The Flatland Chronicles

Soundtracks of My Life: Classic Songs of the Vietnam Era

I posted this at Buck Naked Politics for a Thursday 13.  It's so personal to me that I thought I'd cross-post it here.

You Tube is such a wonderful thing.    This is the sound of war, resistance, and a transient transcendence.  In those days everything had a rainbow aura around it, even blood and death and the seemingly endless grind of my generation's war.  We thought that things were changing and that we could be the agents of change.  You can hear in the voices that these singers thought what they were saying meant something that transcended the merely personal.  Meet the old boss just like the new boss, and the people who we thought were leading us into a new age.   

Soundtracks of My Life: My Dad's Ultimate Party Song

When you reach my age and stage of life, you'll have accumulated a certain set of songs that you don't actually like, but that feel like part of you because your parents did.  Maybe for you it's---say---Bruce Springsteen or Abba.  As my dad was born in 1926, I heard a lot of really good music:  authentic vintage jazz, big band, and so on; some musicals I quite liked and still like; and a whole lot of crap that just seemed to quaint for words. 

I was reminded of this one while looking for the preceding recording by Mario Lanza (Recondite Armonia from Tosca by way of the film The Great Caruso).

More Soundtracks of My Life: 'Strange Harmony of Contrasts' (Tosca)

Here's another song from an opera---Puccini this time----that I fell in love with as a teen-ager.   While I was much too much a product of the seventies to see the famous sexual appeal of Mario Lanza (who flourished earlier), my dad had the album "The Great Caruso" and I played this song incessantly on my Seventies style "hi fi" till the grooves were quite worn down. 

"Whatever Bubbles Bubbles Up....": Greatest Music Video EVER? (Directed by Michel Gondry)

I probably haven't mentioned several thousand times, but I am not a fan of music videos---I mean the contrived sort you see on video stations-- in general.  In general, as I've said, they tend more often than not to ruin the song for me.  They're never quite what I imagined.  Sometimes the director's sense of whimsy ruins the song forever.  At You Tube, Cap'n Fix comments:

An excellent music video that aired briefly on MTV in 1994 and soon became largely forgotten. This one was filmed in B&W to produce an old-timey ambience that works very well with the ragtime sound. Pay close attention to the continuity. The whole video was filmed with a steadycam, in one continuous shot...an unbelievably difficult task that only someone like Michel Gondry could pull off. This catchy vid is no longer in production and a rare treat to find, wherever it happens to bubble up ;-)

Seriously, isn't this fusion of rap and vintage jazz amazing?  And is this not a perfect wedding of music with imagery?  Nicholas, who doesn't like any music that wasn't recorded during a very narrow period, was impressed by the video.  But of course:  Michel Gondry.

I saw it in 1994 and have never, ever forgotten it.  I was thrilled to find it.  It should never be lost or forgotten!  And here it is: 

Bessie Tucker: Twenties Barrelhouse Blues

Courtesy of the indispensable Yazoo Records, I first heard Bessie Tucker sing "Fort Worth and Denver Blues (click here for a sample)."  Here voice blew me away.  Astonishing....  Who is she, you might wonder?

Very little is known of the classic blues belter Bessie Tucker, a product of the folk and field holler vocal traditions of her native East Texas region. A woman whose petite frame belied the earthy power of her voice, her legend is largely founded on a bawdy 1928 Memphis session for the Victor label on which she was accompanied by pianist K.D. Johnson; the date yielded her best-known track, "Penitentiary" (sung in honor of an institution to which she was reportedly no stranger). A 1929 date followed, at which time Tucker disappeared from performing, apparently for good; no data exists on the later events of her life. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide (Answers.com)

Fats Waller: "Ain't Misbehavin'"

Fats Waller, one of my husband's heroes, just before he died (1943) at the age of 39.  He died of pneumonia on a train.  Fats Waller plus a lovely singer named Myra Johnson in a mock catfight; what could be better?   I couldn't find out much about Myra Johnson, beyond the fact (I got this from a book of my jazz-loving husband's) that she recorded with Boyd Senter and his band in 1938.  She recorded two sides.  That's all I could learn.. 

Anyway, here's one of the great jazz classics:

I couldn't love this video any more than I do.  I hope that the current generation of African-Americans will rediscover this irreplaceable and revered musical heritage soon, soon, soon.  Such elan, my God.  Bring back the Delta blues and authentic jazz, 21st Century style!

I'm doing my part to spread the love.

Enigma's Tribute to Callas (and More)

Back in the early Nineties, everyone was listening to Michael Cretu's Enigma.  I started thinking of them while viewing/listening to all of Callas I could find on You Tube.

As so often is the case, the video for "Callas Went Away" doesn't match up at all well with the images that the music put in my head.  You may feel differently. 

I do love the way they've worked Callas's voice into the song itself (an aria from Werther, which sounds completely different against this background music.)...Anyway, I had the image whenever I listened to it of her driving off in her carriage (because of the hoof sounds) while, say, petals blew in the wind.  You know, all pink, white, rose, red, and gold infusing heavenly blue: a metaphor for the death of a great diva.  This is quite different from what I imagined.

"Callas Went Away" isn't the best known song on the album:  I suspect  "Mea Culpa" and "The Principles of Lust" are better known, not to mention Sadeness.  Both helped bring about a revival of interest in Gregorian Chanting.  (But it's just not the same without the background effects of Enigma...)

This band's definitely worth looking into if you're too young (or too old) to remember when their music was everywhere.  I recommend pouring a glass of wine and listening to the entire album in a darkened room.

A Contemporary Tribute to the Memphis Jug Band

Man, I love the Memphis Jug Band.  And thanks to the wondrous Yazoo Records I was able to buy a recording of their music.

One of my friends who claims to be able to do "past lives" readings says I was African-American back in the days of the early Twentieth Century.  Maybe it's so because nothing gives me the faux (or are they?) flashbacks known as deja vu like the real, raw musical stylings of the gutbucket/barrelhouse period.  I'm talking about early blues, not jazz.  It's exactly the combination of diffidence and detachment, of moan and resignation that hits me where I live, as they used to say. 

Love Yazoo.  Love it. 

And I really enjoy this---a contemporary tribute by  a band called Snakehead Run to the original Memphis players' "KC Moan", though without jugs and washboards, alas:

Soundtracks of My Life: "Rustic Chivalry" (& the World's Most Passionate Love Song)

I was fortunate enough to find my favorite version of "The Siciliano" from Macagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" on YouTube (below).  Maybe because the first version I ever heard featured Franco Corelli, I've never been able to love any other the same way.  I think it was in a set of opera records (Italian) my father bought me for Christmas.  I was at the age to fall in love with this opera (a gritty "verismo" piece which my snobbier friends nevertheless call "smarmy.")   And the very first time I heard this song---I was fifteen, so it was 35 years ago and yet I remember it plainly---I was hooked. 

I had an image of a young man---face in shadow----playing the guitar under massive trees and a violet sky.  Fifteen, of course, is a sort of sexual turning point for a young girl.  Perhaps part of the trouble I had settling down in my younger days is that what I really wanted was someone who would break my heart by sitting under the trees singing about another woman.  Perhaps it's unfortunate that the most impassioned love song I'd ever heard was being sung by a man who had abandoned his pregnant girlfriend to start up a liaison with a married ex.

Strangely, no one else reacted to the song the same way.  "Nice," said my father politely.  "Mmmph," said my mom (who didn't care for opera).  That was seventies; none of my friends got it; they were mystified why I liked listening to opera at all when there was so much great rock music out there (there was, and I loved it too).

I remain surprised that this hasn't been "arranged" for today's youngsters.  Whenever anyone talks about a "haunting" melody, I flash back on the Siciliano.

The words are as follows:

Iconic Carmens: A Study in Variations on a Theme

I'm not comparing the technical proficiency of these singers and do not intend to comment.  Everyone has an iconic Carmen.  These are some different conceptions of her.  Back in the day when I hoped to make myself a singer, I wanted so badly to grow up to be her.  I had the idea of playing her with wit rather than the smouldering, half-threatening seductiveness that is usually her lot.

However, speaking of seductive....opera doesn't get any grander than this:  Callas singing anything at all.  I not only love her voice; I love the way her face changes into Carmen's the minute she starts singing.  But her voice is not the voice of the True Carmen as I secretly conceive her.  Callas's voice is too pure, like liquid light.  I admit that she really puts across the sexual intensity.  I don't know.  It's pretty damn compelling.

Carmen's ought to be rich and rough, like certain types of red wine.  She's a virago.  She's got an almost masculine sensuality.  That's why poor Don Jose has no chance against alpha dog Escamillo, the bullfighter.

Frankly, Lori-Kaye Miller's voice is more in line with my idea of Carmen's.  I like a lot more mezzo in Carmen's soprano.  And there's that slightly ragged edge.  Je l'adore!!!

On the other hand, here's a very seductive version featuring Julia Migenes, though (speaking as a mere viewer of this one scene), I'd prefer a more highly-colored set.  This is like Carmen as imagined by Miles Crane: all beige everywhere:  ecru, wheat, ivory, etc. etc.  Meh. 

Romanian soprano Angele Gheorghia sings it.  She's extremely beautiful in that "old Hollywood"  way.  It's not because she's Romanian, but something about her hungry expression as she sings that suggests to me a new permutation on an old theme:  Vampire Carmen.  That would be awesome....Say she first turns Don Jose into a vampire and then he stakes her at the end.... Anyway, a beautiful voice and a beautiful singer and another great version.