Days 61-70 Sampler

In there somewhere is Mrs. Miller...how can you resist?

Day 70: Flora Purim "Perpetual Emotion" & Dorthry Dandridge "Smooth Operator"

It seems like yesterday that I reached 60 and the last set of samplers and now here we are at Day 70. The sampler will come out tomorrow, obviously I'm getting a super late start today. I wish I had something profound to say about 70 days and almost 150 CDs. The whole thing still would fit on a 32g iPod Touch. Not much room left for apps, though.

Flora Purim
Perpetual Emotion

This was the kind of half way in between way of doing the 'advanced copy.' Not a special sleeve, a regular jewel case with no artwork and a backing that simply pitched the artist. Not that it worked, because even with the notes linking her to 'straight jazz' performers, I was convinced I was going to have to sit through another 'adult contemporary' fusion CD. And I was not ready for that. But instead, she's a modern swing singer from Brazil, which occasionally shines through. Especially on the Brazilian flavored Saudade. And Crystal Silence. Alright, so there's a lot of Brazilian influence on the CD. Of course, I don't have any liner notes so I have no idea what that means or what the collection represents.

I have a love/hate thing with singers. For the most part I have no need for them or interest. But then, torch singers seriously do something for me. This album, in that regard, has a lot of ballads and easy swing and Latin pieces.

They're all songs that I don't know. I don't know if that means they're all original or if I just don't know them.

You don't get many drum solos on vocal albums. This is a pretty ragin' one at that.

The album actually moves from various band line ups, from a big band, Latin group, or solo guitar for a Brazilian ballad that closes the album.

Dorthry Dandridge
Smooth Operator

Before the movie came out, our store didn't carry any Dorthy Dandridge. After the movie we had a variety of samplers like this available. Of course, I was the buyer for the section and I didn't stock her not because she was 'unmarketable,' but rather because I had no idea who she was. I may or may not have been pitched CDs with her before the movie, I just don't know that I noticed. But after the movie, I got promos.

I never actually watched the movie, so I still know really very little about her. In fact I wasn't sure what kind of singer she would be. For those in the same bubble as me, she manages a strong yet soft tone in her voice that's very seducing. The mastering and recording is really clean for its age. It's really very beautiful singing, if you're into that kind of thing. If you listen closely she has that 'conveyor belt' vibrato that I've always found weird. But it's subtle here and doesn't intrude unless you focus on it...like I can't stop doing right now...

This is hitting all the right buttons, about the only jazz ballad missing that hypnotizes me when sung by a breathy singer is Someone to Watch Over Me. But instead I get How Long Has This Been Going On, Body & Soul, I've Got a Crush on You and The Nearness of You. All done with a sweet breathy voice that's recorded so that she sounds like she's singing it in your ear (of course, I'm wearing headphones). I guess I would be extra late to the party at this point to 'discover' Dandridge, but she does have a really good voice.

I kind of wanted to be snarky about her absence before the movie and how we all pretended that we were into her all along afterward. But I really didn't know who she was, and I was the one who decided (for the most part) what we carried in the jazz section. So she was ignored because I didn't know who she was. But honestly, there are so many stories in jazz, how can you know them all? I mean, just look back on the last 70 days and the artists that have come up, Red Rodney, Buddy Rich...I love jazz stories and I collect them as much as I collect jazz and there are just so many, someone is going to come across an amazing jazz story before you, and they may have Halle Berry to do a movie.

Of course after leaving the store I got to be familiar with her through Carmen Jones since I spent a short period studying Otto Prelinger. Which I promptly forgot until I had to Google to check and make sure it was Halle Berry that played Dandridge in the movie.

And that's the other side of it, I just can't know all the jazz stories out there, and the ones I do learn I often forget.

Dandridge's Smooth Operator is a little saucier than the Sade song. It really manages to walk the line between 'saucy' and 'campy.'

Day 69: Mrs. Miller "Wild Cool & Swingin' Vol.3" & Paul Bley/Gary Peacock/Paul Motain "Not Two, Not One"

Being able to measure traffic is a mixed bag. Like, it's cool to see new readers who come from traffic sources I didn't know about. But then you also get to see the days when even Googlebot isn't interested in your crap.

Anyway, it's Day 69. Insert your favorite joke here.

Mrs. Miller
Ultra-Lounge: Wild, Cool & Swingin' - Artist Series Vol 3

I actually remember this CD. I got it as part of that whole 'lounge' thing that happened and of all the CDs I ever got it elicited the biggest 'what the hell...?' reactions I've had from a promo.

How to describe what is happening to my ears right now...? It's regular old 50s/60s pop-style lounge, the album starts off Girl from Ipanema. Okay, and apparently makes its way to Yellow Submarine...but then there's Mrs. Miller herself.

Imagine some sort of June Cleaver caracature of domestic mid-century motherhood/housewife-ness. Now, pretend some hack comic was going to mock her singing popular yet innoffensive tunes. Falsetto, a warbling vibrato, just sort of hammering away through the song completely oblivious.

That's what's happening. Apparently, and this comes once again from Wiki, she was a novelty act in the 60's. I'll let you read that there instead of digesting it. Being the internet, there is of course also a website. Also worth exploring. Seriously, turn off your ad-block and click the player or right click on the link in the header for the album, listen to the samples at Amazon, experience this.

Generations might have a tendency to think that they invite irony. I know that I look at the younger generations romance with irony and think, "amateurs,  Gen X already nailed that down..." But apparently the Boomers were into appreciating things ironically on their own (ours was still better...). Oh good lord, A Hard Days Night...

This is the kind of thing that existed before Karaoke where you can listen to average people murder popular songs in bars across the country.

From what I'm gathering from the various websites she was that perfect combination of novelty and completely sincere.  There apparently wasn't much interest in letting her in on the jokes (there was a second tier to it when she apparently was used as an icon of the drug culture late in her career to her own dismay) but for the most part she was good natured about it. Sort of a 1960s William Hung.

This is the kind of thing I loved about getting promos. There's no way I would have known anything about this unless I had gotten this CD. And now I have 50 minutes of delightful ridiculousness on my iTunes.

How has she not ended up on a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack yet?

Okay, that's ridiculously adorable. She apparently does a take on Roger Miller's King of the Road but instead it's Queen of the House. I really feel the overwhelming urge to create some referential pop-culture laden ironic movie that involves homemaking at least tangentially film just to use that song.

And of course he 'big hit,' Downtown. This kind of grows on you in an incredibly weird and indescribable way. And then there's that bizarre bird whistle...

I started this album with a 'Seriously?' and have ended it wanting to have met this woman. I feel bad because we're not entirely laughing with her but at the same time...I don't know. Very interesting.



Paul Bley
Not Two, Not One

I'm cheating with the image, this is another homeless CD but I forgot to scan it before I put it in the computer and now I'm too lazy to stop the CD to scan it and for some reason don't want to do the graphic bit after the fact. Plus, the dim, gray cover lets you in on the kind of album it's going to be. Where Mrs. Miller might have been light and whimsical, this is the kind of arrhythmic, sparse and dissonant kind of music that you apparently hire Paul Motain to play drums on.

This is of course a sharp contrast to the previous album, but they were in the same CD case (to which neither of them belonged.) Which probably means they were part of one of my 'listening blitzes' that I've talked about before, where I listened to half of a few tracks on each CD and then ejecting it and moving on.

I think that every twentieth century composition class has someone at the final hammering or plucking or otherwise attacking the strings of the piano without the keys, which makes me not as receptive when modern performers do it.

This is pretty sparse, a lot of solo piano in it. But where I usually comment on the college common room piano pounders, Bley isn't any where near as dense and isn't mistaking pounding as intensity.

I like this kind of stuff, but I am having a hard time finding anything to say about it. There have been so many of these with this basic line up slipping in that I almost am just listening to it like music and forgetting this is supposed to document  the experience. Or something. If this part is boring, please re-read the Mrs. Miller stuff, that's down right hypnotizing.

I don't have the liner notes to tell me what the idea behind the overall album was, but as we've learned, that doesn't always help.