Performers That Pass You By...
Sometime if you have had music radio on during the past 50 years you'll have heard the song "Cry Me A River" and probably one version stands out as sung by Julie London.
On the strength of that one song some years ago I found three cd's containing the equivalent of six albums as released during the fifties and sixties by this artist. I was not disappointed. They are all of a high quality and well crafted. That's probably all I know.
I am unsure why. Is it that I was not paying attention? Being in another country to where she was so well known the USA is like many artists some for some reason do not cross over and become as familiar outside of their own country.
With the internet why have I not thought to look up her details and learn more about her? How many others am I so oblivious of or is it simply that there are too many performers and too much information that to start and read up all that is available, you become overloaded?
Well, one of the new BBC digital television stations BBC4 broadcast an hour long documentary on Julie last evening. I found out so much. She made around 30 albums. She was considered beautiful and similar terms as Marilyn Monroe. That she was a bit of a contradiction as she came across as sexy, sultry by the album covers taken and her style of singing, even the way she flirted on stage but in reality was often to be found putting her career on hold wanting to be the stay at home woman, happily married and caring for her children and not really pushing her acting/singing career.
I did not realise that she was married to Jack Webb(the actor responsible for some radio's most popular detective programmes)transferring the most famous one of all to television "Dragnet" It was when that marriage failed that thanks to her then to be second husband, Bobby Troup(a Jazz Musician)who realised her talent eventually saw her signing for a new record label called Liberty. Troup best known for writing the song (Get Your Kicks)On Route 66 as opposed to Nelson Riddle who composed another famous theme for the television series in the 50's "Route 66" I had a mental block and confused two tunes and made them into one. My friend The Easy Ace put me right, its good to have someone helping correct matters.
She appears to have suffered badly with stage fright and most of her performances seem to have been held in nightclubs and venues.
And then one day she decided to stop singing and recording. And again, here's something I did not realise...we did see for a few years but probably not as long as the original run in the States a dramatic series called "Emergency" I would guess without having looked up the information on a television website it aired in the 1970's. Again, this was produced by Jack Webb or at least his company and who played the main nurse character Dixie McColl in the hospital but...his ex wife Julie London. I had no idea as I watched. And how this for a twist both Troup played Dr Joe Early.
You may like to take a look at the following link which pays homage to the television series and has quite an article on Troup and London.
I knew that she had passed away but again, I had the impression that this had happened some time ago. In reality it was only around seven years ago having suffered a stroke three years earlier from which she never fully recovered.
This documentary probably only scratched the surface but we did get to see a little bit of archive material taken at some live performances and some US television video probably never seen in this country before. I may also take another look at what is available in her music collection as much of it seems to be available in a range where you get two albums for the price as one.
posted by The Great Gildersleeve | 5:20 pm
15 Comments:
Gildy, I'm glad you watched the programme, I have to say I fell in love with Julie London when I was a teenager some thirty years ago. I wasn't a jazz fan but I got into Julie when I heard some of her on a David Jacobs programme my Mum was listening to and that Marlboro enhanced voice did something to me (we won't go there).
Funnily enough she's still with me all these years later on my mp3 player.
Paul,
As I said, I wonder who is to blame for not knowing these artists? What's annoying me is that now when I went to dig out my CD's of London(and because my system of knowing where things should be is very bad)I have taken the room apart to find that I can find two of the CD's I have her but my favourite has gone astray so though it will probably turn up, I'm buying it again and the others that are available. A certain place with Rain Forrest connections have many of her albums(as stated with two per cd ;-)but guess what, buy two CD's in this range and you get a third free and each only costs £6.97 so you get the equivelant of six of her albums for £15. That's quite a bargain. So while I am able, I'm going for it. Sometimes I have to be careful with money or I have to choose a best of because there is too much material to catch up on but when you get two albums per cd and this offer on top, how can you lose?
I would guess I purchased these three CD's about 10 years ago and because I saw them in a record shop in a larger town, here its mainly chart stuff. So the internet has helped me this time. As I have said before, the BBC will often do programmes about important people in the music business but then you try and find a programme playing that artist.
I hope that you caught the Petula Clark concert on Radio 2 last Friday. It replaced Friday Night Is Music Night.
Even when an artist performed on television or radio abroad and worked there most of time, I am amazed just how few programmes ever reached these shores and how the British missed out on appearances on television which were common place in say the States or Australia of world renowned artists...Even now I still discover new music(of music produced years ago)on programmes hosted by Desmond Carrington or David Jacobs(but who else is playing it?)
Gildy---If ever you catch a showing of The Girl Can't Help It, you'll catch Julie London herself singing "Cry Me A River" to Tom Ewell as the press agent who's also her character's former lover. (The film is probably, still, the best-respected film in which Jayne Mansfield starred: Ewell is a frustrated press agent who gets strongarmed into making the blonde bombshell girlfriend of an aging gangster into a singing star; the title track was one of Little Richard's big hits.)
Joe Cocker once recorded a nice version of "Cry Me a River," and I've always liked Julie London's way with a torch song and a soft swinger---but if you had to ask me to name the lady with the most swing, I'd be hard pressed to decide between Peggy Lee singing "Too Close For Comfort" over an unusual Billy May chart (strings and a flute section, on her album Pretty Eyes) or Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook, on which the lady works with the maestro and his men themselves . . .
---Jeff
p.s. Bobby Troup wrote the old blues "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66," but Nelson Riddle wrote the theme to that classic television programme . . . -EA
Jeff(Easy Ace)
Yes,that's right, how on Earth did I get the two mixed up? Hmmm, I can hear the two tunes in my head and they are totally different(both great)as I do think of them, I'm thinking of Nat King Cole doing a version of Troup's song. Am I right? Well, of course I guess a quick look on the net will verify that one. Isn't the net great ;-)
I'll correct my blog immediately.Thanks.
I will watch for the movie. I've neglected music over the past two decades I guess...time to try and rectify that. I suspect for the reasons mentioned a lot of the music that should be in my collection is not because its not being played.
I'd go along with Peggy and Ella. Some PL's material is also available in the same offer so why not. One song that gets me feeling sentimental every time it is played on the radio has to be The Folks Who Live On The Hill.
Gildy--I could be very wrong, but to my knowledge Nat King Cole was the first to have a major hit with "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66," in the mid-1940s when he led the King Cole Trio. Daughter Natalie cut a version of the song when she did her tribute to her father, Unforgettable with Natalie Cole, in 1991. And, somewhere in between, the Rolling Stones cut a pretty fly version of the song on their first album, in 1964.---Jeff
Cry Me A River The song that kicked this off was written by a childhood boyfriend of London's Arthur Hamilton.
It was to be featured in a project by Jack Webb but was felt to be unbelieveable if the lyrics were sung by the chosen singer Ella Fitzgerald.
Attempts were made to alter the lyrics and Webb disliked the results and Hamilton was unhappy so the song was dropped and it ended up with London and probably gave her the biggest hit of her career which will always be considered her own though its been covered by so many others over the years.
She did have a voice to linger over and Cry suited her voice so well. My daughter loves that song. Even at a mere 7 years old, she is demonstrating that her mother's good taste has been inherited!
Mags,
You've verified something I say so often. A child will know instinctively what they like and if a variety of music is available their taste will be very wide. I am still discovering but the places to hear such a range seems to be becoming much less and so many stations sound similar but equally when purchasing older material it can be difficult to know what to buy to represent an artists output. The good thing here being that you get two albums on one CD so you soon double up.
Some artists choose their material so carefully and are so special they rarely seem to put a foot wrong and others have a certain song that becomes their own.
All too often these days, it is difficult to put on an album and let one track follow another or be happy with the whole album. There has always records that disappointed but I think greater care was taken regarding what was chosen to go on an album years ago whereas today some songs are just there to fill out the product.
The same thing was true of singles in the 60's often the B-side was rubbish and rarely played.
Sometimes, however, the B-side could be better than the side plugged for airplay. (Then you had, among others, the Beatles, most of whose B-sides could have been A-sides and often turned out to become hits in their own right after the A-sides' runs began to fade, examples of which include "She's a Woman" and "Day Tripper," not to mention "Penny Lane," which was originally marked as the B-side until enough programmers got nervous enough about "Strawberry Fields Forever" . . . )
Come to think of it, Artie Shaw landed his signature hit the hard way: it was originally supposed to be the B-side of "Indian Love Call," which ended up as a hit in its own right---but even Shaw was amazed when the flip, "Begin the Beguine," shot up the sales and jukebox charts and became all but his theme song, not to mention one of his top ballroom requests, a phenomenon that didn't always sit comfortably with him. He was once quoted as saying he couldn't understand why it became such a big dance hit when "I made it good enough to listen to."
---Jeff
I make a generalisation but you make a perfectly valid point Jeff :-)
All the 78's I have ever seen seem to have good material on both sides and The Beatles probably offered as good a quality material on both sides of their 45's as anyone. It could be that I was buying the wrong artists.
I wonder how many times a record had a second chance due to the B-side. Or did better than the planned A-side?
I would've loved to have heard what I see as real American radio in the 50's and 60's. My heart may be in OTR but 77WABC New York and KLIF1190 in Dallas when the pop explosion started I can only imagine the excitement.
Gildy---I grew up with WABC when it was "The All-Americans" and not yet bound by the infamous seven-song playlist, but concurrently there was WMCA ("The home of the Good Guys"), paradoxically proud of clean-cut, clean-humoured jocks (one of whom, Harry Harrison, ultimately jumped to WABC) and a far more broad array of rock and soul music---call it WABC's edgier downtown cousin, if you like. WMCA as a rock and soul station endured only a few years but those who listened may hold it in even greater affection. WMCA went all-talk circa 1969-70 and then mostly religious talk/music some time later, but the spirit of the Good Guys days won't die for those who listened and loved . . .
I know of the WMCA good Guys but not too much about it.
I used to listen to a radio station in California that had a nightly OTR programme and then it was dropped and went back to pure talk/news. The studio's of this station(I forget its call letters)had such a history. Many of the top radio programmes where produced there such as Burns and Allen.
They had a website showing its history in pictures and words...I get a bit nostalgic when I think of all the stars and talent that passed through its interior.
I understand that there is quite a history within the building now used for television programmes in New York where the Letterman show happens...I think Fred Allen did his programme from there?
Don't get me started on the jingles used when pop radio really started in the 50's and 60's...
This much I know about the building where David Letterman's show is done now: it's the Ed Sullivan Theater (Sullivan did his show therein, including the night the Beatles appeared for the first time in 1964; assorted television game shows also used the facility; I once saw a taping session there for the revived version of . What's My Line). The theater was used for CBS radio programmes in the classic period; Fred Allen probably did do his Texaco Star Theater (a.k.a. Texaco Time) programme from there, since the show aired on CBS from 1940-44.
The irony: CBS never actually owned the theater until David Letterman joined CBS in 1993. (The network had leased the building since the 1930s.)
I could be wrong, but Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee & Molly, and other classic radio shows that originated from southern California used, primarily, NBC's Hollywood studio on Sunset Blvd. and Vine., at least when Burns & Allen and Jack Benny were NBC stars, anyway . . .
Just popped by Gildy to wish you a Merry Christmas and happy new year too. Hopefully next year will bring less problems with the neighbours!
xxx
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