“PUCKER UP AND BLOW!”: DANCING MICE, A DUCK WITH A BOWTIE, AND ENDEARING SONG (1955)

The pianist and composer Kris Tokarski, someone I both respect and like, started a discussion on Facebook on March 31, asking the question,

Facebook Survey: In your opinion, what makes a jazz singer, a jazz singer? Musically speaking what qualities/skills must they have? Is there a difference between singers who just sing tunes from the Great American Songbook (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and a “jazz” singer? Go!

The responses were intriguing — and although I find such questions ultimately not terribly “useful” as more than an excuse to air our deeply-held personal tastes, I couldn’t resist entering in. It gave me an excuse to utter the sacred name of Lee Wiley, for one thing.  But I soon retired and left the field to more eager debaters.

But Facebook — which can be terribly irritating and an unsubtle call to our worst instincts — is also a wondrous playground. The jazz scholar Steve Zalusky found and posted this kinescope of Cliff Edwards singing and playing GIVE A LITTLE WHISTLE on the Mickey Mouse Club television show — in the Cliff Edwards Ukulele Ike Facebook group, and I love it.  A few cautionary remarks.  If you hate all things Disney, try to calm down for a few minutes, since a half-dozen of the songs from the early films are true classics. Aside from SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL COME (ideologically charged, I know, but such a beautiful melody) there’s WITH A SMILE AND A SONG (which Rebecca Kilgore has recorded memorably, for all time) and this one.

The description of this performance is:

“Cliff Edwards appearing on the Mickey Mouse Club Nov 15, 1955. Edwards is 60 here. He sings and plays tenor ukulele. With Clarence ‘Donald Duck’ Nash doing baby noises and Jose Oliveira (next to Cliff) playing guitar and keeping it jazzy. And the Mouseketeers!! See more of Jose Oliveria here:
http://youtu.be/7cIZdPkvyHs.”

And the performance itself:

This makes me perilously happy.  And I think it is both superb jazz singing, hilarious theatre, and ineradicable art.  If you think it is none of the above, I will still love you, but I don’t want to hear about it.

I wish all the parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts that I know would start playing this video for the Young Talent — think of a generation that 1) knows how to sing GIVE A LITTLE WHISTLE, 2) subliminally absorbs the message that to think of others is a good thing, 3) perhaps begins to play the ukulele, 4) begins to speak like Donald Duck or do what Edwards called “eefin'” — his own brand of weird scat-singing.  We could transform the cosmos.

May your happiness increase!

A SONG FOR THE SEASON: HILARY GARDNER and EHUD ASHERIE at MEZZROW (March 17, 2015)

At the end  of their gorgeous Rodgers and Hart mini-concert at Mezzrow on March 17, 2015, Hilary Gardner and Ehud Asherie, those rebels, decided to “go rogue,” and do a song outside the R&H canon.  Luckily for us, their choice was the lovely THEY SAY IT’S SPRING, by Bob Haymes and Marty Clarke, made famous by the ethereal Blossom Dearie.

The snow in New York seems at last to have melted. Warmer weather makes everyone a little more amorous.  Being able to put one’s snow shovel and heavy boots away is positively erotic.  One thinks of lighter clothing with eagerness, and the possibility of being warm in the breeze . . . I’ll stop before I levitate.

The song is just right for the times, and it’s such a lovely performance too:

It’s a performance I want to hear over and over, which for me is the only real endorsement: art that doesn’t grow stale or give up all its secrets at once.

If you’ve missed the two songs I’ve posted from their Rodgers and Hart portion, here and here they are.  I will have more from Hilary and Ehud and Larry and Dick for you in future.

May your happiness increase!