Got to thinking this week about a “girl singer” I saw years ago in Charlotte, NC. She was down from the Big Apple to do a benefit jazz concert for the local public radio station. It was a tough time in my life, and the public radio station had been a rock for me through a few hard weeks. The “Morning Edition” music had become a signal every day that all was still well.
So I went to that concert to support the station and met the wonderful vocalist Marlene ver Planck. I did really meet her during a reception after the performance. Man, she was good onstage and off. Gracious, talented, lovely.
I’d never heard of Marlene although I knew a lot of other names in the jazz world. As in every field, there are the stars and then there are the yeomen and women who are incredibly good but rarely see their name in lights. The musicians, artists, writers, athletes, architects, teachers, asparagus packers – you name it. These are the folks who just work hard at what they do and mostly love the work without angst or the need for outrageous publicity stunts.
A writer I know who won an award a few years ago said in his acceptance remarks that he was dedicating the award to all the excellent writers he knew who had never won a thing or even yet been published. That’s the way it goes. Most of us are simply toilers in the vineyards and satisfaction comes on quiet cat feet.
Marlene ver Planck may not be a household name among those who love jazz, but hers is a name that serious jazz musicians know. Ver Planck is 80 now but hasn’t slowed down much if at all. She just returned from a tour of the UK where she got her usual rave reviews. And she looks great, too. You can read more about her at www.marleneverplanck.com
Here are a couple of tunes to let you know firsthand how great she is. Like Marlene, the tunes are not the usual American Songbook selections. Hooray for Marlene!
The first is “Blackberry Winter” by Alec Wilder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-lQ_F2s7XU and the second is a Gershwin tune that was more or less lost after it was first written in 1936-37 until Ira put lyrics to it in the 1940s, “For You, For Me, Forever.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPWuRsN-htE
While I was in the mood to think about musicians who may not be as familiar as others, I decided to include a couple of Tal Farlow tunes. Farlow was an amazing guitarist, nicknamed “Octopus” because his hands were very large and could execute great coverage of the fretboard of his guitar.
Farlow was not inclined to play publicly as much as other musicians and retired from public performance in 1958 at the age of 37. He returned to earlier work as a sign painter but did occasional gigs and re-emerged in the late 70s – early 80s before virtually disappearing again.
Here he is on two classic jazz tunes. Give a listen and then give it up for Tal Farlow; “Misty” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIaseicCzFk and “A Foggy Day” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nIXVvQPz4Y
Ciao, Jazz Babies…