Listening To: “Change Partners” – Sinatra & Jobim

You have to select your Bossa Nova music very, very carefully.  The five or six truly great years of the period are far outnumbered by the decades of cheap synthetic knock-offs that wafted through elevator cars, hotel lobbies and dental offices for decades thereafter.  Many dismiss Bossa Nova as cheeky and vapid, and that’s not surprising, because much of it is.

But when the real deal – the music of early forces Gilberto Gil, Stan Getz and Antonio Carlos Jobim caresses your ears, you can readily understand why so many lesser talents wanted to get in on the sound.

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Listening To: “C’est Si Bon” – Ann-Margret

The music for “C’est Si Bon” (“It’s So Good”) was written in 1947 by Henri Betti, with English lyrics following later by Jerry Seelen.  Arguably, the most successful and popular rendition of the song was Eartha Kitt’s in 1954, but the Ann-Margret version made its way into my ears last weekend and hasn’t managed to leave since.

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“He Shouldn’t-a, Oughtn’t-a Swang On Me” – Dorothy Provine

Not many people remember the talents of Dorothy Provine, who despite being skilled in both comedy and music never found a role that would define her to the public.

After signing with Warner Brothers, Dorothy starred in a rather toothless biopic on the life of Bonnie Parker and then, a curious clunker of a science fiction comedy called The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock playing the finacée of Lou Costello. After drinking from a magical spring, her character grows to thirty feet in size. Candy Rock was Costello’s first film after splitting with comedy partner Lou Abbott and wasn’t released until five months after Costello died of a heart attack. Doesn’t exactly give the movie poster creators much to work with, does it?

When Provine was given the chance to shine with decent material, she ran with it. I may not have known her by name until I read about her passing earlier this year, but I certainly remember her as Milton Berle’s angelic put-upon wife in the 1963 Stanley Kramer comedy, It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, as well as the fiery saloon singer Lily O’lay, who makes her entrance in the 1965 Blake Edwards comedy The Great Race descending from the top of the stage in a swaying oversize crescent moon to the hoots and gunshots of the drunken clientele! Her song, “He Shouldn’t-a, Oughtn’t-a Swang on Me,” is linked below.

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Buddies Lounge Podcast #100

My Pal Mike Dooley just hooked me up with my newest obsession, The Buddies Lounge Podcast.  The show, hosted by The Big W, originates out of Santa Rosita, California, and new episodes hit every Friday.  There are already 100 podcasts available chock full of “tasty Hi-Fi Space Age Pop, Jet Set, Swingin’ Vocals, and Exotica sounds…all in LIVING STEREO!”

I’m already trying to figure out what illness I’m going to fake to get out of work this week so I can sit and home and listen.

The Buddies Lounge blog has complete track listings and some great album art. I recommend you check it out. Podcast #100 is embedded below. It’s certainly made laundry, dishes and vacuuming a lot groovier to accomplish than I might have otherwise expected. Highlights include Frank Sinatra and the Billy May Orchestra with “Come Fly with Me, Miss Peggy Lee’s “Baby Baby, Wait for Me” and a Petula Clark extended Coca-Cola jingle, plus Allan Sherman’s parody of “That Old Black Magic” In the Big W’s regular “Strange and Bizarre” feature of the podcast!

Great, great stuff for a weekend afternoon.  The Big W has has a new big fan.

An Evening At The Buddies Lounge – Show 100

Buddies Lounge

Show 100 (6/4/10) playlist:

• I Ain’t Got Nobody – Lean Horne
• The “In” Crowd – Erine Heckscher
• Roses of Picardy – Buddy Greco
• Camelot – Les & Larry Elgart
• I Walk The Line – Eydie Gormé
• 77 Sunset Strip – Ralph Marterie
• Baby-O – Dean Martin
• The Best Is Yet To Come – David Carrol
• Two Ladies In de Shade of de Banana Tree – Sammy Davis, Jr.
• Come Fly With Me – Frank Sinatra
• Up, Up And Away – Dick Hyman
• Me And My Shadow – Lou Rawls
• Up A Lazy River – Si Zentner
• The Lady Is A Tramp – Della Reese
• Dragnet – Buddy Morrow
• Let There Be Love – Steve Lawrence
• Anna – Hugo Montenego
• Baby, Baby Wait For Me – Peggy Lee
• That Old Back Scratcher – Allan Sherman
• String Of Trumpets – Billy Mure
• On The Sunny Side Of The Street – Keely Smith

“An Evening At The Buddies Lounge” can be heard every Friday, in Living Stereo, direct from STUDIO 67 in Hollywood, CA. The show is produced by National-International Broadcasting.

Visit the Buddies Lounge blog here

Visit the Buddies Lounge podcast home here

Listening: “Diamonds Are Forever” – Shirley Bassey

If you know something about Welsh diva Shirley Bassey, and you also know anything about the James Bond film series, then you probably put the two together in your head and instantly come up with Goldfinger, the first of three 007 films featuring Ms. Bassey on lead vocals, and the one for which she is most remembered.

Not me.
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Listening To: “‘Tain’t What You Do” – Julie London

Long before she donned a white cap and assumed the identity of stern nurse Dixie McCall on the the 1970s action/medial drama Emergency!, Julie London was an acclaimed singer who had been providing the soundtrack to moments of passion between lovers for decades.

Julie’s voice could be jet-set cool and smokey with songs like “Cry Me a River” and “Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast,” or downright bossy as she is here with “‘Taint What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It)” written by Sy Oliver and James Young and first recorded in 1939 (Julie recored it in 1960).  In fact, London seemed to trade off between the sensual (prize pin-up girl during World War II) and the serious (no-nonsense Dixie McCall) for most of her career – a career that spanned over thirty years in film, music and television.

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Listening to: I’m a Woman – Peggy Lee

I was well into my thirties before I realized that the music and lyrics for I’m a Woman were originally written as a mainstream pop song by famed songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock, Love Potion #9) and not written expressly for a certain perfume commercial jingle that became a mini-sensation in the late seventies and early eighties (which is included after the jump below).

I didn’t figure it out until I randomly snagged up a Peggy Lee Greatest Hits compilation simply because I knew her as the voice of the Siamese cat duo in the film Lady and the Tramp, and remembered a famous mini-documentary shown on The Wonderful World of Disney where Miss Lee demonstrates how she recorded the voices of both “Si” and “Am.” It’s genius, you see!

“All you need is a home tape recorder, and another one you can borrow from a neighbor.”

Of course… because who would ever need TWO home tape recorders? (Peggy also explains in person after the jump below)

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Listening to: It’s Over Now – Carmen McRae

Would that we could all kiss off a lover this eloquently and with such matter-of-fact indifference.  This is one of those tracks you fall so in love with, you never get around to listening to the rest of the album.  Enjoy your Sunday afternoon.  Looks like rain in Los Angeles.  A better song to accompany this kind of weather I’d be hard-pressed to find!
its_over_now.mp3

Listening To: Sway – Dean Martin

“Sway” is the English version of “Quién Será”, a 1953 Latin pop song with a mambo beat written by Mexican composer and bandleader Pablo Beltrán Ruiz. In 1954 the English lyrics were written by Norman Gimbel and originally recorded by Dean Martin for Capitol. The song has been recorded and remixed by many artists including Bobby Rydell, Julie London, Jennifer Lopez, The Pussycat Dolls, Michael Buble and even Bjork, but the Dean Martin version is in my opinion, impossible to improve.

Listening to: You’re My Thrill – Dolores Gray

The slinky voice of Dolores Gray would be the perfect soundtrack to a midnight skinny dip or an evening trapped in a snowed-in cabin. It also soothes the beastly rage brought about by Los Angeles morning gridlock or your internet service provider being totally incapable of diagnosing your connection issues, not that I would know.

Dolores Gray was an actress and singer who won a Tony award for her performance in the Broadway musical version of the 1936 French film Carnival in Flanders. The stage show, backed by Bing Crosby was generally hated and ran only six nights.  But Gray’s performance in the show still managed to win her the Tony Award in 1953 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Musical, which makes her the record-holder for shortest run of any actress to win the award. Take a listen below and find out why.