Old Fogey’s Favourites

Without doubt the finest version of this Bob Dylan song ever. It’s by Irish singer Sinead Lohan. There is a YouTube video here of her performance, if you prefer.

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Wednesday evenings see me down the British Legion Club in Ilford for a jazz workshop with several other old fogies, all pretending we can play. Like most jazz players we are a pretty ill-disciplined bunch. It can take an age to settle on what number to play, whose choice it is and the order of solos. When frustration starts to set in with me (my tolerance level is lower than the others) I shout for this number - ‘I Can’t Get Started’ - in the hope that the others will get the irony and stir into action. Doesn’t always work.

We play in a vacant room at the back of the club, out of harm’s way. But a few Legion regulars come in and bring their drinks with them. Not so much, I think, for the music, but to witness the amusing real life spectacle of us getting on each other’s nerves.

Anyway, here’s the best version, by Bunny Berigan. He was a beautiful trumpet player. His heyday was in the 1930s - but his day didn’t last long. He was dead at 34. He was almost the equal of Armstrong in tone and invention - more tender too. He also could sing, which he does here, in an engaging offhand manner. When he plays the melody again at the end, in the higher register, it is spine tingling. Recorded in April 1936.

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Eight years ago, 8 October 2001, I was at a concert given by the mezzo-soprano Alice Coote and the pianist Julius Drake at Wigmore Hall, London. She was just starting out on her career then, as one of the BBC’s sponsored Young Artists. I’m not up to speed on where she lies in the current firmament of classical sopranos, but in a recent recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, with Mark Elder and the Halle Orchestra, she’s a radiant Angel.

Schumann’s Meine Rose is one of the most popular encores for sopranos, and Alice Coote sang it at the end of her recital. The recital was broadcast by the BBC and this is from my recording of it then. I’ve left in the applause and the announcer’s voice over at the end.

‘At your feet, I would like, to you as to a flower, silently pour out my soul, though I do not see your blossoming joy.’

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For the last twenty years of his life, the years of his superstardom, it became difficult to see much beyond the the rather grotesque, larger than life notoriety of Luciano Pavarotti. ‘Nessun Dorma’ fixed his fame in the wider public’s mind. It became hard to do justice to his real talent. His gargantuan size made him seem ridiculous. Opera fans began to disdain him in direct proportion to the growth of his world wide fame.

Pavarotti, for me, was simply the greatest tenor voice of the twentieth century. Others may have had greater dramatic talent - Jon Vickers, Placido Domingo to name two. But few, I think, had Pavarotti’s delicacy, and none his voice.

I’m not sure that it was in the big arias of Verdi or Puccini - ‘Nessun Dorma’ the most widely associated with him - suited him naturally - though his ‘Che gelida manina’ would rightly bring the house down. He was at his best, in my view, in the gentler, more reflective and wistful music of Bellini and Donizetti - the bel canto repertoire in vogue before Verdi’s dramatic revolution.

Here he is singing ‘A te, O cara’ - ‘You, beloved’ - from Bellini’s ‘I Puritani’. Nicolai Ghiaurov and Giancario Luccardi join in, with La Stupenda - Joan Sutherland - mooning about up top.

At his best.

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This is from 1986 - from country singer Lyle Lovett. He was famous later for being one of fim star Julia Roberts’ temporary husbands. It’s a man’s song, for which no apologies. I must admit I don’t get all the words and some of the verses of this song don’t seem to bear much relation to the chorus - perhaps it’s just the culture difference which makes them opaque to me. But others do, and carry a lot of meaning, about self delusion, romantic dreams and the conflict of hopes and dreams with down to earth reality. And speaking your mind - which, being English and steeped in reticence,  I find very hard.

‘If I were the man you wanted, I would not be man that I am.’

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