The late John Gunn said something the other day, New Year’s Eve 1981 I think it was, which has stuck in my mind ever since. I was listening to a three-hour show on Essex Radio, a one-off to celebrate the New Year, in which John Gunn, editor of the much missed Gunn Report, and Ray Pallett, editor of Memory Lane (still going strong: click here for details) and future author of Goodnight Sweetheart (if you haven’t bought a copy yet then click here) were chatting to a couple of local DJs about vintage music, their 78 collections and were playing various examples of jazz and hot dance, and a jolly time was being had by all. One record they played was one of the four numbers recorded in 1936 by Cole Porter himself, singing his own songs to his own piano accompaniment, in this case Anything Goes.
Now, Cole Porter is a personal hero if mine. I love everything he ever wrote (except Don’t Fence Me In) to varying degrees. If there were two song-writing geniuses in the 20th century, as opposed to the merely extremely talented, they were Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. While Berlin was the son of poor immigrants who dragged himself up from the gutter, Porter came from a privileged background and one thing he never had to worry about in his life was money. His life was a long social whirl (punctuated by periods of very hard work) and somehow through his witty, urbane lyrics he took us all to the party with him. I yield to no one in my admiration for his talents. But as a singer he had a strange, wavering, reedy voice. Bing Crosby and Al Bowlly certainly had nothing to worry about. Once you have heard him sing one of his own numbers, as a curiosity more than anything else, you don’t need to hear it again.
And it was after that record ended and the surface noise of the run-off groove had faded, that John Gunn said: “Very often, the composers aren’t the best interpreters of their own work.” He was being charitable in that case, when I think what he meant to say was: Cole Porter was a crap vocalist. And he would have been right.
But what of other composer version? How do they compare to other versions? Since I heard John Gunn make that comment, I have made that comparison ever time I have heard a composer version and I think that in many cases he was absolutely spot on. I offer a few examples for your consideration – agreement, disagreement, even argument, are all welcome:
Roger Wolfe Kahn’s band playing his Crazy Rhythm may be the definitive version, but I much prefer some of the others, most of all Fred Elizalde’s 1928 recording when he was in London.
Scott Joplin playing his own numbers on piano rolls (as far as I know he never recorded on disk or cylinder) sounds clean and antiseptic compared to many of the more lively, hot band versions that have been recorded since then. Bechet, Hines, Morton – just three examples.
Serenade For A Wealthy Widow by the composer Reginald Forsythe and his New Music is all very advanced and edgy, but Lew Stone and his Orchestra give us, I submit, a far better version. What’s more, they were actually the only British dance band to record it.
They were also the only British band to attempt Paul Barbarin’s The Call Of The Freaks, some four or five years after Barbarin, as drummer with King Oliver’s Band recorded it in New York. Oliver’s version is good of course, as one would expect, but Lew Stone’s is better.
Raymond Scott composed many innovative, instrumental numbers with strange titles, and recoded them all with his own band. In my opinion he doesn’t do justice to them. Maybe I am prejudiced against so much high-pitched muted trumpet. You can find many far better versions of pretty much all of his numbers by other bands. Ambrose’s versions of The Penguin, Powerhouse and War Dance Of The Wooden Indians come to mind. So do Syd Lipton’s back to back recordings of Dinner Music For A Pack Of Hungry Cannibals and Reckless Night On Board An Ocean Liner.
Dare I say something bad about a national treasure? Noël Coward wrote wonderful songs and clever lyrics, both joyful and cynical. Some of these he performs very well, when he sings solo to his own piano, but others sound far too fussy and even stilted. Give me, say, an eight inch Broadcast of Ciro’s Club Band doing Dance Little Lady any day, or a full band with a female vocalist (Phyllis Robins perhaps?) singing Mad About The Boy. Much better!
In all these cases, though he may not have been thinking about them specifically, John Gunn was right. There are probably many more that I shall think of after I have posted this, but these I offer for your consideration.