It's only a paper moon

80 years old.  Wow.  Still perfect.

Love is the sweetest thing

Written by Ray Noble, sung by Al Bowlly

What'll I do when you are far away

What'll I do 
When you are far away 
And I am blue 
What'll I do? 

What'll I do? 
When I am wond'ring who 
Is kissing you 
What'll I do? 

What'll I do with just a photograph 
To tell my troubles to? 

When I'm alone 
With only dreams of you 
That won't come true 
What'll I do? 



What'll I do with just a photograph 
To tell my troubles to? 

When I'm alone 
With only dreams of you 
That won't come true 
What'll I do?

Tommy Dorsey's Boogie Woogie

Such a thrilling and impelling piece.





 I read somewhere that "jazz" once meant "to fuck". Dunno how true that is, though.

Chet Baker

I dunno how I first discovered Chet Baker.  Or rather, I can't remember.  I think I was in one of those ghastly emporia selling DVDs and CDs and the devices you play them on, not a gay-shaded DVD in the place despite shelf after shelf of dreck.  I love jazz in all its flavours, ever since I first heard Paul Whiteman playing Whispering and was entranced, only to be informed by my then girlfriend that I was weird.  How right she was.  At any event, I saw the Chet Baker, marked down, and bought it.  At least, I think that's what happened.  Indulge a writer's creative memory.

He's a legend, only I didn't know it then.  He played the trumpet like a dream, smooth, mellow, honeyed.  Glorious.  And he sang.  His voice was curiously androgynous, almost contralto, pure but not thrilling, not great but nevertheless lovely.  Oh, and he was beautiful.  Extraordinarily beautiful.

Was he gay?  Hard to know.  He had a series of female friends all his life, without it seems having sex with them, though that could have been the heroin, but he married twice; he probably had a love affair with Dick Twardzik his piano accompanist; he was beaten up once after a show, allegedly for trying to buy drugs; and anyway, he was far too beautiful to be straight.  Gay or not, women and gay men adored him, and you can see why in the video.  The song is called My Buddy, and it is (deliberately? -- this was the mid-50s after all) ambiguous.  But this:

Miss your voice, the touch of your hand
Just long to know that you understand

Come now.  That's fairly direct, no?  Bi*, I suspect, but like Jack Kerouac homophobic.    It drove Kerouac to alcohol and Baker to drugs.  Perhaps.  Baker's emotional aloofness could have been because of that.  Lots of clues, but who knows in the end?  The song, though, is revealing.

Enjoy.



*If I might be permitted to use a label I've just dismissed as useless and misleading.

Music and mood

I was talking to a friend of my younger son's on the train a day or so ago. He's studying percussion at the VCA (Victorian College of the Arts) and he was saying how he'd come to understand and therefore like some very intricate drum solos which previously he'd not cared for. He said the same thing had happened with classical music. As a boy he'd disliked it, found it boring. Now he loves it.

But how do you explain my passion for jazz, swing and blues from the 20s, 30s and 40s? I grew up in a house where classical music was virtually the only music around, except for my mother singing popular songs as she wandered round the house. She had a lovely voice and was an excellent piano player and introduced me to South Pacific as well as Chopin, the one from her songs the other from her playing. No jazz at all. Then, one day in a tiny record shop in Cape Town I listened to Paul Whiteman and immediately fell in love. It's the joy of the music that gets me. They needed it -- the great depression, war clouds and then actual war, unemployment, poverty and misery. The music made up for it.

Listen to this one, made just before the great crash, and this during the war, not long before Benny Goodman was shot down over Europe. (Man, I wish I could play the clarinet like he could)

I'm needing this stuff right now. The wake is tonight. It's going to be hard.