As we so often find with jazz performers, vocalist Helen Merrill started young-age 14 and from the beginning, she managed to be both mellow and edgy. On this 7.20.17 edition of the DuPlex Mystery Jazz Hour on WZBC, apart from her jazz work, you will hear a few recordings made to try to boost her profile outside jazz.

LISTEN HERE

PLAYLIST
Earl Hines w. Helen Merrill "A Cigarette For Company" 1942 on D'Oro

"Don't explain" "What's New" You'd Be so Nice to Come Home to" "Falling in Love With Love" from "Helen Merrill Featuring Clifford Brown" (Jazz, 1954) on EmArcy 

"Dream of You" "Summertime" "Let Me Love You"  "I'm Just a Lucky so-And-So" Helen Merrill  arr. by Gil Evans, from Collaboration 1956 on Emarcy

"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"  Helen Merrill from "American Country Songs" 1959 on Atco

"These foolish things" Helen Merrill from "Helen Merrill Sings Italian Songs" 1960 on RCA Italiana

"Smog" from "Helen Merrill Sings Italian Songs" 1960 on RCA Italiana

"Cannatella" Helen Merrill from "The Artistry of Helen Merrill"  1965) on Mainstream

"Baltimore Oriole" Helen Merrill from "The Feeling Is Mutual" 1965 on Milestone

"What is this Thing Called Love" Helen Merrill from "The Feeling Is Mutual" 1965 on Milestone

"A Man and A Woman" Helen Merrill  from "Bossa Nova in Tokyo"  1967 on Victor

"Norwegian Wood" Helen Merrill  from "Helen Merrill Sings the Beatles" 1970 on EMI

"Vera Cruz" Helen Merrill  from "Casa Forte"1980 on Mercury

"Natural Sounds"Helen Merrill  from "Casa Forte" 1980 on Mercury

 "When Lights Are Low" "And Still She Is With Me" "Music Makers" from "Music Makers" 1986 on owl

"Just Friends" Helen Merrill w. Stan Getz  from "Helen Merrill w. Stan Getz"1989 on Emarcy

"Out of This World"  Helen Merrill from "Clear Out Of This World" 1992 on Emarcy

"I'll Remember April"  "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" Helen Merrill  from "Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown"  1994 on Verve

Peggy's Blue Skylight

Just want to point B.C. readers to this video I uploaded to You Tube. This is the well-known Charles Mingus song with my lyrics. (I have put lyrics to a lot more of the song and to the Booker Ervin solo, but they are not performed here).

For posting, I excerpted it from my *teleplay of the same name, which is why you will see some video of the main characters in that teleplay over the audio.

The song is beautifully sung by Dominique Eade, with support by John Leonard on Bass and Tom Beaver on keyboard.




Here are my lyrics to the song:

[chorus]
A building is greying, its edges are fraying, a sign;
Of bad luck beckoned and innocence destined, to die.
Leave it and you feel,
You've got nothing left but to conceal,
The loneliness living in the city
That you cannot bear.

A blind man is singing, his cup is set ringing, a dime;
A gambler shuffles, a sucker is hustled, for wine.
Windows open wide,
Admitting not light but dark inside;
A face will appear and glow soft in the moonlight,
And die.

But a thought has begun to renew you.
To bury the blue you;
The loneliness shattering to pieces;
Thinking of Peggy and drinking in Peggy,
It's clear where your solace and your peace is.

Wakening in love,
Enfolding her tight, you look above;
The skylight is blue,
A frame for your emotions, tonight.

[Booker Ervin solo]:
As the rhythm of this solo
Marks up time with its notes;
So are our days measured by events,
Quickly or slowly the quality will tell,
That time is measured not by minutes or days,
Its pace a relative question changing with our lives;
People passing through, events determine, times pace;
Are we the victims of fate or do choices we make make a difference?

The answer may lie between the two,
A constant compromise between shifting winds of fate
And taking hold,
Making hard decisions and forcing life's hand.

Trying to find the questions,
Unsure which questions we should ask,
Hoping the answers won't be denied,
To a person who is living honestly, trying to be open.

Learning daily,
That pleasure often hides in, simple, places;
Born on a breeze bearing the scent of a warm autumn day,
Seen on the face of a child at play,
Lost in a warm moon-lit ray;
Locked in the laughter of your lover as she lay,
By your side soft, warm and gentle;
Questions fading,
As you see life is time lived moment to moment.
[Return to chorus]

I have written vocalese lyrics to many jazz songs and solos. Vocalists are welcome to contact me about checking out my material.


*I have posted the complete teleplay (14 minutes long): http://youtu.be/y_wXcgq4mQY

The Tenuous Rise of the Singing Class in Jazz-Pt. I

In a recent interview at Jazz wax, Robert Glasper said of existing jazz styles: "I think they've run their course in terms of attracting a new audience."  Glasper also said, in referring to The Great American Songbook, that "It's time for a new standard. We can't do the old thing forever."


He's on to something. Two trend lines are going in opposite directions.

Chet's Funny Valentine

For many years, learning "All the Things You Are," "Laura," etc. served a dual purpose: you could study how the masters negotiated the chord changes and you could play songs that audiences wanted to hear. Today, aspiring jazz musicians continue to learn pretty much the same tunes their forebears have for the last, say, 50 years, but at this point, a rapidly diminishing number of listeners recognize these tunes.  And, the work of any instrumentalist playing standards in the traditional, bop, or swing style will always be compared to the incomparable body of work generated by the great jazz masters. After having heard these tunes played by the likes of Dexter Gordon and Miles, will even these listeners hear the 1000th iteration of "My Funny Valentine" as anything but pleasant background to a nice meal?

Jazz vocalists are apparently surviving this process better than instrumentalists. Of course, singers doing the American Songbook in a jazz style can also be compared to previous jazz giants, but at this point, the abstraction of a note combined with the specific gravity of a lyric (a.k.a. singing a song) continues to foster a free-floating emotional exchange between the artist and a fairly broad range of listeners. This kind of exchange may have once been the norm between mainstream jazz instrumentalist and audience, but it's now a lot rarer.

I have no hard stats to back me up, but my strong perception is that in the last fifteen years, there has been a increasing percentage of vocalists booked into Boston-area jazz venues. Booking follows taste.  Other circumstantial evidence: the various incarnations of Roy Eldridge playing "Rockin' Chair" on YouTube have about 13,000 views. The vocal version done by Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden have hundreds of thousands of views. Michael Buble's "The Way you Look Tonight" has over a million views. I think you'd be hard pressed to total up 50 posted jazz versions of the tune to reach a million.


People often talk about these songs being cyclically re-discovered, but to people under 30 (except those studying jazz), knowing "Just In time" is like knowing who preceded President Taft. 
















Part 2: Can you salvage the standard repertoire by infusing current influences. Or, if you bend a standard too far does it break?