Weak Whisky and Soggy Gauloise

SOME visitors to this site may have seen Robyn Archer’s one-woman show at the Theatre Royal a couple of decades ago. She selected singers who in one way or another had destroyed themselves — drugs, depression, mistreatment from men and in various other ways but principally booze. Those whom she depicted included Bessie Smith, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Patsy Cline, Janis Joplin and Marilyn Monroe who was of course better known for her acting and sadly dysfunctional private life than for her singing.

Archer was magnificent. Brilliant. From time to time I would close my eyes as she sang and it was Garland or Piaf or Bessie Smith or … And I opened my eyes and there they were in the way she stood or moved or what she wore. She was superb. It was very compelling, creative theatre.

I was reflecting recently on Archer and her torn stars and thinking about the importance of music in different ways and at different times and the associations it ignites in the mind. Reflecting too on how great singers are not simply opening their mouths and sending out pretty noises. Great singers are great artists, great actors, great communicators, great story tellers. And all that physical and emotional energy that they commit to their singing takes its toll. Hence, in so many cases, the tragic consequences of their art.

Take a look at some of the great black women singers. When Bessie Smith sings Do Your Duty to her man she aint telling him to join the army! It is a raw, earthy, passionate plea for love. Physical love. Bessie died in 1937, a few weeks before I was born. She was in a car accident and it was asserted for some time that she was rejected by the first hospital because of her colour and died on the way to the next. This was subsequently established to be untrue but, given the situation in the south of the United States at that time, it could well have happened.

Drink, drugs and various kinds of predators

And so it is with Ella. We believe her when she pleads for Someone To Watch Over Me. So too with Nina Simone singing That’s Him Over There. He is over there. And with Billie Holiday’s My Man. These women were so very good because they were so very human. But in many cases — Billie Holiday for example — their art was so demanding that it was as critical to their destruction as it was to their fame. This is especially so when we have regard to the milieu within which that art was played out — drink, drugs and various kinds of predators.

Of the white women Judy Garland and Edith Piaf were among the sad cases of self-destruction. Poor little Piaf; she had hope with Marcel Cerdan. The champion French boxer was her true love, her hope. And Cerdan died in that awful plane crash and Piaf fell apart, again. After Marcel died she drank to forget but the new men weren’t worth the awful price she paid. Edith sang La Vie En Rose as it should be sung, in French by a marvellous little alley cat of a woman, bleeding from her big French heart in her tiny French body.

Dietrich was quite different from Piaf. Marlene was very Germanic, austere in her remoteness — a sexy woman seemingly beyond sex. But that glib portrayal is seen for what it is when she launches into Lily Marlene. You are a boy, hunched over a primitive radio — or wireless as we called it all those years ago — only a couple of hours walk from the foothills of the Western Tiers and it is war time and Marlene is invoking Lily. And a very young boy and a very old man shed a tear with Lily. And more than six decades on the boy still responds in much the same way.

Of the black men, Armstrong’s version of What A Wonderful World is one of the great tonic tunes of all time. The humanity of the man is palpable, even over-shadowing his unparalleled professionalism. Everyone was in Satchmo’s shadow but I must make a place for our own, adopted, Ricky May. His Blueberry Hill and I Get Ideas are special renditions. Like so many he died too young.

And then there was Dooley. Dooley Wilson and As Time Goes By; Dooley at the keyboard in Casablanca. Some of the pseudo-academic film specialists may tell you all sorts of reasons why Casablanca was not a great film. I was there, in the bar, not far from the piano. I’m sure I was there. The young bloke with the weak whisky and the soggy Gauloise. Casablanca and As Time Goes By were special to for me — I have too many associations with that war for it to be otherwise.

Fred Astaire was an important white singer for me. His version of The Way You Look Tonight is one of the very best. Perhaps it was the first? I often think of it when I go out with my wife and daughters. Willie Nelson’s On The Road Again, Elvis with Love Me Tender and Brian Ferry with Love Walked In — all those songs, especially when sung by these singers, have important memories and messages for me.

I was introduced to Brian Ferry’s music by a Polish friend, an anti-Zionist Jew and engineer who escaped from Poland, with his wife, during the oppressive communist days and made his way to Israel. They disliked Israel for all sorts of reasons and so they then found their way across Africa to Ghana where he taught engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology at Kumasi — African politicians also like their names on everything! — deep in the steamy rain forest of central Ghana. He came to see me at the Australian High Commission in Accra about the possibility of getting to Australia. His timing was impeccable as the Snowy Mountain Scheme was then at its peak in terms of developmental activity and they were looking for engineers. So he became an Australian but, ever the nomad, he moved eventually into the private sector and then to Asia and finally back to Poland after he was diagnosed with cancer which soon led to his death. He was one of the most remarkable people I have ever met. Whenever I hear Brian Ferry my mind turns to Michael Kotowicz — a man of immense intelligence, great fun and the very best of friends.

That wonderful romp

Many of the finest songs of the last century were written by the great Hoagy Carmichael, one of the most prolific of successful song writers, ever. Georgie Fame and Annie Ross do great justice to songs by Carmichael like Stardust and I Get Along Without You Very Well.

I also enjoy Noel Coward with songs like I’ll See You Again, a beautiful melody, and that wonderful romp, A Bar On The Piccola Marina. The latter song is centred on a bar on the island of Capri and this predatory Manchester widow who totters around on very high heels looking for either a very rich American or a very randy Italian, whichever appears first. A very funny song.

Then there were the groups. When we flew to Korea in 1965 our daughters entertained the Mills Brothers in the row behind and when we arrived in Korea the Stattler Brothers were all the rage with Flowers On The Wall. It was about that time, too, that The Mamas And The Papas were rattling the charts with Dream A Little Dream Of Me.

Two instrumental groups that I remember well from those days were Stephane Grapelli, Django Reinhardt et al and the Modern Jazz Quartet. I heard the MJQ play at a very small bar-cum-concert room on Broadway in San Francisco in the early 1970s and was fortunate to meet John Lewis, pianist and leader of the group. He heard my Australian accent at the bar during a break and chatted about the group’s visits to Australia under the management of the Adelaide art and music entrepreneur Kim Bonython.

But finally, back to Monroe. I remember talking with a good friend in Canberra back in the early 1960s and we were discussing the imminent American presidential election. He favoured Nixon because he thought him brighter than Kennedy while I favoured Kennedy because I thought Nixon looked shifty. As events subsequently revealed, they were both shifty but Nixon was seen for what he was while still in office and Kennedy has been unmasked posthumously. We shall probably never know the full details of Monroe’s demise but all the available evidence suggests that the Kennedys had some kind of role in it. Ultimately the blood line proved to be entirely logical. Father Joe made his sympathies for Hitler publicly known, even when he was serving as American ambassador to the United Kingdom and his promiscuity was legendary. His sons were subsequently seen to be a venal lot in various ways but especially with women. They were also alleged to have mafia connections. It seems that Marilyn Monroe may, in some way, have been one of their many victims.

The world, especially the United States, has produced some magnificent singers and musicians.

I just hope Marilyn is at peace. And Bessie and Billie and Judy and Edith and Nina and …