***Out In The Torch Singer Be-Bop Blues Night- The Women Hold Forth

 

 

A YouTube film clip of Billie Holiday holding forth, very holding forth on Stormy Blues. 

I swear, I swear on a stack of seven bibles, maybe more if you have them,  I am off, finally off film noir femme fatales after watching (or rather , re-watching) Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, mainly Jane Greer, go round and round in the classic crime noir Out Of The Past. How could any rational man not think twice, maybe more on that count too, about following such femmes as Jane Greer’s Kathy. Yeah, yeah I know when some steamy night ocean breeze is blowing, the night is young and you have had too much tequila fretting about her whereabouts and she comes at you with those come hither hips swaying in that same breeze you might lose your judgment, a little. Once. But only once especially when she had a funny habit of just being a little gun- happy (and a chronic liar when it suited her purposes to boot) who put a couple in Robert Mitchum’s Jeff after he did somersaults to try to save her bacon about six times. That’s gratitude for you. But he, world-wary, world-weary and had heard it all, seen it all, should have seen it coming, should have seen what she was capable of. Hell, she put old Kirk Douglas through the paces, put a few slugs into his plaint body, and he had dough, big dough. And he was Jeff’s client. Jesus, what an ocean breeze and that gardenia perfume they all loved to wear then will do.   

Well, like I said I am off, done, finished with those two-timing dames, and good riddance. Now I have time, plenty of time, and my health to speak of blues in the night wailing female torch singers who, as far as I know, do not carry or do not need to carry guns, to do their business. Of course it was really no big deal to change my allegiances because ever since I was a kid I have been nothing but putty in their hands for any torch singer who could throw away my blues for a while with some sorrow ladened tune. Any torcher who could sing away those rainy days and stormy weather, could speak of love’s refrain, and love’s heartache.

Maybe it was in some back-drop Harvard Square coffeehouse, the Blue Parrot of blessed memory or the Club Algiers down the street, in the long ago mist times 1960s when I first heard such voices, first among them, Billie Holiday, late, early, whatever Billie Holiday singing of some man on her mind, mostly some no good man, some no dough man, who maybe took a couple of whacks at her for no reason, took her dough for the fixer man, the needle guy, the guy who would make him well,  or just took her last dough to bet on that next sure thing…and happiness. Or maybe it was earlier, and maybe DNA-embedded when some background 1940s we-won-the-war be-bop music filtered through the air of my own childhood house from the local radio station playing Peggy Lee all Benny Goodman’d up, swaying gently into the mic looking for her man to get some dough, or come home, or love her, or just stop catting around all night. Or Helen Whiting, or, Mildred Baily, or, or, well, you get the drift. Stuff that would stop me in my tracks and make me ask, ask out loud where did that sorrow come from, where did the tear flow gushing down their cheeks come from.

Later, several years later, it blossomed fully when some now half-forgotten (but only half-forgotten) girlfriend gave me a complete Vanguard Records set of all of Bessie Smith’s recordings (eight platters in all, look up that word on Wikipedia if you are clueless, okay). Empty Bed Blues, Saint Louis Blues, Me and My Gin, every kind of sorrow, every kind of wrong gee man, every misery known to love’s vocabulary. Ah heaven, and ah too the student neighbors who had to listen for half a day while I played the damn set through. So get it, get it straight I am a long-time aficionado of the genre and commenting on classic women blues singers is a piece of cake.

Strangely, although the bulk of the “discovered” blues singers of the folk revival minute of the 1960s were male (Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Son House, Skip James, et. al) back in the serious heyday of the blues in the 1920s and early 1930s women dominated the blues market, the popular music of the day. And  women were the most well-known of the myriad blues singers that lit up the concert hall, speakeasies and juke joints North and South. Mamie Smith, “Ma” Rainey, the divide Sippie Wallace and that damn good advice to women about not advertising your good man. (and mentor of sorts to the likes of Bonnie Raitt and Maria Muldaur). Of course Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey (later to be one of the first women blues producers and record company owners), and Alberta Hunter are all rightfully and righteously worthy of mention here.

But above all Billie Holiday.  I have put her Stormy Weather here so stay calm. I have also singled her out because to me her voice, her phrasing, her half breath between notes is what torch singing was all about (and is all about) whenever I felt (or feel) blue, On those occasions  I just turned to Billie and she would sing my blues away (unfortunately not her own). Now if I could find myself a torch- singer who was also a non-gun- toting femme fatale I would be in very heaven. Yah, I know I said I was off femmes but what are you going to do because I was just thinking about Rita Hayworth in Gilda (and I don’t care if she lip-synched Put The Blame On Mame)  as I finished this up.