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.

Bossa Nova is Brazil’s own version of “cool jazz” formed primarily within the upper middle-class sections of cosmopolitan cities like Rio de Janeiro beginning in the late 1950s.  The music is lazy and enchanting – piano and finger-plucked guitars with little or no drums – and the lyrics often pine dreamily about loving, dancing and indulging, but only in the suavest of styles.

Sometimes, it’s merely about escapist longings for an object of obsession out of reach, as in one of the genre’s first big hits, “The Girl from Ipanema,” a song that has been covered so many times it’s lost its own legitimacy.  The title itself has been used as a punch line against the movement.  Trace the song’s history however, up the chain to its origin, the 1964 album Getz/Gilberto, and you’ll find a powerfully understated version with a delicate lyrical performance that will haunt your ears for days beyond.

The 1968 album, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim was Frank Sinatra’s first full-steam foray into Bossa Nova, though the sound had drifted up from the South American coast years earlier.  Many of the songs were written by Jobim himself, though several come from The Great American Songbook, including Irving Berlin’s “Change Partners,” which was originally written for and performed in the 1938 Astaire/Rogers film, Carefree.

Though not pure Bossa Nova (the flutes and strings are pure “add-em-ons” for the American ears), Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim is to me, the coolest album Sinatra ever made.  Take a listen to “Change Partners” below.
change_partners.mp3

For the entirety of my youth the only thing I knew about Ann-Margret was that she sang a lot of disco, and occasionally popped up in spandex and strutted around on The Donny and Marie Show.  I had no knowledge of her prior work as a film actress and singer, so I thought she was only famous for being hot, the same way I thought Liza Minnelli was only famous for always being in rehab and Orson Welles was only famous for doing wine commercials
I have since seen Viva Las Vegas, Bye Bye Birdie, and Carnal Knowledge, and though I still don’t really think of myself as an Ann-Margret fan, I sure dig her powerful throatiness on this song.  It kinda sneaks up on ya.  First, she sorta purrs and slinks around some piano dabbling and restrained horn runs, but by the end of the song, you don’t hear anything but the voice.
cest_si_bon.mp3

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.

“He Shouldn’t-a” was written by the great Henry Mancini with lyrics by the possibly greater Johnny Mercer, and Provine nails the gritty, campy revenge tale with a wink and a shake. Take a listen. Her performance is the stand-out element of The Great Race. Fast forward until you get to the saloon scene.

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

Not me.

While there’s certainly no arguing that 1964’s Goldfinger is a far superior film in the Bond series than the dopey Vegas smuggling shenanigans that hobble 1971’s Daimonds Are Forever, in my mind the Diamonds theme song trumps Goldfinger in every way conceivable.

Truth be told, I’ve never really cared much for the Goldifnger theme song, but I usually keep it to myself because whenever some film critic or famed song producer or NPR contributor decides to rank the themes to all the 007 films, Goldifinger is usually placed squarely at the top and adorned with a holy reverence that leaves no room for even a hint of challenge.

I guess “Goldfinger” is one of those songs I just don’t get. The relentless pounding brass and the ridiculous over-the-top lyrics (“Such a COLD finger… beckons you… to enter his web of sin… but DON’T GO IN!!!!“) make me laugh.  The production all seems desperate to merely keep up with a singer whose powerhouse voice simply cannot be caught!

The musical route Diamonds Are Forever takes, however, is far more seductive and smartly secondary to the hellfire that is Shirley Bassey.   The voice reigns supreme here. The horns are relegated to mere punctuation for the ends of certain lyric lines. The animal’s share of the orchestration comes from the sweeping strings, an understated electric bass and a tip-toeing of high-octave keyboard notes that sparkle like diamonds themselves (the motif is repeated throughout the film).

This song is only about one thing: the way Shirley Bassey can murder it.

There are very few Bond themes I outright avoid listening to (Gladys Knight on “License to Kill,” and Lulu on the pitiful “Man with the Golden Gun”), but when I compile my own 007 iPod playlist, “Diamonds are Forever” almost always leads the way.

Shirley returned to the Bond fold for the theme song to 1979’s Moonraker, which sends 007 into outer space but ironically gives Shirley’s voice no opportunity to soar.  I’m still patiently awaiting Theme Song Number Four.  I know Shirley’s still got it in her.

Click on the Mp3 link below to hear Shirley at her Bond best! And remember, “Men are mere mortals WHO... are not worth going TO... your GRAVE for.”
diamonds_are_forever.mp3

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.

This song isn’t necessarily one that leaps to mind as a landmark London recording, but it stands out for me.   The drowsy piano intro, the matter-of-fact-horns, and the way Julie’s voice flirts with the saxophone right after the bridge (around the 1:30 mark).

Click on the Mp3 link below to hear the slinky Julie London in action… yeah, daddy, yeah!
taint_what_you_do.mp3

Julie was first married to Dragnet star Jack Webb, and later to her Emergency co-star Bobby Troup, whom she met when he was a jazz conductor at a club in Los Angeles. London and Troup married in 1959, and Webb was the one who cast them together on the series Emergency! on which he was an executive producer.  Apparently, Julie’s voice had the ability to tame just about any situation, wouldn’t you say?

Below, you can enjoy husband and wife on a 1974 episode of the CBS morning daytime game show Tattletales with Bert Convy.

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)

Peggy had a slew of hits in her career: Fever, Is That All There Is? and Black Coffee, among others. Later generations may remember her as the woman who sued the pants of Disney for royalties due on videotape rights, which of course didn’t exist when she contributed her talents to Tramp.  Incidentally, she won.

I personally consider hers to be one of the most memorable voices of the Decca and platinum Capitol Records era. It may not be the strongest, but she always had the perfect material, and more importantly, she always delivered more than just the lyrics. With every line, she’s sending you the definite message that she’s in on some salacious secret you clearly know NOTHING about…. you fools!

Click on the Mp3 link below to hear the voice in action.  Video clips follow.
im_a_woman.mp3

Here’s the video for that certain perfume… known as Enjoli. TV viewers of a certain age are sure to recall it. And what a nod to women’s lib. This chick’s doing it all… on her own terms. And how about that little feisty bit at the end, where she sprays it right at the camera! Oh, snap!

“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.

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.