After my foray a fortnight ago into machine music, it’s time for some human voices. Here are four singular singers at their finest…
West Side Story is the king of the musicals, and nobody has sung Somewhere, the ne plus ultra of doomed-romantic light arias, better than gravelly old bugger Tom Waits, who used it to open the 1978 Blue Valentine album. This particular fan video includes some nice black and white photos of… Southampton.
Talking of unexpected covers that work, here’s Thin White Duke-era David Bowie’s version of Wild is the Wind. It closes Station to Station, which I reckon is one of his strongest albums (probably top three along with Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory), you can just leave it playing over and over – Golden Years, Word on a Wing… its so easy to groove to….
Talking of Golden Years, Lucinda Williams may have been nudging into hers in rock goddess terms by the time she released the mighty Righteously in 2003 (at the age of 50) but what a voice… pure filth. As veteran DJ Johnnie Walker once memorably put it, she’s got a voice that could melt the wax in your ears…
That was one for the lads, now check out this 1968 performance of Treat Her Right by ladykiller’s ladykiller Tom Jones – he goes utterly ballistic at 1 min 18s, pulling out an unstoppable sex machine of a dance routine. Go go go!
I often think Tom’s CV should’ve taken a different route,
Chills & Fever
What I’d Say?
I can imagine that in the Hope & Anchor.
What am I playing at? I should be taking advantage of the weather – double-digging down the allotment, but here I am listening to Waits pretending he’s Lee Marvin, or was it the other way round? (I wonder what Bernstein and Sondheim made of this? Probably loved it). But the stand-out here, at least for me, is Lucinda Williams. What a performance! What lyrics! Bugger the double-digging, I’m already exhausted.
Another Sunday treat…
Standing alongside you as you fibrillate john. lucinda in there with Chrissie and Dusty, can you imagine (no don’t) that line up, it’s one AM, the lights are low, the Jack Daniels is flowing, that glance across across a crowded room, the taxi, fumbling for the door key…..and you’re the son of a preacher man
Had a girlfriend once who had the hots for Dusty, her and me both.
Yes, Malty, Dusty was special. I remember when she was one-third of the Springfields, and wondered if the remaining two-thirds had any point whatsoever. Thankfully, they quickly stepped aside and allowed a great talent to flourish. She’d be 72 now; hard to believe.
Remember taking my mum to see Tom J around this time, at the Coventry Hippodrome and seeing the knicker-throwing first hand. Not surprising that he and his missus decided on an ‘open’ marriage. Amazing that he had enough energy left for singing – and what a voice. Put Elvis in the shade surely?
With you too on Tom W – but let’s not forget PJ and Bill Medley’s version of the same great song.
And as for Lucinda W – well, it was time I changed the battery in my pacemaker anyway….
Wow! to Tom Waits’ voice and those soulful street shots of Southampton… and to Tom Snakehips Jones. Here’s another curiously singular voice.