I Haven't Forgotten

Here I am: stuck in '38-'39. Well, I shouldn't say "stuck" – I mean, I'm thrilled to be planted at this point in the 20th century, surveying musically, with the aid of my CD collection, the waning years of the Great Depression. Today, I spun, among other platters, Disc 7 of Mosaic's magnificent Mildred Bailey set (out-of-print, as eventually become all things Mosaic), from which played, at the command of the mindless but benevolent random buttom, "Have You Forgotten So Soon," a treatment that I'm mad about of a now undeservedly forgotten ballad.

The song was put together by a distinguished lyricist team, Edward ("Body and Soul") Heyman and Sam ("My Old Flame") Coslow, and a considerably more obscure Tin Pan Alley composer, Abner ("On the Beach at Bali-Bali") Silver. I am touched by its plaintive, lilting melody and still more deeply affected by its picturesque and (like most everything else I adore) at once both timeless and capturing-the-period words. Who better to deliver this combination than the hip Rockin' Chair Lady, Mildred Bailey? Similar in tone to but more vivid in its details than 1940's "At Least You Could Say 'Hello,'" this 1938 offering presents an eternal question, posed yet today by hurt and disbelieving jilted lovers, against a backdrop of distinctly '30's images.

I first came across Mildred's 9/29/38 interpretation, in which she is accompanied by the band of her xylophone-playing husband, Red Norvo, and fell in love with both song and performance thereof and later reacted with equal enthusiasm to the Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra 9/22/38 take, featuring the sensitive vocal of the scandalously underrated Jack Leonard.

I couldn't find Mildred's version on youtube but came across TD's. Though Jeri Southern isn't a musical direction that I've taken, when, in scrolling down the list, I happened upon her record, on which I saw she is joined by Johnny Smith, a guitarist whose playing I greatly admire, I decided to veer off there and was rewarded by a probing exploration, which includes a verse I hadn't known. Jack and Mildred double up here and there and each has his/her own choruses . Jeri's reading, taken at a crawl, follows, in part, the Mildred lyrics. Wonder if it was La Bailey who introduced this later singer to the extremely beautiful, sentimental but not lachrymose song?

Have You Forgotten So Soon?
Music by Abner Silver,
Words by Edward Heyman and Sam Coslow

I find it difficult
To think that once you cared for me at all.
I can't believe
That you refuse to speak to me
Each time I call.

Have you forgotten so soon –
That lovely night in June;
Our graduation dance;
The glorious beginning
Of a beautiful romance;
All those gay diversions
We planned in advance –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten so soon –
The sun upon the sand;
The moon of yellow gold;
The things at Coney Island
That the fortune teller told;
Air-conditioned movies
That gave us a cold –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Don't you still remember
The Witches' Party
On Halloween?
And that grand December –
The whitest Christmas
We've ever seen.

Have you forgotten so soon –
That loving cup we made
Of old Italian wine;
That New Year's Eve at Tony's
When the gang sang "Auld Lang Syne";
All those nights in Heaven
That used to be mine –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten so soon –
My birthday party cake;
The sandwiches you made;
The kisses that I borrowed
And so eagerly repaid;
And the day we walked
In the Easter Parade –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten so soon –
The winding country lane;
A little wayside inn;
And sipping tea while list'ning to
A muted violin;
Thrilling to the old songs
By Irving Berlin –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Don't you still remember
The moonlight hayride,
The Beaux Arts Ball?
And that grand September –
The crimson woodland,
The waterfall.

Have you forgotten so soon –
The concert in the park;
The Army-Navy game;
The time I lost my money on
A horse that bore your name;
The day I snapped your picture
That's still in my frame –
Have you forgotten so soon?

I'll admit – this is a song that really starts the tears going with me.

A Tiger

These last several days, I've been listening to late '20's stuff – Louis, Duke, Bix with and without Whiteman, Venuti and Lang ... that sort of thing. I've been listening, because that's what I do at home, absorb music, but also, I suppose, because I've been seeking a happy aural diversion from my very frequent thoughts of Nelson ... whom I miss. Popular music sides from the late '20's, be they entirely jazz or merely jazz-infused, were, in large part, very peppy (silly word, peppy, isn't it?) – much more so than the Depression-response crooner records that immediately followed. This afternoon, I was distracted in my reflections on a member, dear to me, of the canine community by a few insistent blasts announcing my all-time favorite treatment of a tune about an elusive member of the feline community: "Tiger Rag," recorded 11/10/28 and heralded on the record label as "A Trumpet Specialty by Tom Dorsey."

Those whose interest in Tommy Dorsey, prominent swing band leader, extends beyond merely casual are aware that the smiling, bespectacled musician was not only a virtuouso trombonist but also an extremely interesting, industrious and wholly original trumpet player. For the liner notes for "The Dorsey Brothers Vol. 1 – Recorded in New York, 1928," Jeff Healey offered these astute observations on the dichotomy of TD, the brassman:

A comment on the trumpet-playing of Tommy Dorsey should be made here. If ever a musician displayed, albeit musically, a split personality, it is Tommy. Although justifiably rated as one of the finest trombonists ever to master the instrument, Tommy was a better "straight" than "hot" player on the trombone. In fact, he all but gave up attempting jazz solos by the time he organized his first orchestra under his own name in 1935. His trumpet-playing, on the other hand, is always "hot," if not always precise. There is always a sense of agitated urgency in his tone.

I love Tommy's pithy statements in the verse section as well as the way he turns up the heat with each successive "Hold that tiger!" line. And yet he's so uninhibited and spontaneous; he just lets it go. The way he wails through that final straight mute chorus: Man! I dig Jimmy Williams galumphing bass, also. As for Eddie Lang ... well, with him on your date, you just don't need no piano player!

All this talk of tigers made me think of an amusing scene from one of my Swinging '60's-London favorites. ... I wonder what TD would think of this juxtaposition. Something tells me he wouldn't find it very gear/fab.

They're holdin' him, no?

CD, Sixteen Bucks; Dorsey, Priceless

Chapter Six, "Swing High: More White Bands," of Bruce Crowther and Mike Pinfold's The Big Band Years begins, beneath the sub-header, "DANCING ON THE CEILING," with a quote from The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing, Tommy Dorsey: "They paid $1.75 to get in; let's give 'em $3.50 worth."

Today, on the 103rd anniversary of TD's birth, with five Dorsey discs shuffling around in the CD player upstairs and "Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, 1938" pouring from the computer speakers before which I sit, I consider the tremendous kick given me by the music of the Irish-American Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr., my favorite musician. Dorsey, peerless legit player and facile hot man; his arrangers, my favorite, Sy Oliver, and Paul Weston, Axel Stordahl, Deane Kincaide, Bill Finegan; his musicians, my favorite trumpeter, Bunny Berigan, and Ziggy Elman, Bud Freeman, Charlie Shavers, Buddy Rich, Joe Bushkin, Dave Tough, Johnny Mince, Don Lodice; and his vocalists, my favorite, Jo Stafford, and Frank Sinatra, The Pied Pipers, Jack Leonard, Dick Haymes, Edythe Wright, Stuart Foster, could deliver – something for everybody. The Dorsey crews had no weak spots, no holes; all of the many aggregations fronted by Dorsey in his 20-plus year bandleading career were able to alternate between quiet, crawl tempo romantic ballads and blazing, pounding killer-dillers with ease, assurance and authority.

Tommy Dorsey died – one week to the day after his 51st birthday – not quite ten years before I was born, so I never got that $3.50 value live performance for a $1.75 admission. (Oh, how I wish I had been around in the '30's and '40's!) I have gotten, though, something from that trombone and those bands, on records, now transferred to compact disc, whose worth is inestimable.

Dig Dorsey today!

Five Questions

Listening today, Jo Stafford's birthday, to the music of my favorite singer, I remembered an interview I heard for the first time a few months ago, shortly after the incomparable vocalist's passing. In this conversation between Jo and a California DJ – which took place in 2006, some time before Jo's eighty-ninth birthday that year – Jo responded in her usual thoughtful and intelligent manner – to the same tired, old questions that I, in my capacity of audience had encountered many times before and she, in her capacity of subject, surely must have encountered hundreds of times before. As I listened, back in July, I thought, This is the latest interview with Jo that I've heard; most likely, I'll never run across a more recent one – now she's gone ... and I'll never know the answers to the questions that have burned in my mind since I discovered that voice.

The interview – conducted by musician and Standards Era historian, Michael Feinstein – that concludes the 2003 CD debut of Jo's 1959 concept album, "Ballad of The Blues," is, by far and away, the best with Stafford that I've come across. Because Michael talked to her musician-to-musician. He posed questions that allowed Jo to reveal aspects of the musical miracle that was/is Jo Stafford. There was none of that "Well, what was the young Sinatra like?" (Why ask Jo Stafford about Frank Sinatra when you can ask her about Jo Stafford?) ... Still, the exchange with Feinstein serves to intrigue rather than satisfy fully.

Now, in 2008, like in the late '80's when first I heard that voice, that tone, Jo seems to have come out of nowhere. I'm sure that all whose initial exposure to the Stafford sound came in 1940 reacted as I did – and musician/composer/arranger Johnny Mandel did: "Who is THAT!?" Where did she come from; what did she evolve from?

In 1995, I wrote to Jo. I didn't ask for an autographed picture; I didn't ask any questions – I just rhapsodized, without expectation of acknowledgment. A couple of weeks after I sent my missive, I got a reply from her, which opened with, "Thank you for one of the nicest – if not the [she underlined the – twice] nicest letter I have ever received." Well, did I smile. .. Perhaps such was merely this gracious lady's standard response to a devotee's outpouring of enthusiasm, but I like to imagine that I met my objective of communicating to my favorite singer my tremendous admiration for her talent and music.

If I had had the opportunity that many others had (and, it seems to me, squandered) to speak with that musical enigma, Jo Stafford, I would have asked:

Who and what were your musical influences?
What did you listen to when you were growing up?
What do you listen to now?
Who is your favorite composer?
Does an identification with the lyrics aid you in your interpretation?

Banal? Maybe. Yet, I believe these five questions might have helped me to understand. ... Jo's parents came from Tennessee. Her mother played banjo. Jo had five years of operatic training and took piano lessons. She spoke of having listened, in the '30's, to Glen Gray and Benny Goodman. She dug the Mercer-Teagarden duets with Paul Whiteman's orchestra. The Stafford Sisters, the vocalizing trio in which Jo made her professional debut, took their stylistic cue from the jazzy New Orleanians, The Boswell Sisters. "Our talents — his and mine — fit the music of the time,” she said, of herself and her husband, bandleader/composer/arranger, Paul Weston. “And the music fit us." ... Still, where the heck did Jo Stafford come from? How do you take the environment and the times and get Jo Stafford? Recently, I was listening to her Reader's Digest recordings from the late '60's; Jo, at the time these sides were made, was a 30-year veteran of the music business. And the musical landscape had changed considerably since her heyday. She, singer-trombonist Warren Covington and the then current edition of The Pied Pipers were doing, among other things, that easy-listening '60's anthem "What the World Needs Now," (penned by the then ubiquitous Burt Bacharach), in a take, extremely late '60's in manner, on the quasi-spiritual "Yes, Indeed" approach of Dorsey arranger, Sy Oliver. I could just envision the vocal assemblage swaying, on a variety show (Ed Sullivan; The Smothers Brothers), before a mod, bold, colorful backdrop. The one timelessly hip element of the record was Jo's delivery. That cool tone and laidback style. Jo was hip and modern in 1940. She's hip and modern today. She will be so, long after we, of this moment, are gone. Perhaps the simple, one-word explanation for the newness, the unprecented quality that Jo brought to her environment and times – or anybody else brought to his/hers, for that matter – is uniqueness. Just the same, I would like to have heard her responses to those five questions.