4 minutes ago, Eeveelution said:

No Big Long Slidin' Thing?

 

I guess this is a classy party. A touch of innuendo welcome, overtly sexual bops prohibited!

 

Edited August 13, 20251 yr by Achilles.

Just now, Graves said:

What was @Truth Teller's?

I'm not sure, on the list of @Truth Teller's HMs, under "Dinah Washington" there was just this:

 

 

 

NANCY WILSON

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

 

"More"

The 1962 Italian film Mondo Cane is an example of a mondo documentary film, a subgenre veering into the exploitative with a focus on depicting sensational topics, scenes, or situations. Commonly, these films include… problematic, shall we say, portrayals of foreign cultures and other favourite topics include death and sex. Mondo Cane is a travelogue providing glimpses into cultural practices around the world, such as the production methods behind foie gras in Strasbourg, France, the sale of exotic animals for food at a market in Hong Kong, and the revenge kill of sharks in Malaysia after a 12-year-old boy is killed in a shark attack.

 

Now, why am I telling you this? Because, for some reason, that film featured a Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated original song entitled "More" as its theme music. The song went on to be recorded by a wide variety of artists such as Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra, but it is Nancy's version on her 1965 album Gentle is My Love that I find myself most drawn to. Everything one expects and wants from a Nancy album (lush, romantic, airy), William Ruhlmann of AllMusic described the album as "a collection of romantic ballads that Wilson addresses with her characteristic emotionalism and precision." And I don't think any song on there exemplifies this quite as much as "More" does.

 

 

@Achilles.

 

"Easy"

Quote

"Easy" is NOT the titular track of her 1968 album of the same name—it came a full decade later when she was celebrating her 25th anniversary in show business. Its parent album, Music on My Mind, was noted and well-received for seamlessly blending her traditional jazz past with the gloss and grooves of contemporary R&B/soul, and I think this song really exemplifies that. It's just such a huge bop that proves there's no such thing as being past your prime, so long as you have the talent, skill, ambition to adapt and stay fresh while remaining true to yourself. That hook "things that come easy to you don't come easy to me" is constantly in my head. This isn't a standard but it should have been.

 

"For Once in My Life"

Quote

Apparently this is more of a Motown standard than a jazz standard, with its most famous rendition recorded by Stevie Wonder a few years after Nancy recorded this. Such a beautiful ballad, and gods her vocals are just bursting with emotion and sincerity.

 

"Guess Who I Saw Today"

Quote

"Guess Who I Saw Today" is one of Nancy Wilson's signature songs, and one of my favorites from her. The song finds a woman gradually revealing to her husband that she saw him on a date with his mistress, and the way the story unfolds is just brilliant. A great piece of writing. And this has got to be one of Nancy's most masterful vocal performances. So disarming with the first few spoken lines, when she's trying not to let on to her husband about what she saw. So careful as her tale progresses, like she really is just casually telling a story that she doesn't want her husband to realize is about him. And then she hits the jackpot with that final line, an accusation loaded with betrayal and heartbreak. Julie's rendition also works well in a quite different way, with her vocal performance giving disaffected housewife who has long known about her husband's infidelity and is just putting him on notice that he's slipping and being too indiscreet about his indiscretions.

 

"If Ever I Would Leave You"

Quote

This originated in the stage play Camelot, where a man opens act ii singing it to Guenevere; Julie Andrews originated that role on Broadway, which means some lucky bastard got to serenade her with this countless times. I just find this so beautiful and romantic as it goes from season to season describing how the singer is so endlessly devoted to their lover that they could never stand to be parted.

 

"Night Mist"

Quote

Beautiful performance of a song about being ensnared by the charms of someone "strange" and "unassuring" and yet so endlessly captivating that you "never will be free." Its piano-led arrangement really does invoke the feeling of a foggy evening, and I love the word play of "night mist" and "mystic way" in the first verse.

 

"People Will Say We're in Love"

Quote

We love a good trope. This one is serving friends to lovers in denial about their changing feelings trying to keep it all under wraps. It's always fun when heterosexuals try to do a forbidden romance thing. Like… forbidden why? By who? You just made that up. Peggy's performance is just a quick lil 90 second thing from some radio show or something; it's fine for what it is. Ella's rendition is lovely, but Nancy's performance and arrangement have a sense of urgency to them that I think suits the material.

 

"Teach Me Tonight"

Quote

Don't you just love a good old-fashioned student-teacher role play? The ladies of this rate clearly did, given that more than half recorded this classic bop that's bursting with innuendo. Dinah has the definitive performance of this song, inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and everything, and it's easy to see why given how masterfully she captures a performative naivety that really suits the song's conceit. But I love Nancy's rendition just as much for how romantically seductive she makes it. Peggy has a very distinct arrangement and vocal delivery that makes her rendition notable.

 

"Time After Time"

Quote

Oh, don't end Cyndi Lauper like that! This song was written for Frank Sinatra to introduce in some film, but apparently Sarah actually got her foot in the door early and recorded the song a year before the film's release! That rendition doesn't seem to be on streaming though (just youtube), but she's got a great live performance available. Every rendition is excellent, but I might give the edge to Nancy as I find her performance the most moving and her arrangement the prettiest.

 

Nancy winning the honorable mention rate because she had the biggest snub of anyone here. 
 

And that's the last of the HMs!

 

The Spotify playlist has been updated with all of them:

 

1 minute ago, Achilles. said:

Nancy winning the honorable mention rate because she had the biggest snub of anyone here. 
 

Blue Skies and Guess Who... should absolutely have been here on reflection

 

But alas...

4 minutes ago, conatus said:

And that's the last of the HMs!

Sneak in the Ella and Peggy versions of I Could Write A Book please.

Just now, Achilles. said:

Sneak in the Ella and Peggy versions of I Could Write A Book please.

Remind me when this update's done, my laptop is screaming enough as it is rn

 

#30. "I'm a Woman"

"Get all dressed up, go out and swing till 4 a.m. and then

Lay down at 5, jump up at 6, and start all over again…"

Average: 7.789393939

Highest score: 10 (@Achilles., @Curaga, @Meloetta Carey, @Penk)

Lowest score: 3 (@Luigi)

 

Bluesy and bumping, "I'm a Woman," written by the famous duo of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, is a bold and sassy little number in which Peggy effortlessly outlines how she can not only care for herself, but the man in her life too. As Paul Sexton summarises in his retrospective review of the song for uDiscoverMusic, "Peggy Lee wasn't the first to record "I'm a Woman," but when she did, she owned it entirely."

 

Christine Kittrell's original recording, released only a few months prior to Peggy's, was notably even brassier and more soulful, but when that version failed to make any impact on the charts, Capitol Records turned to Peggy to put her own spin on it and the rest is history. In fact, Capitol actually had so much faith in Peggy's version that they specifically referred to it in trade advertising as "Another "Fever"!" The more you know!

 

What the GP had to say:

 

@Achilles.

Quote

Feminist songwriting really peaked at the start of the second wave I fear; the current generation's lame corporatized girl power bops just can't touch the classics. Much like Big Spender, this has so much attitude to it and its production still feels so fresh.

@Armani.

Quote

Wait, I hear something

@Curaga

Quote

Oh, this classic...

@Vixen Eyes

Quote

in general, i dont like songs like this. feeding into a gender role/stereotype regardless of when it was recorded. on another note, i thought she was gonna say "im gonna give you the shits"

 

@Meloetta Carey

Quote

this was made for a drag queen to lip-sync

I feel like ms Nancy is (was) the nicest lady here. Her beautiful, smooth, effortless vocals, her sweet lyrics and her overall demeanor paint a picture of just a simple, talented gal minding her own business.

 

1 minute ago, Truth Teller said:

I feel like ms Nancy is (was) the nicest lady here. Her beautiful, smooth, effortless vocals, her sweet lyrics and her overall demeanor paint a picture of just a simple, talented gal minding her own business.

 

Ahhh my unproblematic fave

 

4 minutes ago, conatus said:

 

#30. "I'm a Woman"

"Get all dressed up, go out and swing till 4 a.m. and then

Lay down at 5, jump up at 6, and start all over again…"

Average: 7.789393939

Highest score: 10 (@Achilles., @Curaga, @Meloetta Carey, @Penk)

Lowest score: 3 (@Luigi)

 

 

 

 

This is such a classy bop. Peggy may not have had the lung power and skill of the non-caucasian ladies but she knew how to turn in a luxurious, unbothered, cvnty little ditty. This, Big Spender and Get Me Some Money Too

Maybe if it was 'I'm A They/Them' it would have placed higher.

 

Edited August 13, 20251 yr by Antisocialites

Damn, where is everyone? Is Peggy Lee ratings poison?

 

Do we need to eliminate someone else's song?

 

Love to see Peggy lashings

 

 

#29. "I'll Be Seeing You"

"In everything that's light and gay

I'll always think of you that way…"

Average: 7.789393939

Highest score: 10 (@Achilles., @HarajukuPrincess, @Penk, @Reverie)

Lowest score: 4.5 (@Graves)

 

A song so synonymous with goodbyes that NASA sent Billie's 1944 recording as their final transmission to the Opportunity rover at the end of its mission in February 2019, "I'll Be Seeing You" was first published in 1938 for the Broadway musical Right This Way. Unfortunately, Right This Way closed after fifteen performances, and "I'll Be Seeing You" seemed destined to be lost to time. A few recordings here and there followed, but it wasn't until 1944 that the song found a second wind. The song became a hit for Bing Crosby, the lyrics resonating profoundly with wartime audiences. A version by Louanne Hogan was featured in the film of the same name, which starred Ginger Rogers and James Stewart as a young woman on Christmas furlough from prison and a soldier suffering from combat fatigue, respectively, who find romance in their mutual loneliness. The film was a big success, probably for the same reason that Crosby's recording was: it truly captured the zeitgeist of a world disconnected by war. Billie's comparatively softer, more sorrowful version, recorded the same year, however, seems to have stood the test of time a little more though, and in the twenty-first century alone has been used in films such as The Notebook and television series such as Severance.

 

What the GP had to say:

 

@Achilles.

Quote

One of my favorite pieces of songwriting here. That opening line, whew, is there a better one? Billie, Julie, Peggy, Sarah, and Nancy all recorded this and every version is perfect. But I do think Nancy's is particularly worth a listen. She apparently held off on recording this for decades, so it ended up being the final track of her final album. What a song to close a career on, and what a magnificent performance. She also has an extra opening verse that none of the others recorded; no idea where that came from, but it's great.

 

@Vixen Eyes

Quote

i need a cleaner version with less hissing from the record lol

 

It's been a while since we've seen Ella or Nancy.

 

Shall we pay one of them a visit?

 

kind of forgot this song existed  

Quote

 

In everything that's light and gay

I'll always think of you that way

 

She would know

Oh no. That was one of my favorite songs. 
 

Quote

i need a cleaner version with less hissing from the record lol

That's the charm

 

Y'all are not real jazz fans and it shows

 

1 minute ago, Truth Teller said:

That's the charm

 

Y'all are not real jazz fans and it shows

 

 

If it doesn't sound like I'm using a glass to eavesdrop on the apartment next door, I'm NOT interested

 

Edited August 13, 20251 yr by conatus

1 minute ago, conatus said:

 

If it doesn't sound like I'm using a glass to eavesdrop on the apartment next door, I'm NOT interested

 

These foolish things remind me of you.

 

 

#28. "Night and Day"

"Whether near to me or far

It's no matter, darling, where you are…"

Average: 7.811818182

Highest score: 11 (@Meloetta Carey) 10 (@Reverie, @Taylor fanboy, @Truth Teller)

Lowest score: 3 (@John Slayne)

 

First written by Cole Porter for the 1932 musical Gay Divorce, "Night and Day" is notable as an unconventional hit song of the time for its atypical structure and unusual chord changes. While other artists, such as Billie Holiday, who once referred to the song as "the toughest song in the world for [her] to sing," have recorded the song multiple times, Ella's version from her 1956 Cole Porter songbook is considered one of the definitive versions, her smooth voice simply flying over that lush arrangement.

 

What the GP had to say:

 

@Achilles.

Quote

Arguably Cole Porter's most famous song, this was written for a play called Gay Divorce (which is not gay) and one of the few songs to be kept in the film adaptation (The Gay Divorcee). I actually watched the film three years ago and I can't say I liked it that much or that I remember this song being in it; the seventeen minute dance to "The Continental" upstaged it, I fear. This song basically invented the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers duo though, so you can't deny its impact. Billie apparently called this "the toughest song in the world" for her to sing, but her performance is excellent. There is no beating Ella, though. From the moment those drums start thumping she just owns this thing.

 

Oh wow, this is way too low... Night and Day is STUNNING.