Where or when...

This is an old blogging game... but after the post re different versions of 'Stardust' – I was fiddling around last night, feeling mellow(...), and should have been doing other things... but feeling a trifle mentally overloaded... so in the cause of relaxation... thought about the various different versions of one of my favourite standards... 'Where or when.' A piece I used to play as a vehicle for improvisation... written by Rodgers and Hart for the musical 'Babes in Arms' in 1936/7, it's a strange dream-like lyric... two people who have had some kind of affair meet but the protagonist (he or she depending on who is singing) can't remember – 'where or when.' Very much an American song, then, in a society with such mobility – especially during the Depression years. The Peggy Lee hit version came out around Christmas 1941 when vast numbers of people were on the move again as America had entered the war after Pearl Harbou – the song hits home at this time as a resonance of chance wartime meetings. A strange biographical note – Lorenz Hart was a descendant of the German poet Heinrich Heine.

Here's the opener of this particular eisteddford...

The Benny Goodman version featuring Peggy Lee is a rare find... she captures just that perfect sad note of some brief lost love in wartime. Delivered with a fragile grace. It wasn't a hit at the time – the Guy Lombardo version apparently sold the copies.

Then there are obvious interpreters – Sinatra of course, who recorded it several times. This selection is taken from a gig at the Sands casino, recorded live with Count Basie. If you like Francis Albert, this is a relatively obscure but great live album – wisecracks with the audience and the band, Sinatra hip and running, with the great Basie orchestra behind him. Listen to the crisp phrasing. The piano isn't Basie on this track, by the way. Ring a ding ding, mes braves...

Some slightly less obvious versions... One of my favourite records as a kid was 'I wonder why' by Dion and the Belmonts, a New York doo-wop group who hit the big time in the rock and roll years. Dion di Mucci went solo in the sixties and has had various comebacks and setbacks since....

Judy Collins is one of those folk singers with a range that extends beyond the narrow purities of the Anglo-American sixties revival taht she sprang from. Her version contrasts in phrasing to Peggie Lee say – coming from a different musical environment – Lee and Sinatra made their bones with the big swing bands pre-and post world war two. She brings out the plaintiveness of the song in a different way.

Two instrumental versions. The first is the rather wonderful Art Tatum, jazz pianist extraordinaire... with Ben Webster, breathy whooshing ballad tenor player supreme. Contrasts in approach -Tatum all over the keyboard, the Cecil Taylor of yesteryear, Webster all about timbre and note placement. A great combo.

Errol Garner – I saw a couple of times in the sixties when I first started going to jazz concerts at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester. A little guy who used to sit on a telephone directory to reach the keyboard, always smiling. And what a fantastic, two-fisted maverick pianist, self-taught and unable to read music but capable of playing the most florid improvisations. And also very popular. This track is taken from his hit album 'Concert by the Sea' – a record that sold a lot of copies. Garner reached a wide audience in his day – by playing swinging, unpredictable but entertaining jazz, seemingly crossing the boundaries of style at will. This is the fastest version you'll hear – it rocks... joyous music, taking the tune and pretty much destroying it! Cecil Taylor again, in some weird way, reminds me of Garner crossed with Tatum and I think there was some influence – Cecil is just as much of a showman as both of them. Wonder what he'd make of 'Where or when.'

And for the last... Sinatra in the winter of his years. From his 80th birthday concert. One of those late great meditations. This seems as if he is groping for memories through fragments of images of some long gone affair, an old man remembering better days, the voice worn now - but still magical - and defiant against the crashing waves of the band... and he still manages that last high note...

It is interesting to see the different nuances that can be brought out of a set of lyrics. And the context – the wartime recordings for example would have a different resonance. 'Where or when' works in a jaunty mode – Sinatra with Basie – devil may care, yes we know each other, but – where or when and – whatever. Garner's use of it as a vehicle to stomp out some fine playing. The more poignant versions of the two female singers, and the close harmony of doowoppers, young men's voices - a rather sweet, sentimental readings really, which I threw in out of perversity and for the sake of contrast. To the bilateral approach of Webster and Tatum – speed and nuance. To finally – Sinatra again, whose stature and presence in the world as a celebrity cannot ward off the coming darkness in his eightieth year. Almost a Beckettian performance?

I can't get off... I must get off... So... adieu

Bennie Goodman and Peggie Lee

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Dion and the Belmonts

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Frank Sinatra and Count Basie

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Judy Collins

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Art Tatum and Ben Webster

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Errol Garner

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Frank Sinatra

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