SWINGING ON THE VINE THE SWINGING RIDDLE
“You and your smile hold a strange fascination, Somehow it seems we’ve shared our dreams but when, Time after time in a room full of strangers, Suddenly you are there wherever I go.“ This is the emotionally-charged voice of a woman in love singing Paul Francis Webster’s lyrics to Polish-born composer Bronislaw Kaper’s theme from the 1952 film Invitation. The singer is Rosemary Clooney and the arranger Nelson Riddle who understood the backing her voice needed with its subtle phrasing and inflection. She in turn knew how to fit her voice to his arrangements. I lean back in bliss lost in the music as I take a sip from a glass of red wine from a bottle presented to me by my insufferable brother-inlaw Clifford who claimed it’s a special vintage. My throat catches the sour, vinegary taste of an aged rough red. Coughing and spluttering I curse this bounder and cad before pouring the contents of the bottle into the bowl of a snoring Big J who lazily opens one eye. He may be an alcoholic but this is a pig of class: he takes one sniff, overturns the bowl with his snout then looks at me expectantly as I retrieve a bottle from the cellar here in my Hunter Valley hideaway. My glass replenished and Big J’s bowl full I once again lose myself in the music. “You’re the glow of temptation, Glancing my way in the grey of the dawn, And always your eyes smile that strange invitation, When you have gone . . . where oh where have you gone?” The singer, then only 32, was in the middle of a hopeless love affair with Riddle - they were both married - a period she would later describe as “the best blending of my job and personal life that I ever had”. This on-again off-again affair would break her heart and end both their marriages. The intensity of her love for Riddle is shown on some of the unforgettable heart-rending vocals on the album from which Invitation comes. It was called Love and recorded for the RCA Victor label in 1960. On it she plumbs the depths of bliss and sorrow, mostly the latter; it takes only a few bars of How Will I Remember You to realise here is a heartbroken woman pouring her emotion into a song. The album was a follow-up to Rosie Solves’ The Swinging Riddle recorded in the same year but executives at the record company claimed they didn’t like it and refused to release it. But this was a time when RCA Victor was cutting back on recording new jazz albums. Frank Sinatra knew better! He bought the master takes from
Nelson Riddle and Frank Sinatra reviewing a score (1956)
RCA Victor for his own label Reprise when signing Clooney in 1963. A beautiful, haunting recording with Clooney’s voice nestling emotionally in Riddle’s velvet arrangements it remains her finest album. Riddle’s genius was his ability to construct intricate instrumental textures and delicately combine them with a swinging big band beat. To establish the mood of a song, Riddle would pair a bass clarinet with a baritone saxophone and B-3 Hammond organ with a flute. This and other instrumental collages were a joy to the ear. Riddle’s charts sound so simple but it is almost impossible to decipher the instrumentation used. It’s no wonder the best singers of the 1950s and beyond loved his arrangements, especially his swinging ballads, as personified by Frank Sinatra, where they would include strings, traditionally associated with ballads, and the patented Riddle “burping bones (trombones)” and other brass figures. To quote Riddle: “In working out an arrangement, I look for the peak of a song and build on it. We’re telling a story. It has to have a beginning, a middle, a climax and an ending.” In 1959 when jazz impresario Norman Granz began planning the fifth of his Ella Fitzgerald songbooks for his Verve label, the music of George and Ira Gershwin, he knew it would have to be something special. The best-selling vocalists Sarah Vaughan and Chris Connor had already recorded excellent tributes to Gershwin and Ella had recorded a superb, intimate eightsong album with the matchless pianist Ellis Larkins for the Decca label in 1950. On the strength of his work with Sinatra and Nat King Cole - he had arranged Cole’s big hit
Mona Lisa - Riddle was considered to be in a class of his own. So Granz brought Riddle on to the proposed five-album project as musical director with the orders to make it an intimate spectacular by expanding then narrowing its focus to the numbers written only by the Gershwins, a move which delighted Ira. Not only was he was given equal billing with his brother - George had died suddenly of a brain tumour in 1937 - but also that Granz sought his approval. Each night after the 10 recording sessions between January and July in 1959 Granz would drop by Ira’s home with an acetate of the day’s work. Sinatra’s championing of the songbook is interesting as he sang far fewer songs by the Gershwins than would be expected. They didn’t write what Sinatra called “saloon songs” in the style of Harold Arlen, Cole Porter or Lorenz Hart. Sinatra was at his best in the extremes of “sadness and elation” - Ella was at her best in the middle where most of the Gershwin songs are emotionally. Riddle and Ella underscored this middle-ness by making the happy songs a little less happy and the sad songs decidedly upbeat. Two examples: Oh Lady Be Good which Ella always treated as a swinger became the most sombre song of the set; the original upbeat air of How Long Has This Been Going On was transformed into a melancholy contemplation of love. Ella and Riddle reinvented Gershwin for the age of the LP. The five-set album remains the greatest collection of the Gershwin’s music and a highlight of Ella’s illustrious career. It was also Ira Gershwin’s favourite album. - Patrick D Maguire September 2014
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