Dreamers Rise
An Open Notebook
And for those who choose the twisty road, prefer it to the straight
Let joy beat out old misery, as love will conquer hate.
 Illustration by Henry L. Stephens from The Goblin Snob (ca. 1855) | |||||
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A sort of electronic broadside, composed of rants and reviews, conceits and speculations, and whatever else feels the need to be here. Issued as chance will have it. He Ain't Got Rhythm Billie Holiday recorded this Irving Berlin tune in January 1937. The song is as light as a feather, and she only sings about half the original lyrics anyway, but in its own silly way it was perfect raw material for Holiday and her backing musicians. The latter include Lester Young on tenor, Teddy Wilson on piano, Buck Clayton on trumpet, Freddie Green (barely noticeable) on guitar, Walter Page on bass, Jo Jones on drums, and a clarinetist credited as “John Jackson” who usually called himself Benny Goodman when he wasn't sneaking around his RCA contract to play studio sessions for the sheer joy of it and maybe a few extra bucks. The record exudes the seeming effortlessness of seasoned musicians who have nothing to prove, on those days when everything hits just right and they all just shake their heads and laugh when the song ends because that's how it feels when it all falls into place. After a brief intro by Wilson, Goodman states the melody and plays the initial solo; Clayton riffs discretely behind Holiday's vocal, then Young takes over before yielding to Clayton again. The whole thing comes in under three minutes, with the vocal occupying barely fifty seconds. 'Cause he ain't got rhythmAt first glance the lyrics could be taken for just stock bookworm-bashing, except that the circling the equator bit doesn't quite fit the stereotype. I think that at least in this version, with a crack band and one of the twentieth century's true vocal geniuses at the height of her powers, the song instead conveys something about a generation finding its mettle and asserting its independence, telling anybody who's listening that there's a party going on and we know we're good and if you don't get it, well, that's your loss not ours. If you don't understand how a music that began in neighborhoods you wouldn't dare to set foot in is now the supreme art of its age, or how a white clarinetist could sit in on equal footing with the offspring of busboys and field hands, that's because the world you thought you dominated has moved along and left you behind and just guess who's sittin' pretty on top of it now? May 26, 2006 [ Permalink ]
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