Dear lord, it's almost Thanksgiving, which means it's almost time for a gaggle of December holidays, and then New Year's and then - what? January bloat? A zombie apocalypse? One of those "Eat! Drink! Paint!" events at Applebee's? Kill me now. Or rather, don't. Let's hope that our music will get us through the rough spots.
Lucky us, since classy-lassy Lee Wiley can always be trusted to whisk away the wintertime blues. Consider Wiley's frenzied life: disfigurement and temporary blindness as a teen after she was bucked from a horse; a tumultuous married life; a freewheeling lust for the night life. She was a Southern wild child let loose in the big city and she wasn't about to leave any stone unturned.
Lee hasn't the renown she so richly deserves. This is probably due to the fact that there's no footage of her performing. Nothing. Just her gloriously chic recordings. Her 1986 album, "Lee Wiley Sings Rogers & Hart and Harold Arlen" - a Lively Lee Cheerful Exclusive! - combines two of her LPs from the 1940s. Trust me, they're ever-so eleganza and essential.
She sang for thirty years...stopped...worked as a nurse...then twenty years later sang again. In a nutshell, that was the career trajectory of Alberta Hunter, the jazz legend whose career spanned from 1921 to the year she died, 1984, at age eighty-nine. As a child, she worked as a servant girl in a brothel. As a teenager, she took off for Chicago to make it as a singer. Her first gig? At a mob-owned bordello. I kid you not. Legend has it that when a mobster was shot dead one night, his body landed right on the stage before her. And she kept on singing.
Word spread fast, though. No more bordellos for Miss Alberta. She was soon playing the best clubs, touring Europe, conquering the stage, vaudeville and recording records. When her beloved mother died in the 1950s, she abruptly gave up showbiz to become a nurse - to "help humanity," she said at the time - and enjoy her private life, emphasis on "private," since she was a hush-hush lesbian at a time when being hush-hush was more than necessary. In the 1970s, she made a stunning comeback and never looked back.
What makes her so vital today (besides the fact that she was pioneering jazz and blues performer)? Her ageless, supple voice, for one, her sharp, sometimes hard-hitting rhythms, and her compelling emotional delivery founded on a bedrock of blues.
And now it's time for something to be thankful for. More fancy Miss Nancy (plus a li'l surprise)!
I love jazz vocalists best when they're live. Case in point, "Nancy Wilson At Carnegie Hall" - a Knock It Out Nancy Cheerful Exclusive! - in which Nancy delivers in ways she seldom did in her studio LPs. She's looser, more vocally confidant - if that's even possible, though it sure sounds like that's the case here. Plus, with a broad range of songs selections, from jazz to blues to pop R&B, she demonstrates her masterful abilities no matter the genre. This is Nancy at the top of her game.
There are many highlights, though my favorite is one of her signature tunes, "Guess Who I Saw Today." Hold tight, because Nancy's take is cooler and more biting and more thrilling than any version out there (it's even better, I think, than Eartha Kitt's).
Don't you wish you'd been there at Carnegie Hall? If you could actually see her perform? Oh, if only! Unfortunately, this is not that type of blog. Ah, well. In the meantime, maybe I'll just leave this out-of-print something-or-other here:
The Secret Song File plans to wear her stretchy eatin' pants on Thanksgiving, though obviously nothing can ruin her figure. Behold:
Behold also a New Orleans-born singer who's "gettin' up there," as they say, but whose crooning voice sounds better than ever. No really. He even sounds better - in his spanking-new CD - than that younger "bubble" (*cough*hint*) out there, though he always has, in my opinion. If everyone argues over what music to play at Thanksgiving, suggest this modern-day jazz icon. Everyone likes a little Naw'lins with their turkey.
Happy gobble-gobble to you and yours!
Leave a li'l stuffing in the comments, if you like.
