One of my latest, greatest helpers

As a jazz musician whose talents only take him so far, and as readers of this blog will know, I’m constantly reading and thinking about jazz to help my musicianship along. Last year I read Ted GIoia’s The History of Jazz and while I was more than impressed by his look into the history of America’s music, I was particularly taken by the extensive discography to which he made continual reference. After all, if you are going to understand music, even if it is only from a historical perspective, sooner or later you are going to have to listen to it for yourself.

 

Read for yourself, then listen (or play) for yourself.

That’s what makes this book, Mr. Gioia’s latest work (I think), one of his best to date: it’s extensive discography. And because this is all about a solid core of jazz standards, the information is something that any jazz musician will be able to use at some point. Every song has between five and ten recordings listed for listening and research into the nuances and hidden meanings of the songs, not to mention alternative interpretations and styles. It not only reads like a jazz musician’s hall of fame, it reads like a biological listing of family, genus, and species of the recordings for understanding the very evolution of the song. Even better, the book is indexed by song, composer and performer, so however you decide to come at a song, the author has provided you the resources you need to choose your own angle of approach.

After finishing this book, something that occurred to me is that I should have been taking some notes. At some point, I sort of noticed that the index would help me cross reference recordings and performers, but I really should have been making a list of stuff to look for and recordings to Google or buy. Now, if I’m going to get serious about a song or recording, I’m going to have to go back and research it. There are worse things, I suppose, but I could have used my time more efficiently.

I guess I’ll just have to read this book again, and I guess that will happen sooner, rather than making me even later to jazz.

Leap this: Five nights ago, two nights away

Last Friday, Mrs. S. and I again made the drive – thankfully not in the rain this time – to Birmingham, to visit the Alys Stephens Center to see,

The one...

The only...

Algernon!

Otherwise known as Al Jarreau. 78 years old, still singing up a storm with his vast repertoire, iconic hits, and a band of youngsters and oldsters that can make your heart race. He told the story (twice) of how his first record became a hit because even though nobody knew his name, they knew “that song by Algernon”, (young kids: google “Flowers for Algernon”), and that helped him to sell records. So, let me give you the short version of the review of the show. But first, a shot of me and Mrs. S. prior to the start.

He sang all his hits, and he sang a few other people’s hits, like The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home” and Paul Desmond’s “Take Five” (which originally didn’t have lyrics). His bass player, Chris Walker, sang one of his songs that will soon be a hit (phenomenal stuff) and all in all, it was just one hell of a show. Al’s got a star on the Hollywood walk of fame, and deservingly so. It was a great show. Imagine a 78 year old jazz singer on this stage:

Anyway, I’ve scratched another legend off my “must see living legends of jazz list”. Next up is Wynton Marsalis, who I “saw” two years ago, but due to the down front, below the stage, orchestra pit seats in Huntsville, although I sat within twenty feet of him, I never, not once, actually saw Mr. Marsalis, this Friday we’ll actually get to meet and greet him. Expect many autographs, pictures, and memories to adorn these pages shortly after that.

Five days ago, Al Jarreau, two days from now, Wynton Marsalis. Not bad for someone who’s as late to jazz as me. Not bad at all.

Finally: Yoity Tot updates

These have been long overdue, so let’s get right to them.

Although I’ve been listening to a lot of different stuff lately, mainly because of having bought a lot of new stuff, there really aren’t any recordings that have been getting steady, consistent play, but Cross Country Tour by Ahmad Jamal comes closest. I just love what he does with his trademark bright chord voicings. Songs like Poinciana and Surrey with the Fringe on Top stick in your mind for hours after hearing Jamal play them. His Billy Boy is reminiscent of Red Garland’s on Milestones, but again, brighter. He does things with Broadway and My Funny Valentine that are just amazing. A great work that is hard to get away from.

My greatest surprise after Jamal has been the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Complete Last Concert. Like many of my “discoveries”, I just can’t believe how long I went before I found them. The vibes with rhythm section had me seriously out looking to purchase a vibraphone. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (they call it “England’s Carol”) is simply phenomenal.

And finally, Mingus, Ah Um. When I don’t know what I want to listen to, this gets pulled down and put into the CD player more often than anything else I own. Just an amazing work and it runs for more than seventy minutes. Great stuff.

Moving off the Yoity Tot list and onto the B-list are Motion by Lee Konitz, Time for Tyner by McCoy Tyner, and The Sidewinder by Lee Morgan. Of course, it goes without saying, there is nothing wrong with any of those great works. They are all three, tremendous recordings. They just aren’t high on my play list right now. What would be the next three to move to the B-list, I have no idea. It was hard enough relegating these three. I’ll worry about that when I find my next Yoity Tot candidate.

Back against the wall

A while back, shortly after I joined the big band, I made the comment that I thought playing in the big band would balance well with playing in the jazz combo because I wouldn't have to work as hard in the big band as I do in the combo.

Well, I think I was wrong.

We are preparing for our April 17 concert, and we have a singer who does jazz workshops coming in to sing with us, Kathy Kosins. We will be doing two songs with her, plus an undetermined number of other songs, possibly including two Count Basie songs arranged by Neil Hefti. Long and short: there are critical piano parts in each of the Basie songs, and plenty of solo licks in the two vocalist songs, and it is very hard to practice the songs outside of the band because there is nothing for the piano to do when the singer is singing and the brass is blowing. I've taken to recording bits of our practice sessions to play back and play along with, but that hasn't gone so well (yet). Fortunately, I have the Atomic Basie CD, so I can play along with the two Hefti tunes. I also bought two of Ms. Kosins CD's (which haven't arrived at my house yet), one of which has one of the songs were doing with her on it, so hopefully, I'll be able to learn and swing those four tunes, plus our boogaloo tune which everyone is intent on doing (except me).

As if that weren't enough, our combo director wants us to work on Cherokee, which is a very difficult tune (for me) to play, and one I've given up on several times but now will not be permitted to give up on. Our drummer threw Keith Jarrett's The Magician in You into the mix, and I, unthinkingly, threw Falling Grace in (which I can play serviceably enough). And, last week when we practiced without our director, we came to the conclusion that I would be responsible for leading our group into and out of the endings of all our songs, a responsibility that I will not shirk, because I do believe the piano is "the key" to that part of the song, but it is something I'm not very experienced with and will have to work hard on.

So, even if I only do, say, fifteen minutes a day per tune, that's almost two hours, and that isn't that much practice when learning tunes. That's also more time than I have available to practice. Suffice to say, my back is now against the wall, and the only thing that can save me is focusing on these tunes in my private lessons and practicing my butt off every weekend and during spring break.

I asked for it, I got it.

Nothing like a curveball

Last night was the Valentine's Songfest Concert. Four bands playing six songs, and it really was quite a big success. The concert led off with the Wednesday night combo which I play in, then the "second" big band, which I also play in, then the Thursday night combo, which is just a trio, then the "big" big band.

At rehearsal in the late afternoon with the second big band, I was still utterly unable to play my six bar solo without flubbing it, and I started to become genuinely worried I was going to make an ass of myself when it came time to play. When I played it by myself or just for the director, I didn't have a problem, but when I played it leading into the band, I had to make it up. It was awful. But eventually, we ran out of time and I simply hoped to get lucky when it came time for the performance. I'm sure my band mates were hoping the same.

The curveball came at our next rehearsal for the combo. Over the last five weeks, we've play about six different songs, but since two weeks ago, we'd only played two: My Romance, and Ruby, My Dear. Last week, we decided we would play Ruby at the concert, and that was what we worked on all during practice, and that was the only song I practiced during the week. So, sure enough, our director comes in and says, "You guys know you're playing My Romance, right?" The guitar and tuba player both go, yeah, we know, whereupon I said, "You gotta be shittin' me." Then, for a brief second, I assumed the guys were playing a joke on me, and I asked them if they were, but they assured me, no. No joke. The program has My Romance, and we're the first act. Everybody said, don't worry you sound fine, and hey, it's jazz! And while I'm fully aware I can play some simulacrum of the song, I'm also aware I can't play it half as well as I can play Ruby. Oh well. We dive in. We sounded great during practice, we worked out some chording ideas, and my confidence returned.

So, showtime. My Romance did sound pretty good. We got through our solos, but somehow we got confused with the section on tradeoffs, and like the last time we flubbed a song publicly (which was a slightly different group), no one was quite sure what happened. But, we kept going, avoided the train wreck (where the song goes off the track and comes to a complete stop), signaled for the head, and finished the song safe. I don't think the audience even recognized we had goofed.

Then came My Funny Valentine with the big band. And lo and behold, while I did stumble slightly, I did not flub the solo by any means, and as a matter of fact, got it mostly spot on. I was overjoyed. The rest of that song and the original that we did were fine, including a solo in the second piece that was not as interesting as when I played it in practice but still sounded somewhat accomplished.

In short, then: I continue to progress. Slowly, but progressing nonetheless. And I have to say, I do have a lot of fun during the concert. The feeling of exhilaration after the concert is great, too, not to mention the feeling of being free from having to master some songs, patterns, solos, etc. Just liberation and freedom to plunk around the keyboard as I will.

There's nothing like a curveball to make the concert experience all the more rewarding!

Catchin' that Wave

For a change, I had a good weekend of practice. I was sort of worried, because my piano lesson was cancelled on Wednesday, so I didn't have a chance to look at the ensemble's new songs through the experienced eyes of my instructor, and on Thursday and Friday, I couldn't do anything with any of the new material. On Saturday, I gave up, and on Sunday, on a whim, I thought I would at least try to play along with the records: Frank Sinatra singing Wave, and Clifford Brown doing Joy Spring.

That proved to tip the scales in my favor. While I'm still unsure of a few of the chords, I got the rhythm and tempo of both songs down, which makes it easier to fake when I don't know the chord or I get lost in my fingerings, or whatever.

Tonight I have nothing to deter me from a full couple of hours' practice, and the same holds true for tomorrow, although I will hopefully be able to schedule a makeup piano lesson in there to get just a little clearer image of what I should be playing as an ensemble player. (Yes, it seems dumb to have to state the obvious, but solo piano is different from ensemble piano, and ensemble piano doesn't sound like anything by itself, which is one of the reasons why it is so hard for me to practice.)

Jumping into the deep end

Over and over again...

Last night at jazz ensemble, we worked on three songs, two of which were completely new to the group and the third having been merely glanced at last week. They were Four (the one we glanced at), Wave, and Joy Spring. For three weeks now, I've had a hard time figuring out why I'm the only one who can't keep up with the chord changes. It sucks because not only am I completely behind the beat (and the rest of the band), I sound terrible. This morning, as I was running over Wave in my head, I started to think of other songs that I play for my own personal enjoyment and I suddenly realized what the difference is between what I play by myself and what we play in band: the songs I play have fewer chord changes, fewer key changes, and what changes the song has are spaced farther apart.

Take a song like Someday My Prince Will Come. It changes every bar, but that's it. And what's more, there are no key changes (at least, no changes that last long enough to be recognized as key changes). But if you take a song like Joy Spring, it goes through a ii-V-I progression in the space of two (quick) bars, then changes key and does it again, then changes key again and does it again, and man, it just keeps going like that. No wonder I can't play it. I go from having to play one set of chords in one key (maybe two), with changes spread over four bars to having to play two sets of chords in three, four, five (or maybe more) keys over two bars or so.

What's happening? Our instructor is throwing us in the deep end of the pool, that's what. No point in standing at the wading end, not even getting your hair wet, is probably what he figures. Hard songs make you play better. So, in you go. Splash!

My dad taught me to swim at the YMCA. I was never a good swimmer, but I could move about in the water, and once I learned to float, I stopped panicking any time I happened to swallow a little water. So, I'm going to do now the same thing I did then: swim as best I can, and keep afloat. Eventually, I'll be able to play these chord changes in a second nature fashion. I may even find a diving board this weekend and jump into the deep end by myself.

A site I wish I'd found earlier

I say I wish I'd found it earlier, but it's likely that had I done so, I wouldn't have known what to do with it. Anyway...

Here's a link to a site that for the most part does nothing but rank jazz albums.

http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/jazz100/

They do it by genre, all time, decade, new, classic, etc., so it is a very useful set of listings. Conspicuous in her absence is Helen Merrill, who didn't even make the top 200. That can only be considered an oversight of some kind. It's funny to me how the top 10, top 25, and to some extent, the top 100, are (relatively speaking) easy to agree on. There is a lot of uniformity with this list, the Penguin jazz recordings guide core collection and crown collection, typical lists of jazz standards, and so on. And I'd have to say that compared to the Penguin core collection, this list is much closer to how I would probably rank many of these recordings (at least, as far as the ones I've heard goes).

I find these types of lists quite helpful, because the depth of jazz recordings continues to overwhelm me. It's been about a month since I've added any significant amount of recordings to my collection, (though there was the Art Tatum and Charlie Parker stuff I picked up cheap) and even though I've plenty of titles I want to add, I've been more reluctant than usual, simply because I don't feel like spending money in this economy and because I could probably afford to spend more time with the recordings I do have. I think whatever happens, I'll try to hold off until I take my annual trip to Las Vegas (October 19-23), then plan on picking up a pile of stuff before the Christmas holidays, giving me something to focus on over the long vacation. Jazz ensemble class will be wrapped up by the end of November or so, giving me some more time to focus on listening as opposed to playing. (Sometimes it's hard to strike a balance between those two - sounds like material for a future entry to me.)

Damn you, Charlie Parker!

Damn you, Charlie Parker!

I'm not sure what I ever did to you that would make you want to make my hobby of jazz music so difficult. You've been dead longer than I've been alive, but I feel like everything you ever did in the pantheon of jazz was simply to confound and frustrate me. Can I help it if I became a fan of jazz late in life? Can I help it if kids half my age know more about your contributions to jazz than I'm ever going to know? (Not to mention the "whys" and the "hows", too.) Should I be held responsible for my lack of knowledge about jazz, completely handicapping my understanding of how you advanced our art form? And since none of it is really my fault, why make me despondent with your infernal "Parker heads", your huge number of standards, and a recorded legacy so large, it defies imagination and explanation? Did you sleep and eat in the studio, too, just to cut a few extra tracks, in case somebody would doubt your genius after the immense legacy you built?

Damn you, Charlie Parker!

What do you mean, I shouldn't hate you, Charlie? Of course I should. Case in point: Last week at jazz ensemble practice, our group had gotten done fooling around with a blues in F, and the instructor says, "Turn to Blues for Alice". Great, I think. A Parker head, but at least it's a tune I actually know. I even played a lick or two as we flipped through out notations, and some of the group go, "Yeah, yeah man." Unfortunately, playing it in a half-assed way so that it sounds good to my own ears when playing in my dining room because I only know one inversion of each chord, however, is not the same as playing it with multiple inversions in a band setting. I got tore up in five seconds flat. I couldn't keep up with the melody (which nobody was bothering to play), couldn't follow the chord changes (because nobody was playing the fundamental root-third-fifth chords), and couldn't make the chords I knew fit in even when I could figure out where we were in the song. I've been more musically frustrated, I'm sure, but no, I can't remember when, and even if I could, it wouldn't make me feel any better about you, Bird. Which is why I repeat:

Damn you, Charlie Parker!

You say I should listen to more of your music? You say if I only listen, I will understand? You say I need to embody the spirit of your chord changes, imitate your use of the modes over a given key, discover the vibrancy of an off color chromatic that leads back to the basic ii-V-I progression? Okay, what should I listen to? I haven't got a single one of your recordings, so tell me where to start. The complete Dial recordings? The complete Savoy recordings? The Dial and Savoy? The complete Verve? The complete live recordings? Charlie, those suckers are sixty, seventy, a hundred bucks a pop! My CD habit is already more expensive than your drug habit, you ...

OK, that was out of line. Still, damn you, Charlie Parker!

All right. You win. I'm not giving up jazz, but I don't want you and your music haunting me the rest of my amateur jazz musician days. I've ordered a set of eight CD's of your music, 225 tracks (or something like that) of about 60 songs (or something like that). I'll sit and listen to them, really listen. I'll even follow along with the score for the songs that are in The Real Book. I've already been practicing Blues for Alice with no roots and a 6th and a 9th in every major seventh chord. I'm even trying to play Ornithology and Donna Lee again. So, if my ensemble instructor yells out another one of your tunes on Wednesday night, I won't get mad. But, if after I've played these tunes the way you did, and if after I've listened to the ten hours of music I just bought, if after all that effort I'm still struggling, still bashing my head against a wall of out-of-key, out-of-synch, bone crunching, nerve twisting dissonance, well then, I'll go back to cursing you.

I'm going to give you a chance, Charlie Parker. I'm going to sincerely give you a chance. If it works out, I'll be eternally grateful. If it doesn't, well,

Damn you, Charlie Parker! Damn you to hell.

Mel Torme Joins the List

Some things you may or may not have known about Mel Torme:
-He co-wrote the words and music to The Christmas Song (made famous by Nat "King" Cole). He claims he and his partner finished the song in about 40 minutes.
-In addition to writing over 250 songs, he also wrote a biography of Buddy Rich, a novel, and three autobiographical works.
-His nickname (which he didn't like very much) was "The Velvet Fog".

So, if I needed any justification for putting him on the Yoity Tot CD list, there it is. Simple fact of the matter is, Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley is a really fun, highly exuberant piece of music entertainment and true to its name, every tune swings. I really only bought it because it wasn't that expensive and I never expected Mel to become a pseudo-hero of mine, but he did, and he did it in short order. This CD is hard to put on the shelf. It helps that I'm working on one or two of the songs that are on the CD, too. You know, you can listen to Sinatra anytime, but the same goes for Torme. Like I said in my amazon.com review, growing up, his was one of those names that you heard all the time, but you could only really associate it with "older people's music" and when you got older, you just never expended the effort to find out what he was all about. I bought the Shubert Alley CD on a whim, and it was after that I began to learn more about him. Like so many things in being late to jazz, at least I'm able to get on the boat the second time it pulls into the harbor. My entire life would be different if I'd figured out about jazz and people like Torme back in, say, 1972 instead of 2007.

Experiment Analysis: Part 1

Well, we conducted the Tyner vs. Eldar experiment over the weekend. The two subject CD's were Time for Tyner and Eldar's self-titled CD, Eldar (yeah, no kidding). The experiment even had some controls. Mrs. S did a really good job of mixing up all seventeen tunes from the CD's, and the artists themselves had basically standards with a few songs that I was completely unfamiliar with, as well as some made up of pieces of other songs, so there was no possibility for me to judge the artists based on the tracks themselves. Both CD's were studio CD's and for the most part, the accompanists and pianos sounded similar enough that I could not tell the artists apart based just on sound. I have to say, these two CD's match up very well stylistically, technically, and artistically, and it made telling the artists apart solely on their piano chops very challenging.

Before I present the results, here's my analysis.

Tyner's work in Latin and African rhythms and songs stands out. I just couldn't picture Eldar playing Little Madimba, African Village, or Afro Blue (which wasn't on the experiment CD) or something like that. So when I heard something Latin-sounding, I could assume it to not be Eldar. Similarly, when Eldar does that keyboard mashing glissando up or down, there is no mistaking it, and I just couldn't picture Tyner doing something like that. Eldar also makes with the lightning-fingers riffs that, while I'm sure Tyner could do if he wanted, he doesn't, simply because that's not his style. So again, I had no trouble identifying any songs containing those kinds of things as Eldar songs.

Where I got into trouble was when they were playing classic standards at normal tempo with what one could call standard arrangements. There just isn't enough individual style there, at least, not when you just listen to the song for a minute or two. So I need to point out, had I spent, say two or three minutes per song, I think the results would have been different. Yesterday morning and afternoon, I listened to the Eldar CD and in some of the solo work, I heard things I didn't hear when we did the experiment. I think I probably made my decision too early on at least two, and probably three of the songs. (I will do a song by song breakdown and what I heard or didn't hear or thought I heard at a later date, after I've had a chance to listen to each CD .)

Finally, the results were: out of seventeen songs, I correctly identified the artist in eleven of them, 65%. I think that is close to being statistically significant, but probably is not. More interesting is that I was unable to identify the artist in four of the first five songs I listened to. Maybe if I had gone back and listened to the songs again after doing a once-through on them, I might have changed my mind or been able to listen more capably. Hard to say if that would have been the case or not. I think it is accurate to say that, in truth, I cannot tell the difference between Tyner and Eldar just by listening, unless they do something that is one of their trademarks or play a song that the other just never would do.

My final comment here, for now, is this started as a comparison of block chords and based on what I heard yesterday, there wasn't all that much block chord work on either one of the CD's. (Maybe block chords would have made telling them apart even more difficult. The ramifications are endless.)

Next post: a song by song, post-listening analysis.

Sun (Ra) Never Sets

Here in north Alabama, we had covers, tarps, and plastic drop cloths draped over all our plants in anticipation of a nasty freeze last night. (It could have happened the night before, but didn't quite get cold enough.) It's almost as if the sun has gone away. For no particular reason not completed unrelated to that, I've been listening to three great, great, great recordings this weekend, one of which is Jazz in Silhouette by Sun Ra and his Arkestra. Good gosh, that is a great CD. Everytime I listen to it, I hear something I didn't hear before, and I'm just enthralled. It's one of those recordings where, you stop and listen, then shake your head and laugh out loud.

In fact, I didn't get to listen to all of it yesterday before dinner ended and we turned on a movie, so at bedtime, I pulled my boom box into the bedroom, threw on my headphones, and listened to it as I fell asleep. I used to do this quite a lot when I was younger: listen to music while falling asleep. Last night, though, I was so pooped out after pulling down a sick oak tree that I don't think I stayed awake even through the end of the first song. Sleeping on my back, I ended up drying out my throat and that had some other nasty consequences which I won't go into here, but I think I might be able to get used to this method of listening to music.

Sunday afternoon I almost fell asleep while listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing the Duke Ellington songbook. I had my Real Book out and looked at the music as she sang, but like I said, pulling down a tree all afternoon and drinking wine pretty steadily after that, I got sweetly mellow and almost fell asleep before dinner. Ella can have that effect. But anyway, some of the renderings of Duke's songs were impossibly imaginative and richly textured. There is just so much depth to his music and a singer like Ella is deft at plumbing it all the way. I should have jumped over to the piano to try some of her phrasings, but, I felt better lulling myself to that theta-wave pre-sleep instead.

Finally, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue rounded out my weekend listening trio, mainly because I'm working on All Blues, which is going quite well, too, thank you very much. There isn't anything that needs to be added to the commentary of arguably the greatest jazz recording of all time. I know anytime I put it on, I'll feel better before long, even in the face of an $8000 tax bill. KOB and jazz in general give me hope, and Sun Ra makes for a brighter everything.

Maybe it's time for me to add some more Sun Ra to my collection...

An Informal Survey into the Fame of Cole Porter

We have a safety slogan board at work, and I'm usually the one to come up with the slogan that goes on the board. I've been doing it for about four years, so I've been out of ideas for the last three. Yesterday, I came up with something that I thought would fly, and it did. I used Cole Porter's lyrics to formlulate a seasonal safety slogan to this effect:

Birds do it.
Bees do it.
Even educated fleas do it.
Let's do it.
Let's stay safe this spring.

(Yeah, I know.) After I put it up, I thought I would get some comments, but alas, no one said anything unless I asked first. Although when prompted several people said they liked the slogan, no one knew where it came from. So, I just started asking people if they knew who Cole Porter was. I estimate that I asked forty people. Most of them were older than me (I'm 44). Only five people knew or had heard of Cole Porter. Not one of them knew that the "safety slogan" I put up was a lame variation of a Cole Porter song. These were not the results I expected.

The youngest person to know Cole Porter was 30 years old. The oldest I won't say, but I think he's in his sixties. Of the five people who "knew" him, only three knew he was a jazz musician, and only one knew he was a composer. (A familiar reaction was, "I've heard of him, but I don't know what he sings.") I'm not disappointed, but I am surprised.

I feel privileged to be as "young" as I am and as familiar with Cole Porter as I am. Being a jazz musician does have perks, however insignificant they may seem to others.

Revisiting Dolphy

Spending the weekend painting the garage. Yes, no joy. But, it gives me lots of time to listen to music, so I basically pulled out everything I hadn't listened to in a while. Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch managed to make the cut, and I almost put it away without listening to it, but then I thought, aw hell, let's try it. The last time I listened to it, which was probably the second time overall, I had to turn it off. The dissonance, or whatever you want to call it, was wearing me out. This time, I listened to it the whole way through, and I didn't find it half bad. Maybe my jazz ears are finally developing, I don't know. I'll probably give it another try today or tomorrow.

Becoming a jazz musician is a process. I'm glad to find I'm making some progress.

De-cidedly good, but de-finitely not great.

Mrs. S had watched it once before, but having been on a classic song kick of late, we borrowed the DVD De-Lovely from the library and watched it together last night. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a movie about the life of Cole Porter starring Kevin Cline and Ashley Judd. I didn’t know much at all about Porter, so the movie was pretty interesting. The music is, of course, wonderful, and the producers got a bunch of big names – Robbie Williams, Alannis Morrisette, Natalie Cole, Sheryl Crow, etc. – to sing some of his signature tunes so we didn’t have to listen to Kevin sing/talk/whisper/warble his way through them (although there are plenty of other songs where we do). This movie makes a bit of a to do about Porter’s bi-sexuality, but thankfully, it’s handled tastefully and as Porter (apparently) did during his life, it isn’t treated as a major issue. My only gripe, and it is a small one, is that the movie seemed a little too surreal. The sets were all really bright and lavish, obviously trying to evoke “the jazz age”, but I think they could have done it better by hiring musicians instead of actors to play in the background (I get a little irritated when I hear the piano going down the scale and the pianist on the screen’s hands are going up, up, UP, or the drummer’s hitting the snare while the high-hat is going “tss-t-t-tss”). Then if they subdued the tone a little, made it just a little rough around the edges, I would have enjoyed the movie more. In retrospect, there was nothing wrong with the way the movie was shot. I just think the mood the director was trying to evoke was not the right one, especially when you consider part of the movie took place during the Depression and part also took place during WWII. Could be I was just in the mood for a slightly darker, “film noir-ish” experience. And I’m no big fan of Ashley Judd, and Morrisette’s solo was pretty grating, if you ask me. All in all, these are minor complaints, so, if you have any interest in Cole Porter and his music at all, this movie is worth renting/borrowing to check it out.