Ella Fitzgerald: "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" / The Flowers: "Ballad of Miss Demeanour"

29 May 1980 (with more on the next page which may be found here)

"Puts you in the mood for slushy romantic '50s films on a Sunday afternoon complete with Clark Gable/Betty Grable (according to gender) and a box of chocolates."

"Clever, quirky, and compelling."

— Deanne Pearson

There's some confusion with this fortnight's singles. Deanne Pearson has two picks earmarked for 'Record of the Week' but has them categorized differently. Ella Fitzgerald's rendition of the Cole Porter classic "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" is her 'Personal record of the week' while "Ball of Miss Demeanour" by new wave act The Flowers is her 'Record of the week'. I initially had the latter penciled in as the subject of this post because of the more definitive title but I reconsidered the matter when I thought about which one would have been her favourite. If anything, it's probably more likely that her personal choice is the one she prefers. It's impossible to say either way so I've made them co-SOTF.

Ella Fitzgerald's recording of "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" was already twenty-three years old by the time Pearson had recommended it in Smash Hits. She was signed to the Verve label at the time and was riding a wave of success following several top notch albums. In 1956, she recorded Ella Fitzegerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook with a young arranger and conductor by the name of Buddy Bregman. While he would only work with the Great Lady of Song on one additional Songbook (that of the great duo of Rodgers and Hart), she would cut six additional LPs — many of them two record sets — of material of composers from the golden age of American songwriting. These collections are excellent but the quality of them is so high that it can be tricky for individual tracks to stick out. Is "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" any better than, say, "Love for Sale" or "Begin the Beguine"? Nope. All thirty-two songs from the Porter Songbook are great but too much of a good thing etc., etc.

On its own in single form, however, "Ev'ry Time..." is stunning. Fitzgerald sings it as only she could: her voice sounds like no one in the history of recorded music yet she wasn't the least bit flashy with it and takes command of a song without overwhelming it. No one has ever been able to make her voice wobble like she could: a technical deficiency that was one of her strengths. Cole Porter had been at his peak as a songwriter in the thirties and his material would have been familiar to Fitzgerald but it's for the best that she didn't tackle his stuff until twenty years later. Her voice was never better than when she was in her forties and the quality of the Norman Granz-produced recordings for Verve in Hollywood are immaculate. The LP era coincided with the rise of the modern American recording studio. (Oddly, older jazz artists such as Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington adapted to the medium of the long playing album better than younger acts like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker)

Pearson's 'Record of the week' (doesn't she know that ver Hits is a fortnightly mag?) couldn't be more different from her 'Personal' pick, the former not even being in the same league as the latter and how could it be? Porter's composition is a classic and was good enough that even Simply Red's version from 1987 isn't bad. The Flowers had something fresh (Pearson states that the "new wave of pop is headed by bands such as these and The Teardrop Explodes"; one wonders if the Scottish punk-funk-popsters had hit singles in them like their Merseyside contemporaries — they also toured with the likes of The Human League and OMD so they were certainly adjacent to success) but it now sounds far too much like a post-punk period piece, in some ways older than Ella taking on the Great American Songbook. No one would have heard a jazz vocalist in 1956 and thought "damn, this is the future!" but there almost certainly were people listening to "Ballad of Miss Demeanour" thinking those very thoughts. Pearson is one of them.

I've been doing this blog for long enough that the romance of the post-punk/new wave era has completely warn off. The Flowers (not to be confused with the Australian band of the saand would later become Icehouse) possess many of those traits that ought to have made them seem dated more than forty years later: HI-Ray (aka Hilary Morrison) has those manically robotic vocals that bring to mind Lene Lovich, The Slits and Gary Numan, the bass is ultra sparse, the guitars spidery and they all come together wrapped in a cheap, echoey production. Yet, it's a better composition than many of the tackier tunes I've sifted through over the last three years. It doesn't necessarily suggest a promising future (in spite of what I wrote above) only that this Edinburgh foursome must put on an awfully good gig so go out and see 'em dammit!

Two vastly different records from May of 1980. One was already nearing its quarter century, the other freshly pressed in some dingy Edinburgh shop. One was a standard, the other would stand alone. Today, one of them is a relic from a distant past while the other has since been brought back to life by Lady Gaga. One is timeless, the other very much of its time. The rock era carbon dates many of the genres and artists who have come up through it; the Great American Songbook just keeps carrying on.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Fleetwood Mac: "Think About Me"

Considered by Pearson to be the nadir of ver Mac, even if she acknowledges that the musicianship and vocals are both "quality". She's put off by the song being a filler and I guess that's fair enough though I'd argue that it's just one of many examples of Christine McVie being their strongest songwriter. It is sturdier than your average Lindsey Buckingham composition (though like "Don't Stop" it demonstrates that she was very good at crafting tunes that could easily have been written by his nibs) and has more musical meat on its bones than those flowery Stevie Nicks numbers. That said, "Think About Me" is one of twenty absolutely superb tracks that make up their true masterpiece Tusk and I can understand it slipping through the cracks or getting ignored. Granted, the remixed single version smooths things out a little too much but this isn't pop-rock you should be thumbing your nose at.