Skylark

When I think of the Hoagy Carmichael-Johnny Mercer song Skylark it's an unlikely recording which first springs to mind. Memory had insisted that it was acapella, which turned out to be wrong when I heard it again recently after a gap of about fifty years.

Either I hadn't known the identity of the group at the time or had forgotten it, even though they were part of the furniture on BBC Radio 2 in the 1980s, cropping up on Benny Green's show or Brian Matthew's Round Midnight, singing softly but not really forcing themselves upon the listener. 

I was prompted to seek the record out by an obvious associative process. Last year I went with a friend to a park where skylarks were known to nest. I hadn't chosen our destination but it was a sunny day, the park was fairly empty, and it was relaxing and pleasant to lie on the grass and look up obligingly into the blue sky for sightings of these birds.  

At some point I began tentatively singing the lyrics of Skylark to myself, partly to test a memory which had been showing signs of wear and tear. I was relieved and grateful to find that I could remember Mercer's lyric whole but wondered why that particular recording, last heard one Sunday afternoon on Benny Green's show in the early eighties, came to mind so readily - wasn't it a rather cheesy easy-listening kind of take? Wouldn't Peter Skellern or Annie Ross, say, have been more tasteful? Why had my subconscious prioritised it?

As some Benny Green fans may have already realised the recording in question was by Singers Unlimited, a Chicago group formed by Gene Puerling, formerly of the Hi-Lo's [sic]. It doesn't come from one of their purely acapella albums but the jazz-tinged backing isn't obtrusive, merely framing the vocals. In memory I had seemed to hear the performance through whatever the aural equivalent might be of a heat-haze, or perhaps the mist mentioned in the lyrics - by which I mean that without a star vocalist or instrumentalist to demand attention it was the essence of the song which came over, which may explain why it had taken pride of place on my mental mantelpiece. Having probably heard it via an AM radio back in the day could also have contributed to the "hazy" effect: music heard from a great distance. Which probably also explains why memory had stripped away the instrumental backing.

Now that I've had a chance to listen to their Skylark in digital form I'm not sure whether "easy listening" is the right term for the group - or at least I'd distinguish easy listening from muzak. Even so, defendents of muzak say that for songs to be thus translated effectively is a true test of a composition's innate worth: no production tricks or vocal fireworks to camouflage limitations. So you could say that there is a kind of purity about the form, and the same could be said for Singers Unlimited, however you choose to categorise their style.

As their name suggests, the group, who are no longer together, weren't like the average vocal quartet. Their voices were considerably buttressed by multitracking so they were essentially studio creatures. You couldn't call them soulful but the results - certainly in the case of Skylark - don't come over as saccharine either. The overall effect is peculiarly soothing and hypnotic, giving a sense of time slowing time, and you don't miss the added characterisation which a lead vocal might have brought. 

Carmichael's melody wasn't originally intended to have lyrics. It was a nod to his late friend, the cornettist Bix Beiderbecke, an attempt to emulate or pay tribute to his playing. Later Johnny Mercer was asked whether he could do anything with the tune although it took quite a few months before Carmichael was presented with the lyrics we know today. The words possibly reflect Mercer's passion for Judy Garland although they seem general enough not to be attached to a specific person. Put down on the page some of them might even appear trite but combined with Carmichael's Bix-derived melody they become universal, standing for the hopes we all might have for love, romance, some kind of fulfilment - out of sight at present but still possible. I'm tempted to say that the subject matter makes it a doo wop kind of song, but there aren't many recordings by doo wop groups that I know of. Possibly that's because of the bridge.

Steve Ross, who knows more than most about the Great American Songbook, told me that Skylark has one of the most unexpected and lovely bridges: you feel the lift into that other key and wonder how the composer is going to get back to the original key - but he does. (Sophisticated Lady has the same effect, he says.)

I don't have the vocabulary to talk about music in a technical way, but I think I get what Steve means: despite the diversion the song somehow isn't derailed. 

And I can certainly see that the bridge's lyrics are an important addition, taking us somewhere else entirely. Possibly this is what has put doo wop groups off. If - especially when divorced from the music - the rest of Mercer's words suggest a simplified, picture-book view of romance we are given a hint here of something more unhinged and troubling to balance those idealised visions: 

And in your lonely flight 

Haven't you heard the music in the night? 

Wonderful music, 

Faint as a will-o'-the-wisp, 

Crazy as a loon, 

Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon 

It's a long way from the simplicity of Blue Moon's "I heard somebody whisper 'Please adore me'". Jeff Meshel offers this glos on will-o'-the-wisps: 

atmospheric ghost lights, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes, resembling a flickering lamp and said to recede if approached, drawing travelers from the safe paths at night. 

 I wonder whether it was providing that roughage, as it were, which caused Mercer to take so long to finish the lyric? The song would certainly be greatly diminished without that section.  

My battered memory repaired itself, more or less, over a couple of weeks, confirmed when all the intricacies of a favourite Thomas Hardy poem were finally restored intact. But that moment in the park with its distant echo of a recording of Skylark is what I shall probably remember most vividly about that brief but  unsettling experience. It offered reassurance, when I most needed it, that music - specifically the Great American Songbook - had not deserted me and would continue to offer the same kind of consolation and pleasure it had been doing since I first discovered it, courtesy of Benny Green and others, fifty or more years earlier.

 

 

 Links: 

If you've read this far you might be interested in reading an earlier, and probably better, version of this post - find it here. 

You can find more technical accounts of Skylark by Steven Blier here and Tom Strini here; Jeff Meshel writes amusingly here of experiencing the bridge of Skylark as an earworm. 

My tribute to Benny Green, part of a series about broadcasters who taught me about the Great American Songbook, can be found here. It includes links to appreciations of other broadcasters who helped me with my education.  

Having mentioned Steve Ross above, here is a repost of an account of hearing him perform in 2011:

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I saw  the New York cabaret singer Steve Ross perform a few weeks ago in a cabaret venue, the Pheasantry in the King's Road, Chelsea and had the chance to talk to him briefly afterwards.

The show, a tribute to Irving Berlin, featuring a mix of well known and more obscure numbers, made a big impression on me, for several reasons. The act of listening, staring across the otherwise empty table, called to mind a former partner with whom I associate the recordings of Hutch: they formed a soundtrack to to our time together, especially in the earliest days when one little room really was an everywhere. I'm not sure whether it was a particular Berlin song also recorded by Hutch, or simply the conviction which Steve Ross brought to the songs, but either way I felt a sharp pang for an irretrievable past.

And there was another thing about that performance, which is related to my decades of radio listening to the likes of Hubert Gregg and Ken Sykora. Odd as it may sound, although I have been listening to and loving that sort of music for over thirty years, I don't think I had ever sat down at a cabaret style show like that before. Ever. The songs seemed alive in a way not possible through archive recordings broadcast over the airwaves.

And when I mentioned to Steve the people I had admired, like Hutch, and Mabel Mercer - familiar to me from both Benny Green and Robert Cushman's shows - I learnt they were known to him too: Mabel Mercer in particular had been, he said, a big influence. And the name of Robert Cushman was fondly greeted: he even praised his singing - which, I admit, is further than I would be prepared to go.

You could even say that the evening was a kind of culmination of a process - that is, if you were minded, like me, to tie a ribbon of sorts around this post. Let's have a go, anyway. Ahem. (clears throat, assumes solemnity of manner)

I listened as a teenager to love stories in song whispered through my transistor late at night.

Later, the whispering served another purpose: a backdrop to my own particular notion of some semblance of The Real Thing.

Now, thanks to the passion and the artistry of Steve Ross on that recent evening, the songs have been foregrounded once again. But this time I am more aware - and I'm talking about Berlin in particular, though it could equally apply to others - of the magic, or the vitality, or whatever you want to cry it, of these artefacts.

They are at once simple and profound. Direct, universal statements which somehow feel personally tailored at the same time. They are not The Thing Itself - real or otherwise - but they remind us of The Thing Itself. And they suggest that it's important. And they, at least, endure and they bring consolation as well as the odd stab of pain.

Most of all, maybe, they make me feel part of a larger world.

You can find Steve Ross's website here. He says:

So much of cabaret is about love. It's the emotion we're always trying to be reminded of most of all.