“Dragonflies”: a number from Eddi Reader’s most recent album Love is the Way
"Love is the Way": Eddi Reader's most recent album formed the backbone of her gig at Snape
If you think there’s a more abundantly gifted British female singer than Eddi Reader gigging and recording today, please tell me who she is. The range of ‘voices’ and styles that Reader embraced during a hugely appreciated two-hour+ set, part of this year’s Snape Proms season at Snape Maltings Concert Hall, was extraordinary. She bucked convention at every turn, barely tolerating the notion of an interval, and dismissing the ritual of the encore completely because she – rightly – would rather fit in a couple of extra songs for her and the audience’s pleasure.
The maverick qualities that must make Reader a music marketeer’s nightmare were on show in abundance as she veered from pop to folk to Burns to Piaf and Doris Day, supported by an equally versatile band that included drummer Roy Dodds, Alan Kelly on the accordian, writing partner and guitarist Boo Hewerdine, and life partner and ukelele virtuoso John Douglas.
The recent album Love is the Way formed the backbone of the evening, interwoven with older work and several of Reader’s unforgettable interpretations of Robert Burns poems. She sprung a surprise at virtually every turn as she peppered the playlist with anecdotes and explanations, setting the scene for each number with an almost throw-away nonchalance that belied the intensity and commitment of her vocal delivery. Old favourites like “Simple Soul” – inspired, she pointed out with grim humour, by Reader’s experience of living with an alcoholic – and “What You Do With What You’ve Got” – with the input of guest artist and pianist Thomas Dolby – complemented the clarity and beauty of new work: “Silent Bells”, the delightful, poignant “Dandelion”, the ode to “New York City” and a delicious left-field interpretation of the Cahn/Styne standard “It’s Magic”, which Reader delivered as her late mother Jean, evoking the volatile atmosphere of a Glasgow tenement party with the diffident star turn at its centre.
Tale followed tale. So vividly does Reader paint scenes that the well-oiled Brenda sprang to life in front of us. Memorably vocal during a gig back home in Irvine with her “Sing ‘Perfect’, Eddi” during the sublime Burns poem “Aye Waukin-O”, Brenda was saved from a couple of fast-approaching plods and a few hours in the cooler when Reader got her up on stage for the chorus, and for her trouble was rewarded with a request to sign Brenda’s bra. Less prosaically, we were also treated to stories of Burns’ lusty escapades ahead of a haunting “Ae Fond Kiss”.
Reader herself is a fascinating, even disconcerting presence on stage. Occasionally restless, picking up and replacing her guitar as if undecided quite what she’s going to do next, she describes the harmonies with her hands as she sings, utterly committed to the honesty of the sound she is making.
Like Brenda, we got our “Perfect”, the Fairground Attraction hit that first brought Eddi Reader’s voice to a wide public attention back in 1989. Reader hung on to her guitar and delivered a swinging, jubilant acoustic version to close the first half. For me, though, the highlight in an evening of brilliance was a sudden, completely unexpected, a capella “La Vie en Rose” which hushed the hall.
The only thing missing – and you can’t have everything, even in a set of this quality – was her epic take on Gene Pitney’s “Town Without Pity”. If you also missed it, here’s a reminder of Eddi Reader, the consummate torch-singer:
“Dreams”: a video very much of its time, but what a great song
Dreams: Grace Slick's 1980 album, with a title track that's come hurtling back into my life
What makes a song come hurtling back up from the depths of the memory? Just occasionally, something that defined a time in your life – a few hours, a week, a month – but that you haven’t given a second thought to for years, decades, rears up from the past with all its old power. The response, the feelings, the connection you made with that particular piece of music, with its potent combination of voice, lyric, melody – above all, the ‘sound’ it made in your life – clout you with all of their original force. It’s extraordinary, like travelling in time.
I don’t know what made me search for Grace Slick’s “Dreams” on YouTube the other day. It was a random, almost unthinking act. A bit of displacement therapy to postpone some mundane task. But the great thing is that I did it. And ever since, the song has been playing on a continuous loop in my head. I was astonished and touched by its familiarity, the words returning effortlessly to mind after three decades, those epic cadences just as thrilling, and Slick’s fascinating, textured, contralto resonating through an apocolyptic yet compelling vision of the terrors of the night.
“Dreams” was the title track of Slick’s 1980 solo album. I remember the first time I heard it on BBC Radio 1 – how much more adventurous its playlist was in those days! – and how completely enthralled I was by its symphonic qualities, and by Slick’s blistering vocal attack. At that stage – and for a long time afterwards – I knew nothing about her, that pedigree steeped in the legendary psychedelia of Jefferson Airplane in its various guises. I just knew that this was a voice that commanded attention, that was hypnotic in the way it charged on with something that sounded like controlled rage, almost fighting with the majestic beauty of the song’s arrangement. At least, looking back, I think that’s what I thought. Only probably less specifically. I was only 18, after all. I just knew what I liked, and there wasn’t a lot of it about in those days.
Fortunately, “Dreams” got a plenty of airplay, none of which helped to make the song a hit, although it meant I got to hear it a lot. I suppose that gives it cult status today, because it obviously has a lot of fans out there. Sean Delaney’s lyrics paint a wonderfully lurid picture of the sinister parade that storms, tantalises, disturbs and ravages sleep. I now understand, of course, that the album was at heart a concept project that explored the AA 12-step programmes, Slick having recently emerged from a prolonged stay in rehab.
“To be honest, doing solo albums scared the shit out of me; making music was no longer fun, it was nerve-wracking pressure,” she wrote in her absorbing 1998 autobiography, Somebody to Love? “For someone who couldn’t handle a quarter cup of coffee without wondering where the quaaludes were, working solo was just a couple of steps short of flinging myself off a 150-foot diving board.”
The really odd thing is that I’ve only heard the rest of the album in the last few days. The song “Dreams” was always enough in the completeness of the story, the vision it rolled out. But when I found the video on YouTube (a word about that: it’s very much of its time! Slick looks hard and big-haired, her eyes demonic in a Myra Hindley-ish way, but she is still riveting, a performance artist through and through. The Dolly Parton wig is a stroke of genius) and found myself transported back – not to an actual experience but to a sense of my teenaged self – I wanted to know more about the album. A search for MP3 downloads was fruitless. So it was off to Amazon.
In her book, Slick points out that her solo albums didn’t sell. That she didn’t tour on the back of them, which was a mistake. Well, Grace, thanks to a Japanese import and a rather silly amount of money, Dreams just notched up another royalty and I hope you get it. Because it’s a marvellous album, an explosion of musical references that’s surely overdue for a release. It’s gone straight onto my smartphone and I’m just letting the stories it tells play out on the commute, building a complex picture around a song that’s come back into my life like an old friend.
I know that there was much more to Slick’s music than this, and I’ve since discovered the wonders of “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit”, and the unique contribution that arresting voice made to a seminal period in rock history. And even the commercial hits of Starship – Slick has since made no secret of her lack of interest in them – have the ability to generate a nostalgia for the 1980s, powered by her unmistakable vocals.
Grace Slick at 70: a successful artist with the presence of a tribal elder
She stopped performing at 49, believing that rock stars over 50 should stop inflicting their ageing presence on an audience. That’s a shame because from the sound of it, she could still knock seven bells out of her iconic numbers – including “Dreams”. Today, she is a successful artist, renowned for her work in acrylic, particularly studies of her rock star contemporaries, many of whom didn’t have her resilience and instinct for self-preservation. In interviews she appears a wise elder of the global tribe: fiercely intelligent, plain-spoken, as uncompromising as ever, warm, compassionate and very funny, a mane of white hair pulled tightly back so that her interrogator gets the full benefit of that frank, experience-laden gaze. More power to her. And huge thanks for “Dreams”.
Monica Mancini proves her musical pedigree at the Montreux Jazz Festival
I've Loved These Days: a cherry-picked playlist of rare quality
It isn’t often that I’m tempted to call an album “flawless”. There is usually a track or two that misses the mark, doesn’t connect with the whole, has a slight hint of beating the deadline about it – good enough but not quite in the zone. But Monica Mancini’s I’ve Loved These Days has such a calm sense of completeness about it that I’ve found myself staring at the Bose in astonishment. During the first listen, round about an absorbing reinvention of “How Can I Be Sure” – a number I’ve only ever associated with Dusty Springfield, despite David Cassidy’s best efforts – I actually caught myself thinking, “They really don’t make records like this any more.”
And to be honest, in the best possible way, there is a strong retro feel about the whole thing, not least because Mancini’s phrasing and diction are so effortlessly cool. You don’t miss a single lyric – and how often does that happen these days? Every word is considered, explored and offered up with an honesty that brings to mind female pop singers of the highest calibre: Karen Carpenter or Dionne Warwick at their instinctive best.
The choice of songs also adds to the sense of a time slip. Mancini has cherry-picked a 1960s playlist of rare quality – and in many cases enlisted the help of their originators: Jackson Browne plays guitar and sings backing vocals on “These Days”; Stevie Wonder’s unmistakable harmonica burnishes “Blame it on the Sun”; and Brian Wilson – vocally ageless – features on an intriguingly pared-down “God Only Knows”, giving Mancini the chance to show her mettle against a taste of those legendary Beach Boy harmonies.
These collaborations are testament to Mancini’s musical pedigree, as the daughter of Henry Mancini, the composer behind some of the most iconic film soundtracks of the 20th century. Many of the songwriters she honours here were her father’s peers and clearly exerted a profound influence on her own musical development. Indeed, she calls them her “musical heroes” and offers I’ve Loved These Days as a discovery of what their songs continue to reveal. In that sense, the album makes an interesting comparison with Barb Jungr’s The Men I Love. They both raise a musical toast to Paul Simon, for example: Jungr with “My Little Town” and Mancini with “American Tune”.
Although this album isn’t exclusively American in content – there is a poignant take on the Lennon/McCartney number “I’ll Follow the Sun” – an undercurrent of oblique commentary on the modern emotional landscape of her homeland occasionally ripples to the surface, particularly in the compassion of the Fran Landesman classic “Ballad of the Sad Young Men”, Billy Joel’s “I’ve Loved These Days”, and the flute-dusted beauty of Janice Ian’s “Joy”.
The arrangements are spare, acoustic and almost regal in their simplicity. Mancini clearly didn’t want to simply do an all-purpose album of cover versions. Instead, these are gleaming reinterpretations in which the lyrics take centre stage. Producer Phil Ramone – who had a hand in the original versions of many of these songs – has brought all his skill to the mixing desk, giving Mancini’s fluent, elegant vocal line all the air and space it needs to soar above the tasteful, sympathetic arrangements of Jorge Calandrelli. “I’ve Loved These Days” is a breath of fresh air in a musical climate that is so often hell-bent on over embellishment and extravagance. Perfect.
Taeko sings “What are you doing the rest of your life?” from her previous album, One Love
Voice: Taeko's new album - multiple influences knock sparks off each other
Take a talented young Japanese singer, transplant her to New York in her formative musical years, immerse her in what is probably the world’s richest jazz scene, then stand back and listen to all those influences collide, knocking sparks off each other. That’s the story of Taeko Fukao’s career so far, and the result is a fascinating blend of bebop and scat, underscored at times by a poignant serenity fired by her native folk heritage, and at others by the smooth, tasteful sheen that defines the best of modern, mainstream jazz vocalists.
Taeko’s new album, Voice, is a vibrant patchwork of styles that reveals, above all, the passion with which she has explored the range of the jazz idiom. In some ways, it’s a showcase for the benefits of intense study – and just occasionally, the impact is almost overwhelming as she tears up a furious-paced “On A Clear Day” with the dexterity of Ella in her prime, or launches into the bebop delights of the Monk/Hawkins/Hendricks number “I Mean You”, recalling Annie Ross or Cleo Laine at the peak of their vocal powers.
Then she shifts tone and mood with a sublime rendition of the 1940s Japanese ballad “Soochow Serenade” and later, with the self-penned “Spring Nocturne”. Think Sade, with attitude. For all the pace and energy in the surrounding numbers, these are the most effective moments on the album: passages of reflection and melancholy in which a softer, mellow timbre is allowed to flourish on a more burnished melodic line, taken to the limit on Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes”.
This is where Taeko sounds genuinely at home, in the telling of stories, and not least on a subtle, swinging, modernised “Biwako”, a folk song about the Japanese lake near her birthplace at Shiga. Doug Richardson’s melodica solo comes unexpectedly, adding yet another flavour to the music and reflecting Taeko’s confidence in choosing musicians who can complement her eclectic vision with considerable ease: Richardson also plays drums, with Greg Lewis on the organ, guitarist Kevin McNeal, pianist Lou Rainone, and bass player Gaku Takanashi. All have their moments to shine – a sure sign of a generous vocalist.
Such is her versatility that the overall effect is sometimes like being strafed by a benign scattergun loaded with different styles. All of which makes the album’s title more appropriate. She shares one of her most promising vocal qualities – the ability to be part of the band rather than just the singer out front – with the greats. Taeko veers from the soulful funk of the opening track, Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island” (lyrics by one of her mentors Juanita Fleming) to Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues”, using her sound in an assertive, challenging way without straying into aggression.
Her phrasing and diction are impeccable, with interesting nuances generated by the occasional hint of an accent rarely heard in jazz. It’s 12 years since she answered the call of the Big Apple. They’ve been well spent and the city has served her well. But if this album is anything to go by, Taeko’s horizons are set for rapid expansion. There’s a big jazz world out there and it’s beckoning an unusual and singular talent.
“Northern Lights” – the song has lasted better than this 1970s promo video
Annie Haslam: back at the mic, where she belongs (picture by Richard Barnes)
One of the great things about being a journalist is that every now and then, you get – or create – the opportunity to connect with somebody whose work, for whatever reason, has provided a soundtrack to, or influenced in some way, your own life. Of course there is also the old adage that you should never meet your heroes in case they turn out to have feet of clay but I’ve been lucky during my years of interviewing singers. Very few have disappointed, and Annie Haslam was no exception.
“Northern Lights” is one of those songs that transports me instantly back to my youth. I was 16 when prog-rock band Renaissance had their only major hit single in the summer of 1978, but 32 years later just a couple of bars of Annie’s soaring lead vocal takes me right back and the song still sounds as fresh and poignant as it did then. I loved songwriter Betty Thatcher’s imagery and in those days, before I had traveled much beyond my own back garden, the idea of turning to see the northern lights shimmering above an aeroplane wing was intensely romantic.
Song for all Seasons: the album that brought us "Northern Lights"
I’ve been a fan of Annie’s scintillating five-octave voice ever since and always felt that Renaissance, who made some brilliantly inventive albums in the 1970s, didn’t get the attention they deserved. So when I discovered that she now lives in the States and combines singing with painting, I decided to track her down for a feature I was writing on singers who have portfolio careers.
During the course of three lengthy telephone conversations, I spoke to Annie about her childhood in Bolton and her early years as a singer, the rise of Renaissance, her later solo career and her discovery of a style of painting known as dream expressionism. At the time, she was ambivalent about the music business – adamant that she hadn’t actually stopped singing, emphatic that her art was simply an extension of her vocal work, but weary of toiling on the road and the effort of managing a career.
So it’s wonderful to report that now, reunited with Michael Dunford – who was responsible for the bulk of Renaissance’s symphonic, folk- and jazz- influenced music – she is back in front of the mic, touring through the summer and recreating many of those epic numbers from the height of the band’s success. Alas for us in the UK, the tour is currently limited to the American circuit, but with Japanese dates also scheduled, hopefully some inspired British promoter will rise to the challenge and bring them back home to their roots.
My conversations with Annie eventually led to a feature about Renaissance in Classic Rock Presents Prog magazine and a proposed profile for an art publication which never saw the light of day. I’m publishing it here for the first time; obviously the emphasis is on Annie’s painting rather than the music, but I still think it gives some insight into the person behind one of the finest – and undervalued – female voices of modern popular music.
Anne Haslam: Singer and Artist
Annie Haslam with her painting "Embryonic Dream" (picture by Scott Weiner)
When singer Annie Haslam woke up one morning in 2002 with the gut feeling that it was time to start painting, she knew she had to go with it. After more than 30 years in the music business, she’d long since learned to recognise the all-important moments that contain the germ of a new artistic direction.
With her soaring, five-octave voice, Annie is best known as the lead singer of influential 1970s classical rock band Renaissance but she has also enjoyed a successful solo career that has taken her around the world. By 2002, however, the rigours of life in a relentlessly commercial industry were taking their toll. She was ready for a change and despite the fact that she hadn’t picked up a brush since her student days at Redruth Art School in Cornwall in the 1960s, her inner voice was insistent.
“I’ve no idea where it came from but I knew from my past experience that I should act on it,” she says. “Although I’d never really painted before. I’d studied fabric printing, photography and lettering at art school. I think I did one watercolour but I didn’t have the patience for it and it wasn’t very good. We didn’t get on!”
Today, Annie lives in the pretty Pennsylvanian haven of Doylestown, a long way from her Lancashire roots, where she has remained since the end of her marriage to American businessman Marc Hoffman. Armed only with a profound trust in her own instincts, she turned her large, light-filled sunroom into a studio, and went out to buy an easel, canvases and paints, and a ‘how-to’ book on oil painting. But she didn’t get beyond page one.
“Everything stayed in that room for two months,” she remembers. “I’d walk through and water the plants and look at that blank canvas. But there was nothing going on inside. Then one day I just felt it was time to sit down and try it, do something. I went out and picked a huge tiger lily. And I started with the grass. Then I did the sky, and put the lily in between. But it wasn’t very good and I was very disappointed, thinking there must be millions of people out there who could paint better than this.”
Upset because she still couldn’t connect with the feeling that had compelled her to start painting, Annie looked again at her work and to her surprise, realised that the grass she had rendered on the canvas was very detailed and textured. So she launched herself on a second attempt, this time concentrating on the greenness of the lawn.
“It was quite weird, because I felt as if someone was holding my hand,” she says. “The detail was exciting and I really liked the feeling. It was real, yet it wasn’t. The next painting I did was of a UFO hovering over an ocean! They were definitely other worldly images and it was as if they were fighting to get through the door. They couldn’t wait. Suddenly I was doing six or seven paintings a day and I found myself working at one o’clock in the morning. It was like a fever, I couldn’t stop. And I was thrilled!”
During this explosion of creativity, she quickly developed a free-flowing, organic style that makes spectacular use of colour to create dream-like landscapes and mysterious, fantastical images: mountains and dragons, moonlit lakes and starry skies. Dubbed ‘dream expressionism,’ it’s a type of art that commands a huge following and Annie soon found her reputation spreading beyond the fan-base she enjoyed as a singer.
“At that stage, nothing was ever preconceived,” she explains. “I would just pick some colours and put them on the brush and start painting. It’s still like that. I don’t know where they come from – and I don’t like looking at other people’s pictures to get an idea of how something should look. If somebody wants a commission done, I ask for their favourite colours and as much information about themselves as they can give me. Then I make a painting. And sometimes they come back and say that I’ve captured them and I can’t tell you what it feels like, quite incredible.”
Annie only had to wait a year for her first solo exhibition. In 2003 a Philadelphia radio station invited her to show a few pieces in its annual classic rock art show, where they appeared alongside the work of Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood and legendary crooner Tony Bennett. Local gallery owner Colm Rowan spotted her work and offered her his entire space. She displayed 63 pieces and sold 26 of them in just three weeks. Further proof of the appeal of her style came in 2005 when she was asked to show three paintings at the Florence Biennale contemporary art exhibition
“Sometimes I’ll get a title immediately, others I’ll be looking at the work for weeks before it comes,” she says. “But the day the invitation arrived from Florence, I’d been working on a 3’ x 4’ oil painting in lavender and golden yellow, and I’d already decided to call it ‘Tuscan Sun!’ I almost fell off my stool when the email came through – the painting took on a whole different meaning after that.”
One thing that has changed since she started her ‘second career’ is the medium. She found that the combined fumes of the oil paints and turps were making her feel ill. Ever mindful of her own health – Annie survived a battle with breast cancer in 1992 – she reluctantly altered her working materials.
“I loved the oils with a passion,” she says. “The colours were a little more subtle and soft, and I could move them around very easily. But when I realised I was making myself sick, I started using acrylics, which have a very different feel. They took me quite a while to get used to and they aren’t as smooth; you can buy different mediums to thin them down but I didn’t want to bring a lot of chemicals back into it. They are far brighter and have a different, vibrant look, which is very healing.”
Annie is adamant that painting is an extension of her singing rather than a replacement for it. She has used her own artwork on her CD covers and a further musical link is crystallised in the instruments she has painted, including four violins for the Trans Siberian Orchestra and two guitars – “What a beautiful instrument to hold and paint” – which now hang in Hard Rock Cafes in Cleveland and San Diego.
“I’ve decided I really have to move on from the past and let it go but I wouldn’t change anything about it,” she says. “If it had been any different, I might not be where I am now, painting. It might not have had the opportunity to come out. I’m so thankful for it because I love to do it, and I don’t have to worry about dealing with many other people, which you do in the music industry.”
Profile
Born in Bolton in1947, Annie Haslam studied art in Cornwall and was briefly a fashion designer in London before she started to sing professionally. In 1971 she joined Renaissance and her five-octave voice quickly became one of the group’s defining qualities through a series of acclaimed albums. In 1978 they had a major hit single with Northern Lights. When the band split in 1987, Annie embarked on a successful solo career. She has worked with the best in the business, including Roy Wood, Justin Hayward, producer Tony Visconti and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. She began painting in 2002 and now has a second career as a professional artist, exhibiting her work around the world and accepting private commissions.
Florence Rawlings sings the studio version of Love Can Be A Battlefield
Florence Rawlings: a lesson in delivering emotion with restraint
An enthusiastic crowd packed Cadogan Hall last night for Mike Batt’s trip through four decades of hit making and film score composition. A Songwriter’s Tale pushed all the right buttons – music from Watership Down (including “Bright Eyes”), Caravan and The Wombles (the wave of nostalgia which rippled through the audience as it recognised the opening oom-pahs of “The Wombling Song” injected another shot of warmth into an already very hot evening), “A Winter’s Tale” and a Simon Bates-narrated segment from his ill-fated musical The Hunting of the Snark.
It all served as a great reminder of Batt’s significant contribution to British pop music. Not just through the novelty value of The Wombles who dominated the 1970s when the children’s television show brought Elizabeth Beresford’s books to life, but also through his skills as a lyricist and composer, forging hits for a host of great singers (and having a few of his own) and writing some truly beautiful scores, some of which were revisited last night in the sumptuous playing of his self-styled Secret Symphony Orchestra. And his encore – “The Closest Thing to Crazy” – was a reminder that the hits keep on coming, together with his shrewd eye for talent. The song was of course a huge success for Katie Melua, who sat discreetly in the gallery, paying tribute to the man who has been such an important influence on her career.
With the best will in the world, Batt is not the greatest singer himself – there always seems to be too much else going on that requires his attention. Last night those particular honours surely went to another of his protégées, Florence Rawlings, who supplied assured and classy backing vocals as Batt worked his way through the hits, but came into her own with a solo number in each set. Her soulful, slightly smoky timbre brought a new resonance to “Caravan Song”, Batt’s epic journey of a ballad, which provided such a memorable moment in Barbara Dickson’s chart career. And in the second, “Love Can Be a Battlefield” – one of those metaphorical explorations of the dubious spoils of profound emotion at which he excels – was a taste of Rawlings’ current album, A Fool in Love.
A Fool in Love: produced by Mike Batt
Rawlings is only 21, yet here were two lessons in how to deliver songs that carry considerable emotional clout with restraint and dramatic conviction, and without resorting to the exaggerated hand-wringing and gurning that defined the finalists on Saturday night’s hunt for Dorothy, BBC1’s Over the Rainbow. Here was a genuine, modest talent, offered simply and without artifice to an audience that as well as Melua, included another fine singer, Mari Wilson: ample evidence that Batt really knows how to pick them.
Downtown Church: Patty Griffin - Country without too much twang
My review of Patty Griffin’s new album, Downtown Church, is just up on the excellent Folkingcool web site. I’m usually on the fence about country music, but this album stole my heart with a minimum of twang.
There must be something in Canada’s water. Diana Krall and Michael Bublé are just the cream of a crop of exceptional jazz singers from across the Atlantic who have led something of a global invasion over the last decade or so.
To be honest, I have always found something Krall’s style a bit laconic and chilly, while respecting her tremendous musicality and technique. And giving in to the temptation to categorise that I criticise so frequently elsewhere in the music industry, I must admit that I turned to Vancouver-born Tammy Weis expecting to hear something in a similar vein.
I was soon disabused. With the exception of a pensive reinvention of Lennon and McCartney’s “Help” – an unlikely candidate for a ballad, but it works wonderfully well here – Where I Need to Be (TW2010) finds Weis pouring her life-tales into a delicate patchwork of self-penned songs. Now living in London, she has produced a taking-stock album in which nostalgia and regret are evenly balanced by optimism and poignant musical snapshots.
Tammy Weis explains why she included “Help” on the album, and sings it
For several tracks, she joins forces with pianist/composer Tom Cawley, and their songs provide the album’s most intimate, emotional high points, book-ending it with two elegant, beautifully accompanied numbers, “I Kept Going” and “Heading Home”. There is texture along the way, most notably the Latin beat of “Everyone But Me”, with Weis’s lyrics a dry Martini short of self-pity, and the shimmering “I’ll Spend Forecer”. She swings too, throwing down the gauntlet with “Don’t Want to Fall in Love Again”, co-written with Terry Britten, an articulate account of teetering on the brink in the best traditions of the great American songbook.
“I love delving into my mind and imagination, which can be scary,” says Weis, suggesting that the writing might not be as easy as her fluid interpretations make it sound. “But the song at the end is my reward for expressing what’s inside.”
Weis’s voice is assured and true, just a hint of hardness cutting through when the lyric demands. She plays deftly with the melody without ever sacrificing clarity – every word is given its due. The band is impeccable – Al Cherry on guitar, Arnie Somogyi on bass and Seb de Krom on drums, with several guest players including steel guitarist B. J. Cole (particularly yearning on “Where Did the Time Go”, an end-of-the-affair ballad), and pianist Julian Joseph (“All Because of You”) whom Weis credits as her prime motivator for making an album of original songs.
Auditions are brutal. Meat racks by another name, as even the greatest Broadway and West End stars will tell you. But at least in the real world, rejection is swift, delivered as if by an exquisitely sharp, stainless steel blade. The cut is clean. Scar tissue minimal, at least in the early years. Healing is quick, hope springs eternal and you’re soon off to the next one. Which is why there is something profoundly unpleasant about the prolonged agony of television-based audition shows. Forget stainless steel. They wield a rusty knife with a jagged edge that will leave gaping wounds in all but the toughest of egos.
Over The Rainbow, currently filling the BBC’s early evening prime time slot at the weekend, is the cruellest so far. For non-UK readers, this format has been used to find ‘stars’ to fill plum roles in various Andrew Lloyd Webber West End productions – to date, Maria in The Sound of Music, Joseph, and Nancy in Oliver! Now it’s the turn of The Wizard of Oz. Every week, a group of would-be Dorothys loses a member and we’re now down to the last eight. Which makes it sound more like an endurance sport, and that is basically what Over The Rainbow is.
Lloyd Webber is obviously a kind-hearted man, and his reluctance to inflict a killer criticism always makes his presence seem a tad disingenuous. The real grit is provided by the judging panel – one-time Mrs Lovett and current Mother Superior in Sister Act, Sheila Hancock (who has been given a Cruella de Ville look for the occasion), West End stalwart and Eastenders actor John Partridge, and former voice of an angel Charlotte Church – who give the participants nuggets of tough love after each performance. Hancock and Partridge at least have the benefit of years of stage experience. Church is less convincing as a tutor-cum-judge. She clearly rates her own diva credentials, seizing the chance to out-belt all the contestants in a group performance of the Streisand/Summer disco anthem “Enough is Enough (No More Tears)”. But her youthful success with operatic arias has left her with zero understanding of theatrical performance.
Between them, however, they epitomise the dilemma faced by any musical producer today. Not a single one of this week-end’s performances was in any way convincing from a theatrical point of view. It’s a familiar complaint from composers and directors that too many young performers bring a pop sensibility to musical numbers. They belt and they emote, they strain and they sob, but the songs – deeply embedded in the characters they have been written to represent – require a more complicated treatment, a more flexible, shaded voice, than the full-on style propagated by today’s pop stars. And here is ample justification for those criticisms.
Week by week on Over The Rainbow, these young women are being coached to sell pop songs as two-minute dramas – principally for the quick-fix demands of television. And with very few exceptions, the challenge is beyond them. They are told to focus on the emotion and the story – often a ridiculous demand if it’s a song of experience. Then they are hauled over the coals for failing to deliver truth and credibility. Witness this week-end’s “Cry Me A River” from Danielle Hope, delivered at maximum velocity to cheers from the audience, with absolutely zero concept of the many subtle layers of irony in Arthur Hamilton’s biting, classic torch song.
Missing the point: Cry Me A River on Over The Rainbow
The two who come bottom of the television vote are then exposed to the further cruelty of a sing-off for Lloyd-Webber – the knife being given an extra twist for the one told that she is the “audience’s least favourite”. Finally, when the composer has delivered his verdict and saved one of them for next week’s repeat ritual, the loser must participate in a ghastly sob-fest rendition of “Over the Rainbow”, bravely smiling through her tears and thanking everyone for taking her on a marvellous journey… to where, it remains to be seen.
My advice to all of them would be to sit down with a DVD of Sunday night’s South Bank Show Revisited (ITV), in which Melvyn Bragg returned to New York to interview Stephen Sondheim on the eve of his 80th birthday. The conversation was heavily weighted towards Sweeney Todd, the subject of a 1980 programme which provided plenty of archive footage – it was great to glimpse Hancock’s Mrs Lovett in the original London production at Drury Lane. There were also brief segments from the New York revival of A Little Night Music, revealing why Catherine Zeta Jones’s Desirée so divided the critics. Her “Send in the Clowns” is an acquired taste.
Catherine Zeta Jones sings “Send in the Clowns” and divides the critics
As an exploration of his canon, it hardly scratched the surface. But to hear the clarity and modesty with which Sondheim answered Bragg’s questions was a joy. And in just a couple of sentences, he encapsulated the difference between a technically proficient singer and a dramatically gifted singer interpreting his songs. This was a far more valuable observation on the art and skill of musical performance than anything uttered during those interminable hours of Over The Rainbow.
Helen Morgan: a strong legacy for today's torch singers
It’s been a fine week on BBC4 for lovers of old- and new-style torch singing. The channel’s celebration of the Great American Songbook was stuffed with profiles, documentaries and performances rich in the genre, from a biography of Ella Fitzgerald to a welcome repeat of Walk on By, a series on the history of popular song.
One of the highlights was a BBC4 Sessions concert featuring Gwyneth Herbert giving an exemplary take on the Ruth Etting classic, “Love Me or Leave Me”, Melody Gardot’s exquisitely underplayed “Over the Rainbow”, and a great “September in the Rain” from Sharleen Spiteri – all demonstrating that the torch song has never been in better hands.
But most poignant of all was the excellent Clint Eastwood-produced exploration of the life of lyricist Johnny Mercer, The Dream’s on Me. One hundred minutes sped past in a succession of comments and performance snippets – Julie Andrews, Cleo Laine, Margaret Whiting, Maude Maggart (singing a wonderfully touching “Skylark”, accompanied by Jamie Cullum.)
During one of the numerous interview clips of Mercer talking about his craft he mentioned, in passing, Helen Morgan as an example of somebody you would write a particular type of song for. It struck a real chord. Morgan was briefly a huge Broadway star and created the role of Julie in Jerome Kern’s Showboat. But even by the time Mercer referred to her in the 1970s, she had been dead for more than 30 years, and today her name is scarcely heard.
Her style of singing in a light, throbbing soprano, is light years from modern popular taste. Yet Morgan was one of the first of the great torch singers. And a few weeks ago, I had no hesitation in drawing a comparison between Jessie Buckley’s intense, touching way with torch songs in her performance at Pizza on the Park, and Morgan’s way of luring the listener into her lamentations of love gone wrong.
When Helen Morgan’s picture flashed across the television screen, it reminded me of what sparked my interest in the torch idiom over two decades ago. So after focusing on some of the young singers who have piqued my curiosity in recent weeks, here’s a trip back to the roots of the genre.
Helen Morgan was a tragic figure – not in a hell-raising Amy Winehouse way, although she was equally profligate with her talent. When things got too troubled, she’d quietly have another brandy, eventually fulfilling a destiny that was pretty much prescribed in her first starring role as the doomed Julie. But it says much for her legacy that every now and then, a modern performance can still evoke her name and a nod back down the years to a great, if shooting, star.
Helen Morgan sings “Bill”
This is an article I wrote about her in the late 1980s, which hasn’t seen the light of day until now. It’s a bit stodgy and essay-ish in places – and naïve in its approach – but I’m posting it here because in many ways it sums up the elements of torch-singing that I continue to find so compelling – and because I can illustrate it with video, something that would have seemed impossible back then!
Why Was She Born? – The Legacy of Helen Morgan (1988)
Morgan's voice had a unique, pleading quality
Since its plaintive genesis in the early 1920s, the torch song has proved a consistent link between a galaxy of female singers who in other respects could hardly differ more greatly. As an idiom, it provides a historic, if unlikely bridge from Fanny Brice to Barbra Streisand, from Judy Garland to Kiri te Kanawa, from Ruth Etting to Shirley Bassey and from Jane Froman to Dusty Springfield. None of these ladies has ever limited themselves to the genre of the torch song. But each at one time or another has sung from the point of view of the woman on the losing side in love.
If Fanny Brice lit the first torch with her rendering of the classic “My Man”, (“Mon Homme”), consider how Billie Holiday interpreted the same song as a blues number and made it in turn her own. And if Edith Piaf ran the gamut of emotions, she certainly included in her repertoire chansons of a very torchy sentiment. All of these singers at one time or another have reflected through the torch song the suffering of a woman at the hands of a man who does nothing but let her down, but whom she can’t help loving.
Just as the idiom has become more lush and plangent, more downright dramatic, so it has tended to obscure its quieter and more tremulous origins. Now that Dame Kiri has extended her range to include classic torch by George Gershwin, and with a revival of interest in Dusty Springfield’s fulsome entreaty, “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me”, not to mention the interest that never went away in Garland bemoaning “The Man That Got Away”, it is high time to re-evaluate the contribution of the women who started it all with such sentiments as “Why Was I Born?”
With the release of a full-length, universally well-received recording of Showboat, it might be appropriate to focus on the woman who made its two classic torch songs, “Bill” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine” her own. Her name was Helen Morgan and she might be even less remembered here had not Robyn Archer selected her as an example for her show A Star is Torn.
Helen Morgan made these two songs her own by stamping the torch style with her own delicate lilting soprano. At least two recordings of her renderings survive and are reasonably available. The later pressings can be heard on what amounts to the first cast recording of Showboat which is actually a record of the show’s 1932 revival.
They are remarkable not only for their clarity but for the freshness and immediacy of Morgan’s performances at a distance of over half a century. Her voice has little in common with modern popular tastes but through its unique pleading quality and her astute use of a natural huskiness on key lyrics, it is quite heart-rending in its subtlety.
“I See Two Lovers” – a quintessential Helen Morgan performance
Anybody seeking for an introduction to her lamentably brief recording career should start right here. The extraordinary effect she achieved owes much to her own talent and the light orchestra or band backing favoured by artistes of the day, and little to the dramatic and histrionic lamentations of her future sisters in song. Perhaps the closest we can get these days is to listen to Julia McKenzie’s interpretation of Sondheim’s “Losing My Mind” in Follies. This is at once a pastiche and wholly authentic.
Song of Dreamer: great close-ups of a troubled torch singer
Although tracks by Morgan turn up from time to time on compilation albums (FLAPPERS, VAMPS AND SWEET YOUNG THINGS, Living Era 1982, AJA 5015), it is largely thanks to the Take Two label that a sizeable volume of her work has been gathered together. They have compiled a generous selection for the album HELEN MORGAN-Legacy of a Torch Singer, (1986, TT220) although it is rather biased in favour of her earlier material. Much of this is of interest more for its definitive period flavour than as classic torch singing.
It is really in the sessions recorded in the thirties that the depth of Morgan’s voice had matured considerably from the tremulous high notes which mark songs such as “Just Like a Butterfly”. But there are some real gems on this album, most especially the hauntingly regretful “I See Two Lovers”, which also turns up on the album FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN – Classic Female Vocalists of the ‘30s (Conifer 1987, TQ 155). This recording demonstrates to perfection the wistful catch in Morgan’s voice, a sadness which she was able to convey through restraint rather than high drama.
For a more general introduction, Take Two dips into the careers of four singers including Helen Morgan on its album THE ORIGINAL TORCH SINGERS 91980 TT207). The others are Fanny Brice, Libby Holman and Ruth Etting. The latter was probably the most prolific female recording artist of the thirties and numerous collections of her material are widely available. She seems to have endured the test of time more readily than Helen Morgan, while Fanny Brice is better know as Funny Girl these days.
Helen Morgan was a performance chanteuse who, apart from her major stage roles, sang in nightclubs and starred in the Ziegfeld Follies. She might have been a great film actress but after an auspicious debut in Applause the right parts never came along. She might have been an even greater recording artist but performing was her forte and she did other things only as time permitted. Nevertheless diligent searching can result in the discovery of rare pressings, including previously unreleased radio broadcasts which are increasingly becoming a source for the nostalgia buff.
Perhaps the greatest torch song of all is Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”. Yet Morgan never recorded the song commercially. It would be nice to think that an unpublished pressing or wireless performance lurks in a vault somewhere awaiting discovery. In its original working, as sung by Morgan, it would undoubtedly be a far cry from the lavish interpretations of more recent times.
As it is, we can still appreciate the difference in concept between then and now by listening to Helen Morgan’s soufflé-light rendering of “Why Was I Born?” which in accordance with more modern tastes is usually belted out over a rich orchestral backing. Suddenly, to hear how it was originally performed is to hear how it should be performed. The surprise is genuinely moving.
And Helen Morgan perhaps more than any other singer of her generation comes closest to crossing the line between torch and blues. Not that her voice bore any resemblance to Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday. But listen to her interpretation of “Frankie and Johnny” and hear how the divide between them is not so great after all.
There was clearly a brief revival of interest in Helen Morgan’s career after her sad life was given typical Hollywood treatment in a 1954 biopic (The Helen Morgan Story, with Ann Blyth’s singing voice dubbed by Gogi Grant, herself a great torch singer of the 1950s). Collections of her rarer recordings including standards like “Body and Soul” and “More Than You Know” were issued, usually pairing her off with Fanny Brice. There is also a 1969 album issued by RCA Victor in its vintage series which boasts a very discering selection of her material.
These recordings are obviously harder to come by but well worth seeking out. In many ways the quality of these pre-digital mastering issues is clearer than more recent efforts, mainly because the sound is completely true to the original.
Helen Morgan in characteristic pose atop a grand piano
Despite the quality of her more obscure material, the greatest testimony to her rare talent as a torch singer is her legacy of the show-stopping standards which enraptured her audience wherever she was performing, usually characteristically perched atop a grand piano. That such a quality can still capture the imagination after so many years is surely a reason for restoring Helen Morgan to her rightful place in the gallery of all-time-great female performers.
Love Me or Leave Me – a feature I wrote for Gay Times on the classic torch singers, from December 1991 read
Handing on the Torch – a piece for The Wire magazine, tracing torch singing from its roots to modern smart pop read
Someone who sings about love and loss, and the pain of experience. The power of torch-singing lies in its effect on the listener. For me, it transcends musical genres. These pages explore the dazzling, and sometimes dark, world of the female singer through history and in the present. Concert and CD reviews, interviews and articles combine to create a comprehensive view of this vital strand of popular culture. Why not share your views and experiences of your favourite artists, suggest performers you would like to see featured - and let me know what makes a torch singer for you?
The Art of the Torch Singer 
What do you think?