William Dart looks into the rock-to-cabaret journey taken by artists such as Bryan Ferry and David Johansen. And he pays tribute to the late André Previn.
André Previn Photo: screenshot ex https://youtu.be/eSk6T2GTtek
In a programme that could be titled “The Lure of the Saloon”, I’ll be looking at some singers who have resisted or even rejected the call of the stadium and rock'n'roll Nirvana — singers who prefer to cast their pearls to a sprinkling of cognoscenti, sipping martinis at tables rather than swilling beer on the benches.
I’ve been fond of the Australian New Yorker Julian Yeo for some time now, and I keep returning to his very idiosyncratic twisting of favourite tunes, such as Duke Ellington and Johnny Mercer’s hip and flip "Satin Doll" in a style that Yeo’s website describes as that of “an original retro-jazz vocalist" with a unique “new-old” approach, blending old-school soul with celebrated qualities of today.
It must be a highly contested territory for retro chic in today’s Big Apple. Yeo’s website has been dormant since 2016 and his Facebook postings faded out last August, with a notification of one of his spasmodic gigs at the city’s Spoonfed NYC restaurant.
The most recent of Julian Yeo’s albums, a 2016 tribute to Burt Bacharach, cuts the band to just a guitarist Tony Romano, And it’s here that he gives us one of his most telling twists of all, turning a Bacharach and David’s bouncy reality check into a cri de coeur.
While I can’t even start to imagine Julian Yeo riding the riffs in a rock group, David Johansen of the New York Dolls made his name doing just that with the New York Dolls.
Back in 1973, the Dolls gave a pre-punk music world a welcome taste of glam outrage. David Bowie likened them to the early Stones in stripper’s clothes. He fell for the way in which they caught an early r&b sound that was much sloppier and more vital than the original. And he was intoxicated by the humour, the fun and their “don’t give a shit” attitude, which comes roaring out in a song like "Trash".
But David Johansen, the son of an opera-singing father, must have wanted something else.
In the 80s he took on the stage alias of Buster Poindexter and made the cabaret crossover. And it worked, as he had the advantage of a tip-top band, fully equipped to come up with what one track of the first Poindexter album defines as “screwy music”.
Buster Poindexter certainly had one sharp ensemble behind him for that debut album in 1987, which is possibly why he’s looking so happy sipping a martini on the record sleeve.
Alcohol turns out to be an integral ingredient in the Poindexter playlists.
The 1994 album Buster’s Happy Hour features songs like “I got Loaded”, “Pink Champagne", and “Knock 'em down Whiskey”. And he has quite a bar full of musicians at his service, from Buster’s Banshees of Blues, The Uptown Horns, and The Busteriers to the Bogalusa Elbow Benders — here adding a Slavic swing to a Ray Davies song, first heard on The Kinks’ 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies.
Some irritating sound mix problems at Bryan Ferry’s recent Auckland concert reminded me that, early on in his career, the leading man of Roxy Music did sometimes come across as a saloon or cabaret singer manqué.
In 1973, his sexually ambiguous take on Lesley Gore’s "It’s My Party" kept the local party set giggling as they danced.
But, only a year later, tackling a Jerome Kern standard, a few chinks were showing in Ferry’s musical armour. Not the least of which was the flagrant violence done to the song’s indispensable chord structure.
Just last year, Brian Ferry came back to his retro games on a new album Bitter-Sweet, gentrifying his earlier songs by giving them a more self-consciously culture patina.
In a number like "Zamba", it doesn’t so much evoke an earlier age but rather comes across as just another artified dressing-up for another ambitious singer-songwriter. Synthesisers may have been replaced by strings but a certain atmosphere of mystery went with them.
If what I'm saying reveals the difficulties that a singer can have moving from style to style, then I’d like to close up with a tribute to one of the most versatile musicians of our time — André Previn, who passed away late last month at the very creditable age of 89.
Previn may not have been a singer but, on the instrumental side, he was as happy playing jazz with the likes of Shelly Mann and Ray Brown as he was accompanying his last wife, the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in Mozart.
His film scores were something else, setting off in 1949 with an early Lassie movie.
My favourite has always been his music for a 1964 film, Dead Ringer, a pacey, noirish grande dame vehicle for Bette Davis. It's music that showed just how well this man knew his mid-twentieth century orchestral repertoire.
André Previn was very much a performer, a skilled jazz pianist who was happy to do back-up duties for singers from Dinah Shore and Doris Day to our own Kiri Te Kanawa.
For some he wrote songs as well, usually with lyrics by his first wife Dory Langdon. One of the best is on a 1962 outing with Doris Day that, although it’s very much a studio recording, could have been the toast of the town at a swank New York saloon.
"Control Yourself" was sparky and spunky enough to be a favourite party piece of Cleo Laine’s a few decades later, but it’s Doris Day, with her ineffable lightness of touch, that gives the song wings.
And who better to bid final farewells to André Previn than Michael Feinstein, saloon singer supremo who’s been delighting us on disc for 30 plus years. He’s sung everything from Schoenberg — the German’s Cabaret songs of course — to kiddy music, as well as superb CD tributes to songwriters from Hugh Marin and Irving Berlin to Jimmy Webb.
In 2013 it was André Previn’s turn and, with 83-year-old Previn at the piano and David Finck on bass, Feinstein gave us a baker’s dozen of Previn’s best, ending with this winsome number, originally written for, but not used in, the 1969 movie Goodbye Mr Chips.
It’s the perfect envoi and, who knows, the man himself might be playing it now in one of the classiest saloons up in the sky.
Music Details
'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)
'Satin Doll' (Ellington, Mercer) – Julian Yeo
Old New Borrowed Blue
(Independent Label Group)
'Do you know the way to San Jose' (Bacharach, David) – Julian Yeo
Still in Love: Songs of Bacharach
(Yeomo)
'Trash' (Johansen, Sylvain) – New York Dolls
New York Dolls
(Mercury)
'Skrewy Music' (Johansen) – Buster Poindexter
Buster Poindexter
(RCA)
'Alcohol' (Davies) – Buster Poindexter
Buster’s Happy Hour
(Forward)
'Smoke Gets in your Eyes' (Kern) – Bryan Ferry
Another Time, Another Place
(EG)
'Love is the drug' (Ferry) – Bryan Ferry
The Jazz Age
(BMG)
'Zamba' (Ferry) – Bryan Ferry
Bitter-Sweet
(BMG)
'Symphony No 1' (Walton) – LSO/André Previn
Walton and Vaughan Williams
(RCA Victor)
'Main Title' (Previn) – Studio orchestra
Dead Ringer: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
(Warner)
'Control Yourself' (Previn) – Doris Day, André Previn
Duet
(Pickwick)
'Goodbye' (Previn) – Michael Feinstein, André Previn
Change of Heart: The Songs of André Previn
(Telarc)
