Ghosts of Midnight - pt.4

Ghosts of Midnight is the latest edition of Your Heart Out which can be downloaded here free for all as a pdf. It is an affectionate tribute to the 1950s jazz label Bethlehem and some of its voices. Among those voices was the fantastic Frances Faye, whom I first came across via a CD that collected a couple of her Bethlehem LPs under the umbrella title of Frances Faye Sings, Russell Garcia Conducts. One of those was of Frances singing folk songs, and is perhaps her least typical work. Nevertheless it is a stunning work, with highlights like Go 'Way From My Window, the John Jacob Niles song.

Frances was a remarkable performer, with a penchant for pounding the piano and hollering like hell. The wise guys in the '30s loved her cabaret spots, and clips posted on YouTube such as the one where she and Martha Raye are scatting away like mad give an idea why the gangsters would have been eating out of her hand.

Bruce Weber has done a great job of immortalising Frances by placing her right at the heart of his own extraordinary film Chop Suey. It includes some amazing footage of Frances, which hasn't surfaced on YouTube (yet), where she seems as dangerous as Jerry Lee Lewis in the late '50s.

Ironically Frances' name may be best known now for a couple of recordings which remain favourites of jazz and soul DJs, such as her early '50s uptempo rendition of Summertime and her astonishing cover of I'm Coming Home from the early '60s (a song that itself has a couple of Bethlehem connections) which was arranged by Shorty Rogers.

I bet Frances was accused of many things during her lifetime, but age did not mellow her as this brief but astonishing clip shows ...

Ghosts of Midnight - pt.3

Ghosts of Midnight is the latest edition of Your Heart Out which can be downloaded here free for all as a pdf. It is an affectionate tribute to the 1950s jazz label Bethlehem and some of its voices. There is no denying the fact that some of these voices became lost along the way, and were criminally under-recorded. While the advent of the digital age has meant that the Bethlehem sides recorded by singers such as Terry Morel, Betty Blake, Betty Roche, Peggy Connelly, Marilyn Moore, Paula Castle, and Helen Carr are available one way or another, there still seems to be a general lack of awareness about the wonderful talents these ladies had, and background detail is often harder to find. Oddly YouTube is not much help in these cases, and there is little from the Bethlehem back catalogue posted for the casual browser to stumble across. There is even less in the way of rare footage to watch. One glorious exception, however, is a clip from the early '60s of Terry Morel performing on the West Coast jazz TV show, Frankly Jazz. What is particularly wonderful about this piece of film is seeing how the show's host Frank Evans is so visibly moved that he can hardly speak when Terry has finished singing What Is There To Say ...

Ghosts of Midnight - pt.2

Ghosts of Midnight is the latest edition of Your Heart Out which can be downloaded here free for all as a pdf. It is an affectionate tribute to the 1950s jazz label Bethlehem and some of its voices. Bethlehem as a record company hit on something magical in 1954 when Creed Taylor took Gus Wildi's label and set some great ideas in motion. First and foremost among these was to get the jazz singer Chris Connor to record a set of intimate songs in a small group setting, capturing an after-hours feel, and promote this 10" LP in a gorgeous sleeve designed by Burt Goldblatt. It set the tone for how Bethlehem would conduct itself as a label, and that combination of ideas and talents is still an intoxicating one. Chris Connor went on to sing on many special records. Creed Taylor would come up with many great schemes. Burt Goldblatt would design many wonderful sleeves. Bethlehem would release many more fantastic jazz LPs. And it was the magic of those early Chris Connor recordings on Bethlehem that changed so much. Chris certainly inspired a whole host of other singers, and brought out the best in many musicians. If you twisted my arm and asked me to pick a particular favourite Chris Connor record it would be the third set she recorded for Bethlehem, from 1955, with a group featuring Ralph Sharon on piano, Herbie Mann on flute, and Joe Puma on guitar. It's got some really special moments on ...

Ghosts of Midnight - pt.1

Ghosts of Midnight is the latest edition of Your Heart Out which can be downloaded here free for all as a pdf. It is an affectionate tribute to the 1950s jazz label Bethlehem and some of its voices. One of these voices is that of Audrey Morris'. She recorded one LP for Bethlehem in the mid-'50s, which featured some gorgeous tracks. The LP was recorded out in Hollywood and arranged by the great Marty Paich. Audrey had recorded one earlier LP, which is a particular favourite of mine, called Bistro Ballads. And, yes, Audrey is particularly wonderful singing the intimate torch songs on this record, such as Where Are You? Incidentally Audrey is accompanied on this LP by the great Johnny Pate on bass long before he had success with The Impressions. A lot of the Bethlehem singers sort of drifted out of music, but Audrey has carved a niche for herself as a cabaret performer in her native Chicago. After a long recording hiatus, she would make a series of LPs including one of old Film Noir numbers. Among those included on that LP is a particular favourite, Ace In The Hole, which Gloria Grahame is seen performing in The Naked Alibi. Torch songs and film noir ... these are two of my favourite things.

Ghosts of Midnight

Ghosts of Midnight is the latest edition of Your Heart Out which can be downloaded here free for all as a pdf. It is an affectionate tribute to the 1950s jazz label Bethlehem and some of its voices. Bethlehem was an extraordinary record company, and its roster featured a wide range of singers: from intimate torch singers to be-bopping scat specialists. Some seem to have been lost along the way. Others have doggedly stuck with the jazz thing. In recent years the voices of Bethlehem have become a bit of an obsession, so this is an attempt at sharing that enthusiasm ...

Form & Function #8

Form & Function is the latest edition of Your Heart Out, and it can be downloaded as a free pdf here. It was great to have a chance to refer to the work of Don Harper. I guess if the name Don Harper is mentioned it will be in connection with the KPM library LP Electrosonic which featured Don with Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson moonlighting from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. People seem a bit sniffy about the jazz violinist Don's involvement in that, but his credentials were first class. His own early '70s experimental LP Homo Electronicus is as 'out there' as any record you could care to name. It veers from a jazz rock reworking of the Dr Who theme to a few extended mood pieces featuring Alan Branscombe on sax and keyboards.

Norma Winstone appears briefly on Homo Electronicus, and oddly the sound and feel is pretty close to some of the astonishingly beautiful material she would go on to record with John Taylor and Kenny Wheeler as Azumith for ECM. Norma is one of my favourite vocalists, and I love the way her wordless singing links the experimental with exotica in a way that makes a mockery of labels. I love it where she pops up on recordings with Mike Westbrook, say, or Michael Garrick. My personal favourite Norma moment is her contribution to 1969's Hum Dono set by Joe Harriott and Amancio D'Silva.

Now those who know YHO will be aware it thrives on connections, and so it is appropriate that the Homo Electronicus set and Hum Dono were 'supervised' by one of our patron saints Denis Preston. Don Harper and Denis Preston would certainly have known each other from the 1950s London jazz scene. Another link between the two was Denny Wright. Dennis had got jazz guitarist to play on early skiffle sides by Lonnie Donegan and Johnny Duncan. Many years later Denny recorded the now infamous Shout About Pepsi (for the Non-Stop Pepsi Party on MFP) which would appear on the classic comp The Sound Gallery which helped open the door on the wonders of easy listening and library music etc. Denny Wright and Don Harper would in the late '70s perform as a jazz duo and if you search YouTube there's footage of them performing on TV, introduced by the great Annie Ross.

Don Harper is or should be much loved for his library recordings, and there are plenty of examples for the casual listener on YouTube naturally, covering different eras, from light disco back to late '60s beat variations of the sort used as incidental music in TV dramas.

Form & Function #7

Form & Function is the latest edition of Your Heart Out, and it can be downloaded as a free pdf here. Sudden Sway are right at the heart of this issue, mainly because they did more than anyone to mess with traditional ideas of 'form' and 'function'. Where some artists may do something different as a promotional exercise Sudden Sway did things differently pretty much each and every time. Much of the Sudden Sway related material featured in this issue is collated from a variety of sources. And I was delighted to stumble across an entry on The Sound Projector site where Ed Pinsent refers to buying a copy of Sudden Sway's To You With ReGard 12" and finding tucked inside a review and a Sudden Sway interview by Dave McCullough in Sounds. This was a pretty special discovery as it was Dave's enthusiasm for the group in print that pulled me in. And it should be remembered that Dave was THE top pop writer of the time, reGardless of what the history books say, so his enthusiasm carried considerable weight and was certainly a considerable factor in Sudden Sway getting signed to Blanco y Negro (with whom DMcC was involved early on). I always liked the way Dave disappeared after a brief stint at City Limits (the London listings mag), and never resorted to appearing as an irritating talking head on TV documentaries, joining the Oxbridge brigade as an over-revered Guardian columnist, or as a panellist at a Simon Reynolds book launch. I wrote something about him a few years ago, and failed to mention that he actually took the time and trouble to write encouraging words when I first started dabbling in writing about pop music. That meant a hell of a lot at the time. I can recall the impact Dave's words on Sudden Sway had on me. The music itself just improves with time. One of the Sudden Sway critical default positions is that they were about style over content. But this destroys that line completely ...