One of the problems of being somewhat advanced
in years is that we have a full suitcase of memories with
fewer and fewer people every year to share them with. So,
what does one then do? Well, he can do as I have: he takes
up writing about what he likes in earnest and thereby able
to lighten its load one piece at a time.
Thus, when Jazz songstress Lulee Fisher appeared
at 66 California, a club and restaurant in Ventura, in June,
here was an opportunity. To see her, with her long blondish
tress gathered about her shoulders, flat on top and parted
on one side, as women and girls often wore their hair in
the late 1940’s, it took me back to my adolescent
years. They were years when a boy, or girl for that matter,
I don’t need to tell you, the most impressionable.
And impressionable I was, for Fisher has the look.
It’s the look of one of my adolescent
crushes, Elizabeth Scott, that siren of ‘40’s
noirish flicks: her small facial features pretty much the
same, Scott’s blonder hair may be peroxide or her
then young years. And though Scott was a nightclub singer
in at least one film, she, I recall, had not nearly the
voice nor the range of Fisher. Just the same, I still thought
I detected a bit of Scott’s huskiness (read warmth,
if you want) in Fisher’s voice. (Though plenty attractive,
Scott’s most unusual attribute was that purringly
husky speaking voice that could… well, you’ve
gotten the point.)
Now, if anybody really knows my Jazz tastes,
I’m not stuck on bygone days, constantly dwelling
on the past, although I have a deep appreciation of what
transpired then, my record collection reflects it. But as
most people, I like the challenge of new experiences, one
of “the five basic needs” formulated by the
late sociologist William Issac Thomas. Accordingly, my musical
tastes are always moving forward as I continue to reference
the past. And furthermore, singers these days generally
interest me least of all. Most of whom I really like are
dead; I offer Billie and Mr. B and Sarah as examples. And
no scatting is allowed; however Sarah did it as she claimed
to forget her lines. But her voice, like Ella’s, was
hardly human in the way that it could approximate a musical
instrument.
And those select few that still do, Fisher—
caught in her second and third sets— moved me as well.
Not only does she have a youthful, almost school-girlish—
though of more mature years— quality, she has a warm
personal manner, yet having a fetchingly cool delivery.
Given that she is an actress as well, with her stage presence
appearing so natural, I found myself wondering how much
of it was affected and how much was really her. There was
no way of telling, and it mattered not. To my way of thinking,
It only added to her mystery and enchantment.
More importantly, Fisher could not only favor
a ballad with just warmth and grace such as “I Fall
in Love Too Easily” or “You Go to My Head’;
or, as it was, elegantly relax in the gentle breezes of
the bossa nova, “Corcovado” and “Dindi.”
And, too, she had no timidity about tackling more out-front
stuff. Benny Golson’s “Whisper Not,” the
uptempo “Give Me the Simple Life” and Eddie
“Cleanhead” Vinson’s “Four”
(ignobly claimed by Miles Davis as he did Bill Evan’s
“Blue is Green"’), lyrics by Billy Loughborough,
were cases in point. Nor was she shy in her renderings of
Dave Frishberg’s humorous ditty, “Let’s
Eat at Home,” and two owned by Frank Sinatra that
she segued, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”
and “One for My Baby.”
But, to me, “Interlude,” Sarah
Vaughn’s vocal rendition of Dizzy Gillespie’s
“A Night in Tunisia,” and another from Sarah’s
songbook, “East of the Sun’—the later
two originally on a 10-inch Musicraft I used to own in my
late teens (you know, before hi-fi and its successor, stereo)
but replaced years later— along with touching renditions
of “You Go to My Head” and “Mood Indigo”
were the most affecting. The first two were on Sarah’s
first recording under her own name, done, yes, December
31, 1944. And get this, Leonard Feather was not only the
producer but also played piano on that date: but it was
Dizzy Gillespie doubling on the piano on “Sun.”
And would you believe, in addition to Feather and Dizzy,
Bird and Georgie Auld were also counted as the sidemen!
I don’t think Jazz-wise that Sarah ever made a better
recording; so natural far from the strings and the other
sweeteners that brought her greater popularity in subsequent
years. And to think, Fisher, only a few weeks before performance,
discovered it on one of those companion CDs to Ken Burns’
Jazz! A fine choice indeed.
In any event, in another real Jazz outfit,
the harmonically attuned guitar of Larry Koonse, the staunch
bass work of Chris Symer, and the musically drumming of
Jason Harnell were instrumental in making it all work for
the comely songstress; making it a particularly felicitous
event. Being Fisher’s debut with her own band made
it all the more auspicious. To corrupt a phrase from the
romantic “You Go to My Head,” Fisher intoxicated
my soul. And that despite my general aversion to Jazz vocalist!
