So you haven’t yet arranged the dinner music for tonight? Well, never fear, postmodern conservative is here. Nothing says romance more than the crickle-crackle of an old 78, preferably from the swing era.
1.) If Dreams Come True, Ella Fitzgerald w/ the Chick Webb Orchestra. The younger Ella, before the dare-devil scatting.
2.) Me, Myself, and I, Billie Holiday. A shame we didn’t get more of these up-tempo numbers recorded by Billie, as she was too stereotyped as a torch singer—this take is with the great Lester Young.
3) When I Take My Sugar to Tea, Nat King Cole Trio. Gentlemen, listen and learn.
4) Finesse, Django Reinhardt on guitar, Rex Stewart on cornet, I forget the clarinetist. Perfection throughout…
5) Georgiana, Count Basie Orchestra w/ Jimmy Rushing. You are the sweetness, underneath the sun, rolled into one…
6) Body and Soul, Coleman Hawkins. The monumental tenor solo, a hit single in its time.
7) These Foolish Things, Billie Holiday w/ Teddy Wilson(piano). What can one say? Whole essays have been written on it, trying to capture an iota of its beauty…still my heart has wings!
8) I Let a Song Go out of My Heart, Duke Ellington. For me, it took about ten listens before I realized it was just as perfect as its title suggests.
9) I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me, Frank Sinatra. The I had always placed you, way above me line is one of those lyrics that helps you understand what Plato is talking about in the Symposium.
10) Corcovado, Carlos Jobim, Stan Getz, and Astrud Gilberto. My wife once briefly fooled me into thinking that Astrud Gilberto was an Engineering Major. For the ten seconds or so I believed her, I was very depressed. We will always have Lester to thank for what Stan Getz did on this magical album.
11) La Vie En Rose, Edith Piaf. This is not the very best song here, but perhaps the most intense one. Here’s something I wrote about it years ago: “I do not want to know the meaning of the lyrics, for they will inevitably be too definite and down-to-earth, bounded by dictionary meanings, and worse, upon knowing the words I might detect hints and connotations of the merely human, of foibles and motives and half-baked ideas. No, it is better to be the ignorant American here, to have only seen Paris in movies and to fancy French as the very Language of Romance, and in this state to experience the swell, the sigh, and even the soaring flight of Piaf and orchestra. Amid such music, the title is enough, for I do know that “vie” means life, which calls to mind that “La Vita Nuova,” Dante’s collection of love sonnets, means “the new life.” Love of the Beloved, after all, beckons us toward a higher life, one that is all the more glorious for just beginning or being as yet just out of reach. It is a life wherein the world becomes new and full of hitherto unnoticed delights—a “fairyland” as “Stars Fell on Alabama” puts it, made of what was only everyday yesterday. The Lover’s eyes having been opened to the presence of the Beloved, they are able to see much else besides.”
12) Faded Love, Maddox Brothers and Rose. Of course, there’s a time to come down to earth, too, and who better to bring us there than Rose Maddox, who can’t refrain from crackin’ some jokes in the midst of a weepy love tune.
Perhaps someone else can assemble the classical equivalent…I think it would include lots of Chopin, definitely Dove sono i bei momenti from Mozart’s Figaro, and of course the Dido/Aeneas duet by the sea from Berlioz’s Les Troyens.
We’ll consider the rock music equivalent another time…for now, let the scratchy old records play, the cigarette smoke curl, and the black and white films flicker in the distance…
February 14th, 2012 | 10:21 pm
So on this Vantine’s day I reminded the students in my class–learned from NPR driving to class–that today celebrates the 85th anniversary of the St. Vanentine’s Day Massacre. I was trying to appeal to the lonelyhearts on this day of the public display of affection and exclusivity that constitutes Valentinian love as it is understood today.
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was the day that Al Capone eliminated all his rivals in one fell Godfather-likle swoop of violence in the Chicagoland days of illicit booze and other illegal rackets. Capone decided in favor of a “Carthaginian solution,” and he established himself as preeminent. To a point it worked for him and his racket, even if the Untouchables eventually got him on tax evasion.
I mentioned this story in the name of lonelihearts and in a typical manner of professorial humorous irony, but one student would have nothing of it. She expressed her disgust that a day celebrating such important things like the exclusive loyalty to each one in terms of one’s own should be associated with such brutality as Al Capone.
I agreed, but this led us to a conversation of the actual St. Valentine. She had knowledge on this issue. She noted that for St. Valentine’s divine devotion, he had his limbs severed and had his heart placed on stake.
I responded, who is more morbid and bloody–”me” or “you?” The story of Al Capone or the story of St. Valentine? But I suggested that perhaps Valentine had a good reason despite his bloody fate, while on the other hand it is hard to justify the actions of Al Capone.
It was a useful example of the importance providing reasons for the actions we take.
That said, as a lonelyheart myself, I am dismayed that Carl did not list “Love Stinks” by the J Geils Band as one of his Valentine’s Day songs.
It is a perspective of love that ought not to be neglected.
February 15th, 2012 | 10:10 am
Yeah John, my sense is that early February is a weird time to be celebrating love. But “love in song” is not the same thing as “love in reality,” and I think everyone, the lonely-hearts included, can celebrate the former. To love music, methinks, is to have some love for love-in-song.
I am slightly irked by your bringing Capone’s massacre or St. Valentine’s grisly martyrdom into the presence of my fragrant love-in-song bouquet, but, to so bring in the J. Geils Band!?!?! THAT is not right, my friend–if it were back in the day I might have to challenge you to a duel.
For if transhumanism means that I could pay Itunes to remove all memory of J. Geils Band songs from my mind, then I’m all for it!
March 25th, 2013 | 10:46 am
[...] for other contenders for most the romantic song ever, you could turn to this Love Spins at 78 RPM post of mine from Valentine’s Day a year [...]
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