I Could Have Told You

One of the great joys of music is meeting different musicians and then hearing them play or sing pieces I’m not familiar with.  Wikipedia says The Great American Songbook, also known as 'American Standards', is the canon of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century.”  That’s enormous territory and although I’ve been playing songs from that genre for more than fifty years, I still come across new ones (to me).  Most are fun to play and some are very moving.  Such is the case with the song “I Could Have Told You” The haunting melody was written by the great James Van Heusen, a friend of Sinatra’s, and the melancholic lyrics were penned by the prolific lyricist Carl Sigman. 

The  recording became a Frank Sinatra “signature song.” The Nelson Riddle arrangement was recorded as a single on December 9, 1953 just days after Sinatra reportedly attempted suicide over his broken marriage to Ava Gardner.  No wonder it is so mournful and heartfelt and supposedly he never performed it in his endless appearances on stage. Obviously, the song conjured painful memories. It later appeared on his 1959 compilation album Look to Your Heart and another one that same year, made up of mostly sorrowful songs, No One Cares.   

It was also recorded by Bob Dylan (surprisingly to me) so if one likes his voice and style you can also find it on YouTube.  It can’t compare to Sinatra’s smooth tonality and phrasing. 

Although I probably heard the song in my years of listening to Sinatra, I didn’t have the sheet music or take note of it.  I was “introduced” to it by a singer we came across in our many visits to the Double Roads Tavern in Jupiter.  The Jupiter Jazz Society headed up by Rich and Cherie Moore has a Jazz Jam there on Sunday nights.  Rich is a very talented pianist and can play almost any style. We’re supporters of the Society and try not to miss a performance.  We learned about the Society and Double Roads from our good friend (and my bass accompanist from time to time) David Einhorn who occasionally plays there.   So one connection leads to another in the small music world and there we saw a performance by an upcoming interpreter of the Great American Songbook, Lisa Remick.

A prediction: we’ll hear a lot more from her in the future.  She’s a perfectionist, the kind of singer we really appreciate, trying to go to the heart of a song, and singing it while conveying the emotional foundation of the lyrics and the melody.  Such is her interpretation of “I Could Have Told You” on her CD, Close Enough for Love.   

Thus, I was captivated by that song on her CD. I found a lead sheet for the piano and after playing it over and over again for myself, decided to record it and upload it to YouTube trying to allow the melody to speak for itself, with my usual disclaimer that it was recorded under less than ideal conditions in my living room and using a digital camera.  I played it just one time through and one can follow the lyrics which are below. It’s a gem of a song.

 

I could have told you

She'd hurt you

She'd love you a while

Then desert you

If only you'd asked

I could have told you so

I could have saved you

Some crying

Yes, I could have told you she's lying

But you were in love

And didn't want to know

I hear her now

As I toss and turn and try to sleep

I hear her now

Making promises she'll never keep

And soon, it's over and done with

She'll find someone new to have fun with

Through all of my tears

I could have told you so

Too Late Now

We think of Lerner and Lowe as a team, but lyricist Alan Jay Lerner worked with other composers such as Burton Lane on the film Royal Wedding in 1951.  It includes this gem of a song, a memorable contribution to the Great American Songbook, touching lyrics by Lerner and a suitable Burton Lane melancholic melody.  Supposedly, they wrote it over the telephone. 

Although it’s been recorded by many, it’s Judy Garland’s sad rendition I think of as the song was written for her but she dropped out before Royal Wedding was filmed and was replaced by Jane Powell.  This YouTube recording was from her TV show, performed some dozen years later.  It takes on a genuine sadness given the back-story.

Too Late Now

Too late now to forget your smile

The way we cling when we danced awhile

Too late now to forget and go on with someone new

Too late now to forget your voice

The way one word makes my heart rejoice

Too late now to imagine myself away from you

All the things we've dreamed together

I relive when we're apart

All the tender words together

Live on in my heart

How could I ever close the door

And be the same as I was before?

Darling, no, no I can't anymore

It's too late now

My rendition in the “recording studio” of my living room has its technical drawbacks, but I tried to capture the pure simplicity of this wonderful melody.

I Love My Wife

Cy Coleman’s I Love My Wife is the title song from his 1977 musical about wife swapping – a very popular “sport” in those days, the same year NYC’s Plato's Retreat opened for swingers.  After the fantasying by the husbands in the show, they come to the conclusion that they have the best in their own wives.  Thus this song.  If it were not for Frank Sinatra perhaps the song would be as forgotten as the musical but, thankfully, Sinatra saw the genius of this beautiful ballad, the repeated musical phrases resulting in such a haunting melody.  He recorded it as a single using a Nelson Riddle chart. The lyrics, by Michael Stewart, latch onto those musical phrases (these of course are not the entire lyrics):

But just in case, you didn't know

I love my wife

and later in the song….

But just in case, you hadn't heard

I love my wife

and later again…

But just in case, you couldn't guess

I love my wife

and the concluding

But just in case, you couldn't guess

Or hadn't heard

Or didn't know

I love my wife

I love my wife

I love my wife

mmm….

I love my wife

My piano rendering of this wonderful melody is dedicated to my wife of nearly 50 years, Ann.

Jazz is Alive and Well in Jupiter

I am very fortunate to have a new friend in my life, Nina Motta’s brother, David. 

They were raised in a musical family and David Einhorn has established himself as a leading bassist. Although he lived in Martinique for the past several years, he has recently returned to South Florida to resume his jazz career here as well as continue his other vocation as a journalist.

David has played with some of the great musicians of our time, and was bassist with jazz pianist Dick Morgan for some 20 years, with several CD recordings.  He’s also played with Anita O’Day, Kai Winding, Nat Adderly, Woody Herman, among others.  While in the Caribbean he recorded and toured with jazz pianist Reginald Policard.

Knowing that I play the piano he suggested we get together once a week and play some standards as well jazz classics.  I am not a jazz musician, so I wondered why he would want to invest the effort, but as he explained it was all part of getting back in the grove, particularly with songs from The Great American Songbook, which given a lead sheet, I can play almost anything written.  Meanwhile I dabble still at jazz compositions, particularly ones by Bill Evans, a great enigma to me as a pianist, beautiful melodies with harmonic and dissonance challenges.

After soloing all my life, other than accompanying a singer at one time, playing with a bassist has issues for me.  Suddenly, timing becomes paramount.  Alone, I’ll add or delete beats here and there, where I “feel” the music.  It’s difficult for anyone trying to accompany a musical maverick.  So David as been a taskmaster as well and I look forward to our usual Tuesday sessions as learning moments.  But that will soon end for the summer when we depart for our boat in Connecticut, but hopefully our sessions will resume in the fall.

As David eases back into the South Florida jazz scene, I asked him to keep us apprised of any local gigs he might have and he told me that he would be performing (this past Sunday) at the Jupiter Jazz Society’s 2^nd anniversary Sunday Jazz Jam session at the Double Roads Tavern in Jupiter.  Little did we know about this Society and the fabulous stage at the Double Roads (and great Tavern food too).  This jam session is every Sunday from 5 – 9 and anyone with serious talent can sit in, but as a special occasion, they started off with a professional jazz gig, Jérôme-Degey on guitar, John D. Beers III on trumpet, David Einhorn on bass, Goetz Kujack on drums and Rick Moore on keys (Cherie and Rick Moore are co-founders of the Jupiter Jazz Society).  David even inveigled Rick’s group to play a Bill Evans piece in our honor, an embarrassing pleasure.  For an hour this group improvised some of the great jazz classics.  Where have we been Ann and I wondered?  We’ll now be at the Double Roads on Sunday nights when we can.

Once their set was over, and “Dr. Bob” an ophthalmologist had sat in at the keyboards, it was time to hand over the event to the "Jupiter Jazz Youth Ensemble."  If this is the future of jazz it is in good hands.  These kids were fabulous.

As the photograph attests, David goes into another world when he plays.  He’s as intense as I’ve ever seen a bassist and we asked David during the break, just exactly what he is experiencing at those moments.  He replied that the music must come through you, almost from another place.  He’s found that sacred piece of real estate.

We’ll be back and anyone in the area reading this blog who loves jazz is encouraged to do so as well.  Maybe next year I’ll pick out a lead sheet and try to do something myself with the group.  Although an electronic keyboard is not my thing, and playing with a group would test my skills, one never knows!

The Great American Songbook Inhabits the Palm Beaches

Some recent events bear witness to the title of this entry.  A focal point, though, is Palm Beach’s The Colony Hotel which has its very own version of Manhattan’s Cafe Carlyle, or any of the well known NYC cabarets, only more intimate.  The Colony’s Royal Room attracts some topnotch American Songbook talent. Also, the Colony’s Polo Lounge Sunday brunch this season featured one of the best jazz pianists, Bill Mays. Sometime ago we heard Mays accompany diva Ann Hampton Callaway (a composer and a great jazz-cabaret singer) at the Eissey Campus Theatre of Palm Beach State College and made it a point to seek him out at the Colony’s Polo Lounge a couple of weeks ago. 

I asked him to play Bill Evans’ Turn Out the Stars, not very frequently performed, a work of beautiful voicing and emotion.  After a break, Mays played it solo, without the bass, effortlessly as if he plays it daily.  To me, it was heartrending. Then we were treated to an impromptu performance by the then featured performer at the Royal Room -- Karen Oberlin.  Amazing how an unrehearsed number by three professionals can be so natural.  Bill Mays’ CD Front Row Seat is exactly as titled – it’s as if he is playing in your living room.

Last month at the Royal Room we also caught Jane Monheit who we saw years ago and who has matured into such a great stylist, with phenomenal range, her latest album, The Songbook Sessions, a tribute to the great Ella Fitzgerald. She gladly posed with Ann for a photo. 

She performed pieces from her album and other numbers with her trio, husband Rick Montalbano on drums, Neal Miner on bass and Michael Kanin on piano, just the perfect combo for classic jazz.  Unfortunately her album (and this is very personal, not a professional observation) included a trumpet player, at times a distraction. I just wonder why the addition of a brass instrument was necessary. The bass, piano, and percussion combo is (to me) ideal for intimate, classic jazz.

Nonetheless, just to tie this together is a YouTube performance by Jane Monheit of Bill Evans’ Turn out the Stars, which was recorded at the Rainbow Room some six years ago.  What a sultry performer, one of our leading jazz first ladies, along with Stacey Kent, two completely different styles but both at the top of their games.

Last Saturday our close friend and neighbor, Nina (the artist who painted “Jessica” which hangs over my piano), who is also a cellist and a singer (do her talents have no bounds?), performed in the Choral Society of the Palm Beaches (S. Mark Aliapoulios, Artistic Director) – at Jupiter’s Florida Atlantic University auditorium. 

This was one of the most diverse programs we’ve seen in a long time, culminating in a partially acted out version of Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella, a Broadway show which was recently performed at the New York City Opera.

The program’s featured performers made it especially enjoyable, vocalists Lisa Vroman, a soprano with extensive Broadway experience (who played Rosabella in that New York City Opera presentation) and Mark Sanders, a baritone who frequently performs with the Gulf Coast Symphony.  They had the perfect chemistry for performing one of the most beautiful Broadway duets ever written, Loesser’s "My Heart Is So Full of You."

But for me the highlight was the appearance and performance of Paul Posnak, who arranged Four Songs By George Gershwin for two pianos, which he played with the Choral Society’s pianist Dr. Anita Castiglione.  The songs reminded me so much of Earl Wild’s arrangement, Fantasy on Porgy and Bess and after the concert I told him so. He was delighted by the comparison, and it was apt.

Not enough praise can be directed to Dr. Catiglione for her nearly non-stop performance during the 2-1/2 hour program, easily transitioning to soloing, to accompanying, from Gershwin, to Irving Berlin, to Rogers and Hammerstein, to then to Frank Loesser and finally to classical, accompanying songs beautifully sung by the 2016 Young Artist Vocal Competition Winners, Mr. Julian Frias and Ms. Celene Perez, both high school seniors with great artistic careers ahead of them.  Our friend, Nina, was instrumental in organizing this competition.

Judging by these events, the American Songbook thrives and its future seems assured in the Palm Beaches!