Soubrette Heart: Blossom Dearie 100

Blossom Dearie - My New Celebrity Is You

All right, we're gonna end April in torrential style, with the rare three in a row from me, beginning with a much needed interruption of the sausage fest that is my page.

Today we'll start the trifecta of birthday goodness by unpacking our adjectives for another undersung star of the firmament.

And wouldn't you know it, she's the third centennial of the month! April 1924 was quite a time, apparently, with Charlie Rouse, Hank Mancini and Blossom Dearie all hitting the C-Note in 2024.

Of course most people associate Blossom Dearie, if they know of her at all, from her cameo on several Schoolhouse Rock! songs from the early 1970s, when her friend Bobby Dorough -- I will cover him someday, I promise -- enlisted her to sing about the Number 8 and the Scary Bear, much to the delight of then-seven-year-olds such as I.

Of course we know she's about quite a lot more than grammar lessons via cartoons, as good as she was in that series.

As identifiable from one syllable as any vocalist who'll ever open their mouth to sing, she started wayyyyy back in the 1950s with her unique brand of coquettish, playful little-girl-gone-astray voicings.

The French call this type of character a soubrette, who can transmit a flirtatious, naughty vibe even when reading the phone book.

She forged a whole, decades-long career with her one-off style of swinging piano stylings accompanied by her unmistakable vocals, until she left our plane in 2009.

ROIOs of Blossom Dearie are hard to come by -- dare I say, nonexistent -- but here she is invading Marian McPartland's utterly ecstasy-inducing Piano Jazz radio program back in the 1980s, dragged by me off the archive site of that wonderful show and supplied here for your enjoyment.

Blossom Dearie

Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz

probably Manhattan Beach Studios

New York City, NY USA

1985

01 NPR "Piano Jazz" intro

02 talk

03 My New Celebrity Is You

04 talk

05 I'm Shadowing You

06 talk/NPR ID

07 talk

08 Surrey with the Fringe On Top

09 talk/NPR ID

10 talk

11 Inside a Silent Tear

12 talk

13 Bye Bye Country Boy

14 talk/NPR ID

15 talk 

16 Everything I've Got Belongs to You

17 talk

18 The Things We Did Last Summer

19 talk

20 If I Were a Bell

21 NPR outro & ID

Total time: 57:23

Blossom Dearie - piano & vocals

Marian McPartland - piano

192/48k HD webstream captured from the Piano Jazz archive site

converted to 16/44 CD Audio and tracked by EN, April 2024
243 MB FLAC./direct link

Anyway I shall return in 24 with something completely different, yet similar in that it's another milestone b'day for another long-gone luminary.

Before we do that, we remind you to feel free to use any and all praiseful adjectives as we fondly remember Blossom Dearie on her 100th birthday!--J.

4.28.1924 - 2.7.2009

Birthdays of Wine and Roses: Henry Mancini 100

 

Henry Mancini - Gonna Fly Now (From "Rocky")


There are a ton of milestone birthdays this month; for whatever reason, April of 1924 was exceptionally fruitful when it comes to marking the musical centennials.

This here is the second one of three, and the first of two in a row on this page. As the kids say, we're 100.

You know who else is 100? Today's honoree, born this day in that heady year of 1924 and in no danger of being forgotten, even decades departed from our realm.

Of course everyone knows the Pink Panther music, we all grew up going to those films and there can be no debate about the heights to which the instantly-identifiable, ultra-iconic work of today's main man elevates all those movies.

But he also scored dozens of other films, as well as roughly a million TV shows, and in doing so helped to define an entire genre most people refer to as Lounge Music.

So get out your cocktail glasses and your swizzle sticks, because we're going on a 2 hour and 15 minute safari into all those times Henry Mancini got funky. Which was a few.

Henry Mancini
Soul Saga: Mancini Funks the '70s

01 A Bluish Bag
02 Almond Eyes
03 Baretta's Theme (Keep Your Eye On the Sparrow)
04 Battlestar Galactica
05 Bench Warmer
06 Butterfly
07 Car Wash
08 Delta Dawn
09 Easy Baby (single version)
10 El Morocco Rocker
11 Get It On
12 Give Me Some Mo'!
13 Gonna Fly Now (From "Rocky")
14 Here's Looking At You, Kid
15 Ironside
16 Keyboard Harmony
17 Medley: Kojak/S.W.A.T.
18 Medley: Love's Theme/TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)
19 Memphis Underground
20 Men's Room Rock
21 NBC Nightly News Theme
22 Naval Maneuver
23 Peter Gunn (1975 version)
24 Pick Up the Pieces
25 Police Woman
26 Pretty Girls
27 Satin Soul
28 Shaft
29 Shoe Shine
30 Slow Hot Wind (Lujon)
31 Soul Saga (Song of the Buffalo Soldier)
32 Sun Goddess
33 Symphonic Soul
34 The Deacon Speaks
35 The Rockford Files
36 The Streets of San Francisco
37 The Thief Who Came to Dinner/Watching Dynamite
38 The Zinger
39 Theme from Charlie's Angels
40 Theme from "The Night Visitor"
41 White Girl Boogie/Black Girl Boogie
42 You Make Me Feel Like Dancing

Total time: 2:15:01
disc break goes after Track 18

compendium of Mancini funk excursions from the 1970s
assembled and remastered in alphabetical order by EN, April 2024
824 MB FLAC/direct link

You can tell this is a dope mixtape because it goes by so fast... none of the tunes go for too long so if you don't dig one, just wait a minute and a new one will come on.

I'll be back on Sunday and Monday with the last two big b'days for this standout month.

That's in the near future.... the present demands you accept this gift of Mancini Funk and celebrate a foundational American musical figure's centennial. Dare I say, it's the bomb.... were you expecting one?--J.

4.16.1924 - 6.14.1994

"Information" Age: Dave Edmunds 80

 

Dave Edmunds - Slippin' Away


OK, it's time for the second of three sets of back-to-backs I have set up for this month.

It's kind of hilarious that I couldn't do the Nick Lowe 75 post I wanted to last month, yet here we are 30 days later and I've got his most consistent collaborator all queued up for his 80th today.

I absolutely swear I'm gonna get to Nick Lowe eventually -- someone out there needs to do a lossless transfer of the LPs of his 1984 BBC appearance immediately! -- but for today Dave Edmunds is just gonna have to do.

Ah yes, Dave Edmunds... he hears you knocking, but you can't come in. He must be busy or something.

He's from Wales in the UK, but as I was saying about Nick Lowe, he identifies musically as American.

I wonder if that cancels out. Like, if you took all the American bands and artists that sound, for all intents and purposes, British, and all the English ones that wish they were Buddy Holly, if it would be directly proportional.

Look at that fret reach! That's big for a roots rock guy. Who does he think he is with that Tele, Steve Howe?

Really for me the central feature of Dave Edmunds always-catchy tunes is the prominent, piss-taking humor. Or the humour, as he is one of them Brits we spoke of earlier.

He also wrote a bunch of hits with which other artists scored, like Queen Of Hearts was for Juice Newton way back when.

Whether he's Crawling from the Wreckage or he Knew the Bride when she used to rock-n-roll, he's always had a wry album title or double entendre cooking.

All of these qualities are on full and prominent display in this crackling 1983 set from Roseland in NYC, in which DE -- then touring his tremendous Information LP -- conquers some initial technical catastrophes to deliver with his usual potency.

Dave Edmunds
Roseland Ballroom
New York City, NY USA
5.18.1983

01 WNEW-FM introduction by Meg Griffin
02 From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)
03 Dear Dad
04 Sweet Little Lisa
05 Loud Music In Cars
06 Girls Talk
07 Don't Call Me Tonight
08 Queen of Hearts
09 I Don't Want to Be In Love
10 I Hear You Knockin'
11 Trouble Boys
12 Paralyzed
13 Slippin' Away
14 Information
15 Crawling from the Wreckage
16 Sweet Little Rock 'N' Roller
17 C'mon Everybody
18 Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie
19 Ju Ju Man
20 I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)

Total time: 1:06:17

Dave Edmunds - vocals & guitar
John David - bass & vocals
Dave Charles - drums
Billy Bremmer - guitar & vocals
Gerriant Watkins - piano, keyboards & vocals
Chris Spedding - guitar (Tracks 16-18)
Brian Setzer - guitar & vocals (Tracks 17-18)

320k/48 webstream from Wolfgang's Vault
spectral analysis goes to 20k, so essentially equivalent to a preFM source
captured, converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, retracked & remastered by EN, April 2024
478 MB FLAC/direct link

This circulates as a partial off-air FM cassette, but the stream from Wolfgang's Vault goes to 20k and was essentially the complete thing.
Look out for wild guests shots from Brian Setzer -- then scaling the charts and the MTV mountaintops with his Stray Cats -- and guitar monster Chris Spedding (who needs his own day on this page), who show up to rip the roof off Roseland for a few tunes.

I will be back shortly with a completely sick mixtape I just finished for our next honored centennialist.

That's in 24 from now; this moment is about driving the pickaxe of your eardrums through the rockpile of this smashing Dave Edmunds show, that he might hear loud music in cars on his big day here. C'mon, everybody!--J.

Acolyte Years: Charlie Rouse 100

 

Charlie Rouse All-Star Quartet - Rhythm-a-ning


We are back as promised with the next big birthday in an April 2024 chock full of them.

The dictionary says that the assistant in a monastery, who tends to the daily needs of all the monks, is called an acolyte.

Today's honoree, as the right-hand man of possibly the greatest Monk of our epoch, would qualify for such a sobriquet.

Not too many people have probably ever stopped to consider what it must have been like to make sure a galaxy-class eccentric like ol' Thelonious got to the gig on time.

Fewer still may have ever considered the degree of difficulty behind taking such a wild, unusual visionary's music and arranging it to achieve its maximum impact.

I talk a lot on here about those visionaries and the marquee value they command, but not nearly enough about the ones who facilitate that genius coming into contact with the world in a digestible, memorable way that stands the test of time and taste.

When it comes to the music of Thelonious Monk -- a catalog that has definitely lasted and retained its universal impact decades after its advent -- there is no more seminal a facilitating figure than today's centenary saxophonist, the great Charlie Rouse.

Today we are all about the support system that this man fashioned to help make the music of Monk something that's brought joy to so many tens of millions of people for so many acolyte years.

So let's have at it, courtesy of two pretty heavyweight tribute concerts that have our hero as a central figure, continuing to spread the Gospel Of Thelonious as only he could.

Thelonious Monk Tribute featuring Charlie Rouse
Chicago Jazz Festival
Grant Park
Chicago, IL
8.27+29.1986

01 introduction
02 Eronel
03 Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues Are
04 Pannonica/Ruby My Dear
05 Rhythm-a-ning
06 Epistrophy
07 outro
08 Bye-Ya
09 I Mean You
10 Evidence
11 Light Blue

Total time: 1:28:12
disc break goes after Track 07

Tracks 01-07: Charlie Rouse All-Star Quartet @ Chicago Jazz Festival, Chicago IL 8.27.1986 FM
Charlie Rouse - tenor saxophone; Barry Harris - piano; Cecil McBee - bass; Ben Riley - drums
Tracks 08-11: Thelonious Monk Orchestra Reunion @ Chicago Jazz Festival, Chicago IL 8.29.1986
FM
Don Sickler & Tom Harrell - trumpets; Eddie Bert - trombone; Steve Lacy, Phil Woods, Charlie Rouse
& Howard Johnson - saxophones;
Mal Waldron - piano; Cecil McBee - bass; Ben Riley - drums; Don Sickler - musical co-ordinator; Hall
Overton - arranger
1st gen cassettes of off-air captures of the original 1986 Chicago Jazz Festival FM broadcasts
slightly edited & retracked -- with the Orchestra segment boosted +2 dB throughout -- by EN, April 2024
568 MB FLAC/direct link

You can see by the lineup around Charlie on these two sets that they are essentially an All-Star array of talent, with each player towering above most and all on one stage, playing the music of the master.

I'll be back soon with the rest of this wild month I have planned, but let's get you pasting your lobes to these fine Monk sets -- midwived into existence since forever by today's birthday centennialist -- in tribute to both Monk and his right-hand acolyte assistant. I mean you!--J.

4.6.1924 - 11.30.1988