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March 15, 2006
TT: La perfectly swell
It seems I stirred up a considerable fuss with the recent Wall Street Journal column in which I explained why I'd never been crazy about the singing of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. You may be surprised to hear, incidentally, that the fuss came from both directions--I even received an e-mail from a very prominent cabaret singer thanking me for "telling the truth" about Ella and Sarah.Among the other people from whom I heard was a reader in search of enlightenment:
Very interesting column! I'm not sure I agree about Sarah Vaughan, but I can see right away where you are coming from. I'm sure you are getting a lot of comments about putting Fred Astaire in a list of favorites in an article where you take two legends to task. But again, I take the point. I've always sort of ignored him as someone who "sang like an actor," but your spin makes me see that in a different light.
Astaire is well represented on iTunes. Any recommendations?
This e-mail surprised me, since most of us middle-aged pop-song connnoisseurs take Astaire's vocal excellence so completely for granted that it would never occur to us how anyone could have overlooked his singing. To be sure, he was modest to a fault, and never admitted to having been anything more than a dancer who sang on the side. "He had put together, at his home, a film library of all his dance numbers," André Previn recalls, "but all of them had been shorn of the vocal that precedes the dances. He seemed to be oblivious of the fact that he was many musicians' favorite singer, or if he knew it, he was embarrassed by that fact." To name two, he was the preferred interpreter of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, a distinction so mind-boggling that mere mortals should bow down humbly before it.
What was it that made Astaire's singing so memorable? His voice was small and reedy, his expressive range seemingly narrow--yet he was equal to the widely varied demands of such passionate songs as "Night and Day" and "One for My Baby," both of which he introduced (the first on Broadway, the second in a film). Perhaps the best way to put it is that he had an uncanny knack for knowing what not to do. If you'll pardon my saying so, Astaire never put a foot wrong: he sang a tune the way it was written, he "read" a lyric with elegant simplicity, and he brought to every song in his huge repertoire the same rhythmic lightness and lift with which he sailed across a dance floor. Though never a jazz singer, he swung with the best of them, and was wholly comfortable in the company of such heavy hitters as Count Basie and Oscar Peterson.
Don't take my word for it, though. In addition to recording dozens of now-standard songs for the soundtracks of his films and TV specials, many of which have been collected on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at RKO (Rhino, two CDs), Astaire also made a considerable number of commercial recordings, nearly all of which show him off to splendid effect. Top Hat, White Tie and Tails (ASV Living Era, two CDs) contains decent-sounding transfers of most of the best of his 78s, while Fred Astaire's Finest Hour (Verve) offers a nice selection of the recordings he made with jazz musicians in the Fifties.
iTunes carries Fred Astaire's Finest Hour and some of his other recordings, early and late. If you've only heard the soundtracks of his films, I suggest you start by downloading the nonchalant 1952 performance of "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" included on Fred Astaire's Finest Hour, which is accompanied by Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel, Ray Brown, and Alvin Stoller. (Whew!) I won't tell you what it is, but there's a neat little surprise at the end of the record that'll put the biggest possible smile on your face.
Posted March 15, 2006 12:00 PM
