959, Lady Day recorded ten studio albums and three live albums, primarily for the Verve label (and its Clef subsidiary). She recorded her final album, 1958’s Lady in Satin, for Columbia.

This last period of her life was marked by a lot of personal strife, including abusive relationships, as well as heroin addiction, but even on that final album, she’s well in control of her talents, though her voice had lost a lot of its range.

The thing to remember about these albums is that, unlike her earlier work, these are their own set pieces, not standalone singles, or collections of singles. Of course, this isn’t true only of Billie’s work – it’s the nature of the music business in general in the 1950s– with the advent of LPs, artists, label, and producers began to conceive of pieces listeners would enjoy at a sitting, generally in front of a large console hi-fi system.

By this period, the recording art had become such that the instrumental solos get as much attention as Holiday’s vocals. I don’t think in recording she was ever less than generous with the people who played with her, but on these late albums the band members all get a chance to shine.

1952 Billie Holiday Sings / Recorded: March 26, 1952 (Clef)

This eight-song 10” (extended to 12 and renamed Solitude for the 12” 1956 rerelease) maintains a mostly upbeat take on love with gently swinging arrangements. On the one hand, producer Norman Granz keeps the instrumentation light and Billie’s voice to the front. On the other, her interplay with the musicians, notably Charlie Shaver’s muted trumpet on Solitude and Oscar Peterson’s piano on Blue Moon, highlight how well she used her voice as an instrument in much the way Ella and Sarah Vaughan did. I recall hearing her version I Only Have Eyes For You sometime in the 90s and falling in love with it. I was already familiar with a lot of her work, but only knew the slower 1959 version by the Flamingos.

1953 An Evening with Billie Holiday / Recorded: April 1, 1952 & July 27, 1952 (Clef)

This is an altogether more down affair than Billie Holiday Sings. Stormy Weather sets the tone – this is a collection of lost love and love on the rocks songs. While My Man, He’s Funny That Way, and Tenderly address love as a good thing, the tempo and timing are as sad as those on opener Stormy Weather. On the other side of the coin, closer Remember addresses a lover who has strayed, but with a much happier the tempo. This track also features a pair of really nice solos from Peterson and Barney Kessel. (At the time Kessel and bassist Ray Brown rounded out the Oscar Peterson Trio, though Kessel only stayed a year.)

1954 Billie Holiday / Recorded: April 1, 1952 & April 14, 1954 (Clef)

As you can see all three of these albums came out of sessions that occurred in a four month period, and with many of the same players on all sessions. That said, the musicians are all at the top of the game. The playlist has all eight tracks because they weren’t obviously available on Spotify in sequence. Listen, in particular to Everything I Have Is Yours. Billie and tenor man Flip Philips are engaging in a sweet dialogue. As with the first two sets, the songs strike a melancholy balance between love and lost love. The closing tracks, however, positively swing. What a Little Moonlight Can Do features another fantastic solo from Peterson and some sweet trumpet work from Charlie Shavers while I Cried For You, a defiant kiss-off to a faithless lover is notable for its building intensity.

1955 Stay with Me / Recorded: February 14, 1955 (Verve)

This seven-song result of a single recording session with Tony Scott’s orchestra and features on side A a couple of longer pieces (each well over six minutes) sandwiching a modern take on Fats Waller’s 1929 hit Ain’t Misbehavin’. (I’ve added a Waller rendition to the playlist as well, for a contrast.) These are strange recordings in that the solos really stretch out. Everything Happens To Me, with its line “I’m just a girl who never looks before she jumps” has the not quite defeated feeling of the classic recordings of Good Morning Heartache and Travelin’ Light off Lady Sings The Blues recorded the following year. The sequencing of the album reflects that of Billie Holiday, with two swingers on side B, I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm and Irving Berlin’s Always, though it closes with a thoughtful rendition of Ellington’s Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me.

Tags billie holiday

Categories Jazz, Music