Songbirds

Here’s some new music I’ve been listening to over the past few months. It’s new only to me—none of it was recorded any later than the 1960s.

Tina Turner was in the thick of her “comeback” career phase when I was coming of age, but her songs from that era don’t strike me as having anything other than nostalgic value (“What’s Love Got to Do with It?” and “Private Dancer” are so 1980s). Then there was her role in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. All that was enough to lead me to ignore her music. Until now. For some reason, I recently recalled hearing (and enjoying) her version of “Proud Mary” when I was a teenager. I began to wonder what the rest of her early work was like. So I turned to iTunes and downloaded a few tracks (despite the fact that it makes me feel like a sucker every time). The first was “Proud Mary,” which cooks. I also got “River Deep, Mountain High” and “I Want to Take You Higher,” which compare favorably to “Proud Mary.” The superfunky “Sexy Ida, Pt. 1” was fun, but the strongest track I got was “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” This song shows just how powerfully she can sing. It’s a bluesy number, and the way she sings it, you know she’ll do anything to keep her man. The best part is the closing bars: Turner and the band get really quiet, only to raise the volume back up to full blast, as Tina sings, “sock it to me, SOCK IT TO ME, SOCK IT TO ME!”

Helen Merrill’s eponymous album came my way as a present last Christmas. I had heard good things about her as a singer, but my main interest in that record was the fact that it featured one of my favorite trumpet players, Clifford Brown. Merrill’s voice just knocked me out, though. It has a hint of whispery raspiness, but not at the expense of strength and control, and she gives so much attention to every word she sings. I don’t know what the recording conditions were, but it sounds like she’s singing right into your ear, especially if you play it through an iPod’s earbuds. You can often hear her lips parting, or her mouth taking in breath. All of the songs are ballads or mid-tempo, except for the closing “’s Wonderful,” so it’s a nice, relaxing listen. All the tracks are gems, but my favorites are probably “What’s New” and “Falling in Love with Love.”

I first heard about Nina Simone in the Bridget Fonda flick, Point of No Return, in which Fonda’s character keeps asking her handlers for some of Simone’s music. That movie was pretty forgettable, which I guess is why I was always reluctant to try out Simone’s music. Big mistake. I recently picked up a copy of a live album, At the Village Gate. She plays piano and sings. I have no idea what her merits are as a pianist, but her voice is unmistakable. It’s deep—maybe a low alto. Her tone would work well for a blues singer, and I hear a dimension of that music in her singing, but she has the ability to do more than holler out the blues. Listen to “Brown Baby,” and you’ll see what I mean. She also does a version of “House of the Rising Sun” that bears hardly any resemblance to the versions you’ve heard from Bob Dylan or the Animals. She closes the set with a couple gospel numbers: “If He Changed My Name” and “Children Go Where I Send You.” Those tracks alone are worth the price of the album.