shannon butcher sings

Standard #26 - Why Don't You Do Right?

Every once and a while I have an audience member suggest tunes that I should learn.  I think it's wonderful that people care about songs so much that they want to share them with me.  It gives me a nice feeling of community.

Last month after singing at the Dovercourt Swing Dance I had a dedicated swing dancer, Cedric, introduce me to a tune that's all the rage with the dancers these days -  Why Don't You Do Right?  Cedric even took the time to visit my website and email me me an mp3.  See what I mean by dedicated?  How could I not learn this song?

Now Cedric told me he thought the recording he sent was either Peggy Lee or Amy Irving?  Cedric, if you're reading this, Amy Irving? 

The woman who used to be married to Steven Spielberg? 

Funny, I don't remember Hadass doing any of the singing in Yentl...

But wait....Why Don't You Do Right? was sung by Jessica Rabbit in the classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit.   I thought Kathleen Turner was the voice of Jessica - but as a matter of fact good ol' Amy was Jessica's singing voice!  I guess Jessica was too much for one woman - just like Maria needed both Natalie Wood and Marni Nixon in West Side Story.

Thanks for the song Cedric!  I will try my best to bring out my inner Jessica Rabbit next time I sing it.

Standard #24 - Bésame Mucho - Congratulations Natalie and Tim!

My beautiful friend Natalie and my husband's buddy Tim were married on September 8th.

Natalie and Tim requested that my lifelong friend Danielle and I play some music during the signing of their registry at their wedding ceremony.  They didn't have a particular song in mind - just something that felt appropriate for their relationship.  Danielle and I were lucky enough to have been on vacation in Cuba with Nat and Tim when he popped the big question so of course a little Latin number seemed right on the money. 

Down in Cuba there are numerous talented musicians who play the resorts during dinner and for the cigar lounge crowd.  Not surprisingly they have their own standard tunes.  Since Bésame Mucho is such a well known song I'm sure we heard at least five versions while we were there in Cayo Coco.  Could there be a more perfect choice for Natalie and Tim's wedding song?  Fortunately, Danielle has become fluent in Spanish over the past five years and she was able to help me with my pronunciation.  (Otherwise I'm sure I would have given Amanda Martinez a call.)  For my part, I tweaked the English translation to make it a bit more wedding appropriate:

The Beatles English version:
Oh so dearest one, if you should leave me,
Then each little dream will take wings
And my life would be through.
 
Our English version:
Dearest one, now that you're near me
each little dream will take wings
and my life is a-new

I thought the change was needed. I didn't really want to focus on the "til death do us part" of their marriage vows before they had even been announced as husband and wife.

Congratulations Natalie and Tim!!

Standard #21, 22 & 23 - My, My, My

The past few weeks at gigs and rehearsals I've had some "My" songs called that I just didn't quite know.  "Hey, do you know My ....?"  "Hey, let's play My ......  You know if right?"  Sadly, I had to be Lil' Miss. Shutterdown on those calls because although partial melodies were there, the words escaped me. And being the singer, I'm all about the words.  Only 32 bars of text!  Four lines of poetry!  I should be able to commit those to memory right?  Well, this week My Foolish Heart, My Romance and My Shining Hour...are mine. Ah ha ha ha! Ah ha ha ha! All mine!!! (Note to reader:  The previous phrases should had been read with evil cackle inflections. Thank you.)

Us singers are so self involved aren't we?  Always wanting to sing about ourselves or things we own.  "Let me tell you a story about me!"  Checking out the "My" songs in the alpha listing of tunes in my fakebooks is second only to the "I" songs - which I think further proves my point.  I suppose most composers are just following the old adage to write about what you know and they know themselves really well.

My Foolish Heart was written in 1949 by Victor Young and Ned Washington for a movie by the same title.  These men penned an impressive list of standards between the two of them - Ned is responsible for the lyrics of The Nearness of You, Victor, the music for When I Fall in Love and Stella By Starlight.  Amazing how their work has stood the test of time.  Of course their work wasn't always appreciated in its day.   Check out the following review of My Foolish Heart: "nothing offsets the blight of such tear-splashed excesses as the bloop-bleep-bloop of a sentimental ballad on the sound track."  Obviously the general public disagreed with that reviewer as My Foolish Heart was nominated for an Oscar and has been recorded by every great jazz singer over the past sixty years.

My Romance by Rodgers and Hart was written for the 1935 musical Jumbo.  I can only guess on the plot of that piece of theatre.  I wonder if it has anything to do with Jumbo the Elephant who died tragically saving a smaller elephant, Tom Thumb, from being hit by a locomotive in St. Thomas, ON?  St. Thomas just happens to be my in-laws hometown.  I remember visiting the statue when first meeting my husband's family.  (Don't worry my husband isn't really that morbid, there just aren't that many "sites" to take your girl to in St. Thomas.)

Of the three songs My Shining Hour is the least well known to me.  Internet research has informed that the song was written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the 1943 Fred Astaire film The Sky's the Limit.  (Lots of song writing teams on the 'My" songs....curious...)  The song became the movie's signature theme, albeit at the time it was meant to be more of wartime hymn then the lilting theme it often masks as these days.  Funny how interpretation morphs through time.  John Mueller claims in his book Astaire Dancing - The Musical Films that the song's title, and opening line: "This will be my shining hour", is a reference to Winston Churchill's famous rallying call to British citizens during the war: "This will be our finest hour".  How I would have loved to have seen Winston drop by the old Birdland and crooned out this tune.  That would have been something.

Standard #19 - A Foggy Day

For the past couple of days I've been helping my parents make a clean sweep of their garage.  It's a huge job which involves some discarding of past treasures and memorabilia.  I knew we'd come upon some of my own keepsakes and such but until we hit the second storage wall today, little did I realize how many boxes I'd been keeping with the parents.  Five, no maybe it was seven rubbermaid containers!  Scripts from plays I performed in, XL t-shirts from high school shows, music boxes, letters from old pen pals, my grade 7 Language Arts book.  The list goes on.  See, with the Toronto apartment situation, I don't have storage space and so it was easy to forget about all of those things from my childhood room that I just couldn't part with when the boxes that contain said trinkets were tucked away in Mississauga. Out of sight, out of mind as they say.  But one day, and that day may be soon when my parents want to, oh, I don't know, park their car in the garage, those boxes will be moving to my place.  What's a girl in a two bedroom apartment with no storage unit to do?  Well, she's gotta part with some stuff.

I decided that first I'd review the contents of the two boxes that are currently taking up room in my closet in the hopes that I could consolidate them into one.  In box A I discovered two large manila envelopes full of pamphlets, ticket stubs, maps and postcards from my trip to Europe...thus my inspiration to learn A Foggy Day (in London town)  Although, if I remember correctly since I visited London in late August/early September my days were never foggy but they were still in London town.

Previous to my journey down memory lane this song was already on my mind as it seemed to pop up at every open mic.  I heard it performed two weeks ago at Girls Night Out and then last week at the Courthouse Singer's Night Out.  To be honest, when songs are on everyone else's song list I don't get too excited about adding them to my own but you never know when you might get a request so I thought it would be worth learning.  Plus I don't know too many Gershwin songs and A Foggy Day tells a charming story and has a cute little verse.  Us singers can always use a good verse.

Okay, no more time for blogging.  Must get back to the boxes.

Standard #1 - Cherokee

Week one of January and the first standard tune is on my piano stand.  I've chosen Cherokee by Ray Noble because, well, I like learning fast songs and this song is usually played super fast, I mean break neck speed.  Of course it's a little mean of a singer to bring out this tune because the melody is basically at half time so if I'm singing fast that means Ross and Stu are going to be at hyperspeed. Ha! Come on, you know they can handle it.
Clifford Brown's version of this tune has been on repeat in my iPod for the past few days but I think most people would say that Cherokee is Charlie Parker's song.  If I could lift Clifford's solo and perform it note for note I would feel like such a super jazz kid!  It was something I would have done in school if I had studied jazz at U of T, not classical music.   I'm sure Mike Murley's students get assignments like that all the time - take this genius' work apart and find out what he was doing why he was doing it.  Why did he make those choices at that very moment?  That's got to help you make your own choices somewhere along the line.
I've done a bit of internet surfing on Cherokee and found some neat articles - including one that claims Charlie Parker loved this song because it was a "tribute of sorts to Native America"  I think extra emphasis must be added to the modifier "of sorts" because the song was written by a white British guy and first made famous by Charlie Barnet and his politically incorrect album cover. 

Is it the fact that he's wearing a suit with a tie that makes this more offensive to me than Felipe the YMCA guy?

I'm going to do my best to block out both of these images while I'm stage this weekend and focus on my lightning fast notes.