Listening to Prestige 446: Etta Jones

Etta Jones is back, with the same rhythm section that accompanied Betty Roché on her January 24 session for Prestige, and why not? These guys had demonstrated that they knew how to work with a girl singer, and Etta, I'm guessing, must have been very easy to work with, and a very professional singer, because she got a lot accomplished in a session -- a dozen songs in this one.

And she had material left over from her last session, in September, so six of the songs from this session were bundled with five songs from that one to make her next release, Something Nice. The rest of the September session had to wait until 1963 for Hollar!, when those songs were packaged with...five more songs from this session. The titles suggest

two different concept albums, one sweet and one wild, and that does seem to have been the logic. As I've said, making the decisions about what goes on what album, and gets released when, is way above my pay grade.

You can hear a lot of other singers in Jones's voice -- there's some Billie, there's some Dinah. Those are the main two, but maybe a little Sarah, and everyone was influenced by Ella. That was the style of the day, and it was a golden era for female jazz singers. So Jones makes the right choice, I believe, when she doesn't force herself to try to be different. She accepts her influences gratefully and graciously, and she uses them to create a sound that is wonderfully listenable. whether it's familiar standards or songs that don't get recorded all that often. She is, ultimately, her own singer, and why she isn't numbered among the first ladies of jazz is beyond me.

"And Maybe You'll Be There," the first song off the session to be placed on Something Nice, falls somewhere in between, on the scale of popularity. It hasn't been covered as much as, say, "Laura," but it certainly hasn't been ignored, either. Written by Rube Bloom with lyrics by Sammy Gallop, it's a good song to sing, and some good singers have done it, including Billie Holiday, Lee Wiley, June Christy, Dakota Staton. Frank Sinatra has recorded it, and a couple of marvelous and underrated doowop singers, Lee Andrews and the Five Keys' Rudy West. Even Bob Dylan.

Here's one more interesting comparison: Betty Roché recorded the same song, just couple of months earlier, with exactly the same musicians.

The musicians approach each session differently. Jimmy Neeley takes the lead for the Roché version, Wally Richardson for Jones.  Roché takes a more theatrical approach, and by that I don't mean grand gestures, I mean she does more to create a persona, the forlorn lover who can't help looking for something she knows she'll never find, and so is constantly torn. The quintet gives her space for little pauses of self-doubt, finds equivalents for the restraint which that self-doubt imposes. Jones sings the song, her engagement more with the melody and the musicality, and the musicians play to that.

I'm very glad we have both versions. I spent a lot of time on this song, a lot more than I'd expected, and when I got back to Etta Jones's version again at the end, it still sounded wonderful.

Composer Rube Bloom deserves a little mention. He had his share of hits as a songwriter, including "Fools Rush In" and "Give Me the Simple Life," and he had his moments as a piano player, working with Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer, and leading a group called Rube Bloom and his Bayou Boys, which included such bayou denizens as Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. Bloom also wrote the music for "Fools Rush In," which, with Johnny Mercer lyrics, has been a staple for pop singers, jazz singers, country singers and Elvis Presley.

"My Heart Tells Me," a Harry Warren tune with lyrics by Mack Gordon, is from a Betty Grable movie, and it can fall prey to a little over-sweetness of rendition, but not the way Jones does it. With a powerful assist from Michael Mulia and Jimmy Neeley, she swings it hard. The tune has an interesting history, in that during the war, a version was made by Glenn Miller lyrics sung in German by Johnny Desmond. This was broadcast over the American Broadcasting Station in Europe, a station set up to broadcast hopeful news to Resistance fighters and demoralizing messages to German troops. Gordon also wrote the lyrics to "Through a Long and Sleepless Night," music by Alfred Newman, also from a movie. Neither of these songs have been widely recorded, but both worth a listen from Jones. "Love is the Thing" is also pretty obscure, and also written by movie composers--Ned Washington and Victor Young-- although not, apparently, for a movie.

"Till There Was You" was the hit ballad from the hit Meredith Willson musical, The Music Man, just winding up its 4-year run on Broadway as Jones took the tune to Englewood Cliffs, so that star Robert Preston could head for Hollywood to make the movie version, which was also a hit. This was the breakout romantic ballad from the show, and it became a Top Forty hit for Anita Bryant. But its biggest success was yet to come: in 1963, when the Beatles included it on their first American album. Jones keeps the sweetness of the song, but adds just enough jazzy tartness to make it interesting. "Till There Was You" was also the 45 RPM single from the session, along with "All the Way" from her first Prestige outing.

"Give Me the Simple Life" (Rube Bloom again, with Harry Ruby) led off the March 30 session, and found its way into the groove of the uptempo swingers that make up Hollar! This kind of easy but forceful swing is most associated with Ella Fitzgerald, although she wouldn't record "Simple Life" until several years later. Jones can hold her head up proudly at a comparison with Ella--she swings it, with considerable help from Michael Mulia and a "Peter Gunn"-type walking bass.

"Looking Back" is a soulful blues from the pens of two songwriters equally at home in blues and pop, and this song has found success in both genres, and in country as well. Originally a hit for Nat "King" Cole in 1958, it was covered by country crooner Ferlin Husky in 1959, and later by Marty Robbins, Conway Twitty, and rockabilly Gene Vincent. Soul versions have been recorded by Mary Wells, Roy Hamilton, Carla Thomas, the Chambers Brothers, Otis Rush, Irma Thomas, and Johnny Adams. Jazz singers Nancy Wilson, Julie London and Ruth Brown have all recorded it. The soul singers, in particular, could have learned a lot from Jones' soulful interpretation, with great assists from Neeley and Rudy Lawless.

The songwriters were Brook Benton, no slouch as a pop and soul balladeer himself, and Clyde Otis, whose entry into the music business is one of those storybook tales. As a young marine, he became friends with fellow jarhead Bobby Troup (“Route 66”)—these were the days after President Truman had integrated the armed forces. Troup encouraged his songwriting, so after he’d mustered out, he moved to New York, where he spent the better part of a decade knocking on doors, piling up rejections, and driving a cab. One evening, he caught a fare who was going to a party given by a well-known music publisher, and he persuaded the passenger to give the publisher a song.

Reel to reel? There were no cassettes in those days. But anyway, the song was “That’s All There Is to That,” and it became a Top Twenty hit for Nat “King” Cole. Within two years, Otis was the first African American A&R executive with Mercury Records. He is credited with over 800 published songs. His work with Brook Benton yielded several hits for Benton singly and in duets with Dinah Washington in addition to “Looking Back.”

“And the Angels Sing,” by Ziggy Elman and Johnny Mercer, is another song like “Give Me the Simple Life,” made to be swung. Additionally, it has a lot of lyrics (“Suddenly the setting is strange / I can see moonlight beaming / silver waves that break on some undiscovered shore”) which require a very good singer to make them make sense, carry the emotion, and keep swinging. This takes some serious musicianship combined with some serious intelligence. And she does it all in two and a half minutes, which includes a most satisfying solo by Wally Richardson.

“Answer Me My Love” was originally a German song by Fred Rauch and Gerhard Winkler. A close English translation by Carl Sigman, a prolific lyricist, began “Answer me, my Lord,” and had the singer questioning why God had stolen his sweetie, but even when recorded by Frankie Laine, who was no stranger to addressing God (“I Believe”), it didn’t take off. Sigman tried again, and Laine had better success with the new secular version, although the big hit was Nat “King” Cole’s. Love was a good fallback theme for a song in those days. “Let Me Go, Devil,” was a song about an individual in the clutches of alcoholism, but when it was redone as “Let Me Go, Lover,” it became a number one hit for Joan Weber, a top ten hit for both Patti Page and Teresa Brewer, and a charted record for several other singers.

The tempo of “Answer Me My Love” may have been more suited to Something Nice” than Hollar!, but it’s nice to have it wherever.

“Reverse the Charges,” by Paul Francis Webster and Clarence Williams, seems not to have made much of a mark in spite of the pedigree of its composers. It was the B side of a 1946 78 RPM single by the Velvetones, a vocal harmony group in the style of the Ink Spots or the Mills Brothers. A nice save out of the remainder bin of pop history by Miss Jones, and a nice recording.