It begins with the rainfall rumble of two pianos - played by Ray Noble and Harry Jacobson - with sweetness gradually being subsumed by whole tone discordancy, symbolising the perceived replacement of old and gracious with new and crass. Then Max Goldberg's plunger-muted trumpet growls out a lugubrious ex-working man's blues, succeeded by a hopeful comfort blanket of low-register clarinet. It is November 1931, just over four months since my father's birth, and the prelude to the Great Depression. Affairs are far from happy.
Then HE enters - with an extended moan of "Blues" which is simultaneously vast and intimate, angered but cordial. He sings Coward's lament of drear and din, chaos and confusion, and sounds only a little more assured than Coward that it is the times which have gone wrong, rather than himself. "What is there to strive for, love or keep alive for?" he asks, and only half knowing that he is part of the answer (as opposed to Lydon two or three generations later, who possessed full knowledge that he was forming the future when he snorted "No future").
It would not really be truthful to say that prior to Al Bowlly, there was no such thing as the English popular singing voice, but the dividing line had been sternly firm - the costermonger's yellow yells and mangled labials of the reckless music hall tradition, barked without need of megaphone or metaphor, directed directly at its intended audience; or the politesse of the post-Victorian parlour recital with plums for vowels, vibrati as shaky but steadfast as Stephenson's Rocket - Donald Peers' surprise 1968-9 smash "Please Don't Go" was perhaps the last audible gasp of the latter tradition in the public market.
But Bowlly came from somewhere else, so no wonder that he made a difference; of mixed Greek/Lebanese parentage, he grew up in South Africa and methodically worked his way over to Britain as a singer and guitarist. And it is with Bowlly that the remarkable mainstream of British popular singing, for workable purposes, really starts. There were both sensuality and threat in his tones (and Dennis Potter was quick to pick up and magnify both tendencies), a rumbling assurance derived in part from Armstrong and a closeness modified from Crosby (for instance, the italicised triplicate of "Say, hey hey, call it a day" in "Twentieth Century Blues"); relaxed but menacing, almost akin to an undue ejaculation within earshot of Lord Reith, with an innocent grin to meet the sternly swerving head.
Even when the "refrain" part of the song has ended, Bowlly, like Elvis in '69 Memphis, can't let go of either song or feeling; his "Blues, blues, blues" murmur, every "blues" half a second longer and half a tone lower than the previous one, is like a rake descending into his basement, luxuriating in the low light; trumpet and clarinet lead one last perky attempt at reconciliation with those then current times by doubling the tempo before gloomily descending into the elegiac and the pissed off, even if Bowlly determined to be above, if not beyond, the latter. "Why is it that civilised humanity can make this world so wrong?" - are we really that far from "Oh, mercy mercy me, things ain't what they...USED to be"? The times were certainly dread-filled enough to make both Coward and Bowlly want to holler.
Then HE enters - with an extended moan of "Blues" which is simultaneously vast and intimate, angered but cordial. He sings Coward's lament of drear and din, chaos and confusion, and sounds only a little more assured than Coward that it is the times which have gone wrong, rather than himself. "What is there to strive for, love or keep alive for?" he asks, and only half knowing that he is part of the answer (as opposed to Lydon two or three generations later, who possessed full knowledge that he was forming the future when he snorted "No future").
It would not really be truthful to say that prior to Al Bowlly, there was no such thing as the English popular singing voice, but the dividing line had been sternly firm - the costermonger's yellow yells and mangled labials of the reckless music hall tradition, barked without need of megaphone or metaphor, directed directly at its intended audience; or the politesse of the post-Victorian parlour recital with plums for vowels, vibrati as shaky but steadfast as Stephenson's Rocket - Donald Peers' surprise 1968-9 smash "Please Don't Go" was perhaps the last audible gasp of the latter tradition in the public market.
But Bowlly came from somewhere else, so no wonder that he made a difference; of mixed Greek/Lebanese parentage, he grew up in South Africa and methodically worked his way over to Britain as a singer and guitarist. And it is with Bowlly that the remarkable mainstream of British popular singing, for workable purposes, really starts. There were both sensuality and threat in his tones (and Dennis Potter was quick to pick up and magnify both tendencies), a rumbling assurance derived in part from Armstrong and a closeness modified from Crosby (for instance, the italicised triplicate of "Say, hey hey, call it a day" in "Twentieth Century Blues"); relaxed but menacing, almost akin to an undue ejaculation within earshot of Lord Reith, with an innocent grin to meet the sternly swerving head.
Even when the "refrain" part of the song has ended, Bowlly, like Elvis in '69 Memphis, can't let go of either song or feeling; his "Blues, blues, blues" murmur, every "blues" half a second longer and half a tone lower than the previous one, is like a rake descending into his basement, luxuriating in the low light; trumpet and clarinet lead one last perky attempt at reconciliation with those then current times by doubling the tempo before gloomily descending into the elegiac and the pissed off, even if Bowlly determined to be above, if not beyond, the latter. "Why is it that civilised humanity can make this world so wrong?" - are we really that far from "Oh, mercy mercy me, things ain't what they...USED to be"? The times were certainly dread-filled enough to make both Coward and Bowlly want to holler.
2 comments:
I've got a 1970s EMI compilation called 'The History of Popular Music' and - indeed - in a chronology like that, the invention of the microphone does feel like the beginning of time when it comes (in that case through 'My Blue Heaven').
For me, the great thing about Al Bowlly's voice is I think something in the inherent tone, maybe the phrasing. He always manages to combine an amused distance apart from the song with the ability to also live emotionally within it. I think that Mark Sinker once wrote about him being a forebear of Bryan Ferry in that sense.
Re: Coward, I wonder if anyone knows a good version of 'If Love Were All', which I think is equal with 'Someday I'll Find You' as his most devastating song. The Pet Shop Boys version is okay in as far as it goes, I suppose. I was excited to discover a thirties original cast recording a few years ago, and was then alarmed to discover that in the original revue it was sung operetta-style with a cod-French accent! Getting through these defunct stage conventions made hearing it too much of an archaeological process for the recording to resonate with me.
First port of call for decent "If Love Were All" interpretations is Judy Garland Live At Carnegie Hall (and Rufus Wainwright does a better job of it than Tennant on his, um, tribute to the above) but, of all people, Alma Cogan did an excellent version which can be found on her highly recommended Celebration 3CD compilation.
Joyce Grenfell does the song justice too but alas her reading is not currently available on CD.
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