Glory be! Why is that dresser reaching beneath Miss Patrice Munsel's garment? And Patrice looks so happy about it. Why I never!
And to think, she only tipped the dresser twenty bucks. Ah, well. Auditioning the finger puppets; it's a time-honored backstage tradition. And Patrice should know, being a famed opera soprano who leaped into the mainstream in the early 1950s when her face graced the front covers of both Time and Life. Even more surprising, she had a go at popular tunes in 1962 with her LP "Unpredictable" - a Mouthful of Munsel Cheerful Exclusive! - and she does not disappoint.
This is no ordinary one-off or cash-grab, but a revelatory collection which reveals Patrice's honed sense of high drama and surprisingly effective jazz and blues vocals. I say "surprisingly" because sometimes opera singers can't quite escape their origins, but Patrice seems sets free in this set - and its fabulous.
Her on-and-off singing career - she hit a peak in the mid-1950s, then took off to study acting, only to return to singing in the 70s and 80s - is emblematic of many artists and their hard-scrabble efforts to break through. She almost did, but the shift to rock 'n' roll in the early 1960s derailed her (and quite a few other jazz singers) (obvi), much like silent movie stars were tossed to the curb during the transition to sound.
Still, what she's left behind is positively entrancing, like her 1955 debut LP "A Woman In Love" - a Lovely Lea Cheerful Exclusive! - which led to her win as Downbeat's Best New Jazz Singer of 1956. Recorded with minimal back-up, her sparkling vocals are very much in the forefront. She would later record with full orchestras, but in her case, less instrumentation is definitely more.
Whenever would-be film geeks proselytize about the "dark anti-hero," and how modern movies and "prestige TV" have brought then to the fore as never before - that rhymes! - I give them a withering side-eye, slap them silly, and calmly introduce them to the work of Bette Davis, whose entire library is rife with sharp-edged anti-heroes.
Case in point, "Dark Victory," her 1939 drama where she plays a wholly unlikeable, superficial socialite who's given a whammy of a diagnosis from her doctor George Brent: impending blindness and death. Yes, there's eventually tears, but the movie holds up - and that includes its grim finale, which doesn't sugarcoat. More remarkable, test audiences in 1939 rejected a tacked-on scene with cheery uplift.
Max Steiner doesn't sugarcoat, either. The score is a marvel of increasing desperation, accompanying Bette's character as she scrambles from denial to anger to sadness, and finally, to bleak acceptance.
Meanwhile, the elevator door opens and someone's in there. And, hold on, is that a woman? A man? Something in-between? Something non-binary, as all the kidults say? The Secret Song File is so confused, but hey, you be you (whatever form that takes).
Who knows? Maybe one of the UK kidults in this fairly new electro group are genderqueer or cisnormative or gynecomimetic (so many shiny-tingly terms!). Whatever they are, their latest CD is mesmerizing, with tasty beats and dreamy vocals. No wonder fashionistas and designers love their work, which they've started using as soundtracks for their fashion show catwalks. I know, right? If someone like this is a fan, The Secret Song File is fer sher on board.
"Make it work" applies to more than fashion, dont'cha think?
Leave a stylish, genderfluid comment, if'n you like!
