The Erteguns' New York Cabaret Music

[trane_fanatic]

http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:hvfixqlgldde

Saw this used recently. Impressive list of names (Billy Taylor, Eddie Condon, Mel Torme, Chris Connor & Carmen McRae to name a few on Atlantic, of course.) How is the music?

[Chuck Nessa]

Considering my impression of your listening habits, I would say "skip it".

[Larry Kart]

A piece I wrote about the set (from my book -- hey, eventually I'm going to post the whole damn thing here in dribs and drabs):

CABARET MUSIC

[1988]

We are, so it seems, in the midst of a modest but genuine revival of cabaret music--the always sophisticated, sometimes brash and campy style of entertainment that used to prevail in the smarter nightspots of New York, London, and Paris. Essentially an American phenomenon, cabaret music took shape in the mid-1930s. And it lasted until that indeterminate point in the late 1950s or early 1960s when the notion that there was such a thing as an aristocracy of taste, let alone a literal or figurative aristocracy to support it, finally began to seem out of date. In fact, the return of cabaret music, in the hands of such earnest young interpreters as singer-pianist Michael Feinstein, is based in large part on the music’s datedness. Able to evoke an era of elegance and romance that most of its current performers and fans were not around to experience firsthand, cabaret music now seems all the more attractive to some because we live in a world where such virtues are hard to come by.

But re-creations are one thing and the originals are another--which is why The Erteguns’s New York Cabaret Music, a boxed set recently released on the Atlantic label, is a cultural-historical event of considerable importance. Produced by Atlantic’s legendary chairman of the board, Ahmet Ertegun--who founded the label in 1947 and who has through the years, along with his older brother, Nesuhi, played a major role in shaping America’s taste in popular music--New York Cabaret Music preserves some of the best work of the acknowledged heroine and hero of the cabaret style, Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short. But because, as Ahmet Ertegun explains, “we recorded this music as it showed up,” the set also includes the work of a number of equally intriguing but now almost-forgotten performers--among them vocalists Greta Keller and Mae Barnes, singer-pianists Ted Straeter and Hugh Shannon, and keyboard virtuosos Cy Walter and Goldie Hawkins. And it is this sense of the total scene that makes New York Cabaret Music so vital--for this was a style of entertainment that was so intimately tied to the emotional and social makeup of its audience that neither side of the equation can be grasped unless one has a good sense of the other.

Encountered out of context, for instance, Mabel Mercer’s clipped, brittle singing can sound quite peculiar. Her “constant dignification of otherwise casual songs” (the apt phrase is composer Alec Wilder’s) erects a barrier of high-toned classiness between the listener and the music, until one begins to feel that exclusion, not communication, is the goal of Mercer’s art. But when the context of her work is sketched in, as it is by the rest of the performers who appear on New York Cabaret Music, it becomes clear that exclusion, but of a particular sort, is just what Mercer was communicating--an attitude toward popular music, and toward life in general, that only a certain group of “in the know” people was equipped to understand and share.

“In my youth,” recalls Ertegun, who was very much a part of that scene, “a grand evening was to have dinner at a restaurant like Café Chambord, then go to El Morocco to dance and then travel up to Harlem or down to Greenwich Village and hear somebody like Mae Barnes. Mae’s songs, I think, are among the most delightful things on the set.” Indeed they are--ten cheerfully uproarious, urgently swinging performances, marked by glimmers of impish wit, from a singer-dancer who got her start in the all-black revues of the 1920s and then, in the 1940s, became a fixture at a Greenwich Village club, the Bon Soir. A favorite of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Elsa Maxwell, Barnes might be described as a female Fats Waller. So exuberant that it could make the whole night seem like fun, Barnes’s music, like Waller’s, had a definite air of the put-on and the put-down to it--a rebellious impulse that was directed in part toward her smart, sophisticated audience but one with which that audience also was able to identify.

Singing Irving Berlin’s “(I Ain’t Gonna Be No) Topsy,” a parodistic protest against the typecasting of black performers, Barnes delivers the song with a corruscating glee that borders on genuine rage at times--as Barnes plays the stereotypes that the lyric says she wishes to leave behind against her own impishly knowing “hot momma” mannerisms. But at whom was Barnes aiming this little whirlwind of wink-and-nod attitudes? Not at her fans, it would seem, though most of them belonged to the social and financial power elite. And not at herself either. Instead the joke, which she and her audience were able to share, lay in the link she drew between the song’s sendup of racial servitude and her well-heeled, well-connected audience’s desire to do whatever it damn-well pleased (without, of course, violating the prevailing norms of good manners and good taste).

The link between Barnes’s ironic Harlem uproar and Mercer’s rigidly genteel restraint may seem tenuous at first, but it was, in fact, iron-clad. And its nature and strength can best be understood when one turns to yet another figure whose work is handsomely represented on New York Cabaret Music, singer-pianist Ted Straeter. Hired entertainers of black or racially mixed ethnic origins, Barnes and Mercer were, in several senses of the term, members of what used to be called “the servant class” or “the help.” But Mercer’s art depended on that role and her ability to transform it--for as she assumed a stance of such hauteur that she could look down upon anyone, she provided her admirers with an image of aristocracy that was, at once, more genuine than the bloodlines of the social register but not, in its fundamental gentility, at war with it.

Straeter was a hired entertainer, too--the leader of a celebrated society band of the era—but he doesn’t seem like one at all. “Ted was a bit of a dandy,” Ertegun recalls, “a very urbane gentleman who was always very well-dressed. More than anybody, he typifies the elegant music that prevailed between the first and second world wars.” That estimate is confirmed by Straeter’s casual, sandy-voiced singing and his graceful yet seemingly artless piano work--which together create the feeling that he is part of the audience he has been paid to amuse and has agreed to perform only in order to amuse himself. Real or illusory, Straeter’s status as a gentleman--that is, a member of the class that doesn’t need to work--is evident in everything he sings and plays. And it emerges with particular force on his version of Cole Porter’s “All of You,” where he interprets Porter’s obliquely erotic lyric with an innocent leer that couldn’t be more unlike the earthy passion that marks Frank Sinatra’s famous recording of the song.

There are a great many more pleasures to be found on New York Cabaret Music--some of the finest recordings made by Mercer, Short, and Sylvia Syms (whose version of “Tea for Two,” based on a solo by tenor saxophonist Lester Young, swings like crazy); Greta Keller’s medley of songs from Kurt Weill’s and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, sung in the original German with an emotional insight that rivals the work of Lotte Lenya; the harmonic subtleties and ravishing technique of pianist Cy Walter; the almost delirious good cheer of another, very different pianist, Goldie Hawkins; the brisk, laidback perfection with which Joe Mooney handles “The Kid’s a Dreamer”; and a slow-motion Chris Connor recording of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Something To Live For” that sounds as though Connor had just flung herself from the balcony of the penthouse that figures in Cole Porter’s “Down In the Depths On the 90th Floor” (which Syms sings to perfection earlier on in the set). But as remarkable as these and a number of other performances are, the overriding fascination of New York Cabaret Music lies in its ability to reveal the nature of the lost world that these artists inhabited, a world whose anxious, fragile codes of sophistication they did so much to define.

“I have always had an interest in what a lot of people call ‘good music,’” says Ahmet Ertegun, “as opposed to…well, I think that the music that’s being made today is great, but there’s always a segment of the population, the older generation, that feels its music has somehow been usurped, that the new music has wiped out what they love.

“Now that’s not true. Musical tastes inevitably change as history goes on. Things don’t remain static; they evolve. And no music remains popular. But after its popularity is gone, the music that has been made still remains. And while the music of the cabaret era must be understood in order for it to be appreciated, that music still is, I believe, very beautiful.”

[marcello]

I don't know why Mel Torme and Eddie Condon are included in the set, but I assume that Atlantic didn't record say, Bart Howard or Jane Harvey.

Wonderful review, Larry.

[paul secor]

Just an opinion:

Reading Larry's review makes this stuff seem interesting. And years ago, when I read Whitney Balliett's essays on cabaret singers, it seemed even more interesting. (I"ve always felt that Mr. Balliett would have been a great success in the advertising world had he chosen that as an endeavor.) Hearing the music, however, has been a different story. I've never felt a connection between it and any part of my life, and I have no desire to spend any part of what's left of my life listening to it.

ymmv.

[Christiern]

I ordered it, but mainly for the Mae Barnes tracks—she was always a pleasure to listen to. She also had some great stories to tell, and she was married to Leroy Walker, brother of Bessie Smith's niece, Ruby (who was said to have written "Jailhouse Blues.")

From "Bessie":

In an interview for this book, dancer/singer Mae Barnes, who married Leroy Walker shortly after his release from jail, could not confirm that her husband had written “Jail House Blues,” but she acknowledged it as a possibility, adding that Bessie had indeed facilitated his release.

Ruby’s brother had obviously not learned his lesson, for soon after his release and marriage to Mae Barnes, he took on a business partner and embarked on a new career as a drug dealer. The drug partnership lasted only a short while, then came to an abrupt, dramatic end when Leroy learned that Mae had become romantic involved with his partner. The news sent him rushing off to his partner’s apartment at 129th Street and Eighth Avenue, where he was greeted there by his own wife. Enraged, he pushed her aside and barged into the apartment. He found his partner having dinner at the kitchen table, took aim and killed him with one well-directed shot. Mae fled the house, screaming hysterically, attracting the cop on the beat. “I couldn’t even talk,” she recalled, “because I was a wreck, so I just pointed to my house.” When the policeman got there, Leroy was no longer in the apartment, but he had not been seen leaving the house, so the police officer headed for the roof, where he found him and shot him dead.

The policeman, a West Indian who had been assigned to the neighborhood beat for a few years, was no stranger to Leroy. He was known to be on the take and to have benefited from Leroy’s drug dealings. The two had a history of business-related run-ins, which may account for the swift justice carried out on the rooftop. “I think he did that so my brother wouldn’t blab on him,” said Ruby, and Ms. Barnes concurred, unable to think of another reason why her husband was killed rather than taken in.

Just thought I'd throw that in here.

[Larry Kart]

Just an opinion:

Hearing the music, however, has been a different story. I've never felt a connection between it and any part of my life, and I have no desire to spend any part of what's left of my life listening to it.

ymmv.

Many eminently reasonable people feel that way, and I can see why.

[mjzee]

Larry, thank you so much for printing that wonderful piece. As a review of the box, it was pitch perfect, and I always admire good writing. I've owned the LP for many years, and have always approached it as a historical document, almost like an aural history book in music. It transports me to a world that existed before I was born, and wouldn't have had entree to even if I had been around then. Some of the stuff swings like mad, my favorite being Mae Barnes' "On The Sunny Side of the Street." ("On the side street that's sunny!" I love her phrasing.) But the things I find alien, like the Mabel Mercer or Ted Straeter, I like because it's alien - there's much to ponder. Your article made that world a little more understandable.

[Larry Kart]

Your article made that world a little more understandable.

Thanks. I enjoyed that set for reasons akin to yours and also enjoyed talking to Ahmet Ertegun back then. He definitely had an aura about him.

[Christiern]

Larry Kart: "Thanks. I enjoyed that set for reasons akin to yours and also enjoyed talking to Ahmet Ertegun back then. He definitely had an aura about him."

That would be Balm Vitale by Oscar De La Renta.

[Larry Kart]

Larry Kart: "Thanks. I enjoyed that set for reasons akin to yours and also enjoyed talking to Ahmet Ertegun back then. He definitely had an aura about him."

That would be Balm Vitale by Oscar De La Renta.

Unfortunately, we talked over the phone.

[Christiern]

Don't underestimate the power of fiber optics, Larry, but—having had in-person conversations with Ahmet—he did impress with his enthusiasm for the music, his candor, and general persona, and I guess one could call that an aura. Nesuhi had a somewhat warmer personality, but both were comfortable to be around.

Thanks for the piece, it is as good as I expect from you—and I might add that my high expectations were also met by Jazz in Search of Itself.

Did you ever meet Mayo Williams?