The Blossom Dearie Centennial, Part One: "Rootin' Songs"

Margrethe Blossom Dearie (1924 – 2009)

Sarah Vaughan and Max Roach were only the beginning - in 2024 we have a veritable deluge of major centennials (in no particular order):

Sarah Vaughan
Max Roach
Bobby Short
Blossom Dearie
Margaret Whiting 
Julie Wilson  
Dinah Washington
Shorty Rogers
Arthur Prysock 
Hank Mancini 
Mary Ford
Gogi Grant
Dolores Gray
Allan Sherman
Lauren Bacall
Truman Capote
Don Knotts
Chet Atkins
Marlon Brando
and lastly, Miss Jane Morgan, who will celebrate her 100th birthday on May 3rd. Bravo! (I believe she is the only centennial celebrant this year who is still very much with us.)

I’m going to try to honor almost all of them - one way or another. (Wish me luck!) 

I’m slightly early in celebrating the 100th birthday of Blossom Dearie, born April 28, in East Durham.   Today, I’m going to share (via YouTubes) one of her great, lesser-known albums, as well as part of an interview I conducted with her in 2002.  Tomorrow (Saturday, April 20), on Sing! Sing! Sing!, I’m going to celebrate her recorded legacy with three hours of my personal favorite Blossom tracks, and I’ll include all three parts of my 2002 interview with the great lady.  Then next Wednesday, April 24th at 9:30PM, I’m doing a Clip Joint program of rare and amazing video performances by Miss Dearie. More info below! 

When is a Blossom Dearie album not a Blossom Dearie album? The 1963 Rootin’ Songs would be unique in anybody’s discography.  It was produced as a promotional release for the Hires Root Beer company.  It’s virtually the only Dearie album where she doesn’t play - Joe Harnell is credited as musical director and pianist - and the advertising agency probably picked the songs.  They’re all contemporary hits from that year - unlike most Dearie albums, there are no French songs, no lesser-known older show tunes, or songs by friends like Dave Frishberg, Bob Dorough, or Bob Haymes - although Cy Coleman (“I’ve Got Your Number” from Little Me) and Sheldon Harnick (“She Loves Me” from She Loves Me) were both close to Blossom.   Three songs come from Tony Bennett - who was truly flying high in the aftermath of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” an early bossa nova (“Desifinado,” with Jon Hendricks’s lyrics), more show tunes (“What Kind of Fool Am I?” from Stop The World and “The Sweetest Sounds” from No Strings). (Surprisingly there’s nothing from Sinatra - her treatment of “Fly Me to The Moon,” in Bart Howard’s original waltz time,  predates the hard-swinging Sinatra-Basie version by a year or so.)

The original 1963 promotional album.

Then too, her treatment of “Our Day Will Come,” which was already a superior pop song successfully marketed as a Brill Building product (thank you Ruby and the Romantics), inspires a singularly magical interpretation from Blossom.  Still, for me, the big surprise is “Those Lazy, Hazy Crazy Days of Summer” - a German song that had been one of Nat King Cole’s last hits.  Cole’s blockbuster single is, like the Deutschland original,  essentially a jolly polka, but Blossom puts it into something closer to swingtime, and there’s a serious tenor saxophone solo by Jerome Richardson.  It’s a fun album that’s been released on CD in Japan but still not heard very often. (As Rob Isaiah and Tom Buckley point out, all releases have been in mono - if the album was actually recorded in stereo, no one has ever heard that tape.)

The 2008 Japanese "Limited Edition" CD - there have also been LP, vinyl and even 45 RPM editions in Japan.

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I heard Blossom live and talked to her dozens of times, but this is the only formal interview I have where I managed to keep the audio - mainly because it was done under the auspices of Sirius Satellite Radio - where I worked along with Mike Peters, Loren Schoenberg, Kenny “The Jazz Maniac” Washington, and Eric Comstock (I know, I know, how did I get in that amazing group?) - for a few years at the turn of this century.

The interview is in three parts, I’ll include part one today, along with the (slightly edited) transcript.  (Please don’t anybody repost this anywhere!)

I guess the most basic question is, what do you look for in a song? 

Everybody asks me that. First of all, the music has to be a certain standard that I like, music that appeals to me, the melody and the rhythm, and the chords and harmony. And then the words are sort of like the icing on the cake. But if the words are good and the music isn't good I wouldn't do a song like that. So first of all, the music has to be appealing to me.

So are you always hearing new songs-...that are of interest? I mean new new and new old?

Yes. I get a lot of songs in the mail. People send them to me. Actually, I don't even have time to listen to a lot of them but they're songwriters and I have friends who are songwriters, so I try to do their songs. John Wallowitch, for example. He's a wonderful songwriter. I try to do some of his songs. And Jay Leonhart is a good songwriter. I'm going to do some of his songs on my next CD. And I love Ivan Lins. He writes wonderful melodies, wonderful melodies. Of course most of the words are in Portuguese and then there are a few that are in English. I don't sing in Portuguese, of course, so I sing them in English.

Well, you have a special affinity, I think, for Brazilian music.

Yes, I do.

You were one of the earliest North Americans to do those songs.

Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, Frank Sinatra did that wonderful album with Jobim.

You've had these interesting relationships with people like Bobby Dorough, Dave Frishberg, and Jack Segal where sometimes you do their songs and sometimes you work with them on songs too. How does that usually work?

Well, we work three ways. Sometimes I write the music first and they write the lyrics. Sometimes they write the lyrics first and then I write the music to their lyrics. And sometimes, in the case of Jack and I, we worked doing both at the same time.

That's how “Bye Bye Country Boy” was written?

That's right. Jack wrote the words first and he sent me the words and then I wrote the music. I particularly liked that song.

That's a great song. You've been doing it for years now. But you changed the interpretation, didn't you?

I have. I slowed it down and made it more like a Country and Western with some piano fills that I think are more interesting now.

I like the newer version, yeah.

Me too.

How long have you known Jack?

Long time. I remember when Jack was writing with Marvin Fisher. They were writing wonderful songs in the sixties and Nat Cole was singing them, and Nancy Wilson. And they wrote “May I Come In?”

That's right.  “Cloudy Morning” Did you know Marvin at all? I got to speak with him, just once.

Yes, I did. Sure. I knew Marvin.

You said that you consider yourself primarily a piano player?

A Musician, yes, a pianist and then a singer. I feel I'm more of a jazz musician than a jazz singer. Jazz singer is a little different. I'm a jazz musician and I have a little record company.

You started Daffodil Records around 1972  or so?

Something like that.  I started that and the first recording was made in England.  And I knew the first one wasn't really good enough to do anything with. Nobody would be interested in it. So I made the second one, that was much better. Then the third and the fourth and I kept going.

You've been getting better and better.

I hope so. And the nice thing is that I can re-record some of the songs because a lot of those, the earlier ones are out of print now, so I can re-record them and do a little different interpretation of my own songs. Like “My New Celebrity is You,” now that's a marvelous song.

Now how did that evolve? That was your collaboration with Johnny Mercer.

That's right. But not a collaboration. He wrote the music really. It's just the blues. He sang it on a cassette and sent it to me and those lyrics are just fantastic. Fantastic. And there are other verses too. Really, that's something.

You were also one of the first Americans  to record a song by Michel Legrand.

I guess so. I mean, I guess I was the first American, I'm not sure. Well, that's really just a great melody. I mean, you have to be a musician to write a melody like that because it goes from major to minor. He's quite a musician, Michel Legrand. I heard the melody with the French words, La Valse des Lila, and I love the melody. The words are nice in French, but I loved the melody. I played the melody for Johnny Mercer when I came back and he liked it too, so then he wrote the words for “Once Upon a Summertime.” Yes, wonderful. Michel, of course, is still writing great songs.  The latest one is “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” That's a good song.

That's wonderful. Tony Bennett does that, obviously.

Yes, Tony does all of the good songs.

How did it happen that Tony did “My Love Went to London?”

Well, he heard it, evidently. I sent it to him probably, because I do send him my CDs and he heard it and he liked it.

The first Verve album, which is called Blossom Dearie, has all those wonderful songs by Bob Haymes. How did you know him? How did you work with him?

I don't know. You know how we met people in those days. You just met them. Like you and I met, I guess. I don't know when the first time was. I met Bob Haymes. He was doing a radio show and he was writing with Marty Clarke.

Yes. Now Marty Clarke owned a club in the Bahamas or something like that?

Yes. Let's see, Bob Haymes was on the radio and I appeared on his show once or twice and he was a good songwriter. He wrote the lyrics.  Yes, Bob was singing on  the radio. He was Dick Haymes’s brother. Marty would play the piano. I think Marty wrote the music and Bob wrote the lyrics and they wrote some good songs. One that I'm going to do again, “They Say It's Spring.” That's a lovely song.

To be continued.

Here’s the audio:

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Our buddy, the inestimable Alan Eichler, shared this a few years ago: a fantastic clip of Blossom on The Danny Kaye Show (1967). I’ll be showing about 90 minutes of rare videos on Wednesday, April 24, in honor of the impending centennial.

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Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!

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Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming.) click here.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com, click here.

Saturday, April 20
10:00AM Pacific Time / 1:00PM Eastern Time
KSDS San Diego Presents
THE BLOSSOM DEARIE CENTENNIAL SPECIAL 
for more info and streaming link, click here

Wednesday, April 24
7:00PM (EST) - THE NEW YORK ADVENTURE CLUB presents: 
'Lambert, Hendricks & Ross: The All-Time Greatest Jazz Vocal Group' Webinar
click_here

Wednesday, April 24
9:30PM (EST) - Will Friedwald's CLIP JOINT presents: 
THE BLOSSOM DEARIE CENTENNIAL CLIP JOINT
No Cover Charge!
click_here Yes!

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