Pleasant distractions

26.2.19

23.2.19

"The Legendary Alberta Hunter The London Sessions" by Alberta Hunter (1934)

Famous blues mama Alberta Hunter had a music career that spanned almost the whole 20th century (with some breaks in between) and this might be the most unusual work in her recorded discography. Though she is best known as blues artist, she always considered herself a pop singer and the fact that she started as one of stars of "Black Swan Records" and "Paramount" now seems more as necessity and matter of race - back than, segregation kept artists pigeonholed and only people like Ethel Waters and Josephine Baker managed to cross over into wider market. Hunter might have wanted other things in life and she worked hard to widen her horizons - eventually she moved into elegant nightclubs and into theatre, where she famously performed in "Showboat" with Paul Robeson.

As expected, Europeans treated her differently than audiences back home - here, she wasn't just another black singer but a full-fledged star and this recordings give us a wonderful glimpse of Hunter as a dance band vocalist. Backed by Jack Jackson & His Orchestra, she performs songs by Cole Porter and Noël Coward that sounds light years away from risqué material of her former years - her joy and pleasure in this sophisticated music is very obvious and in fact even her style suits the material very well. Sure, this is not blues and perhaps life was unfair to constantly box her in that category, since Hunter was always perceived as blues artist (she ended her days singing risqué songs again) but this rare experiment shows Hunter in another universe, how her life could have been.

To fully understand the appeal of this music, one must check music popular in 1930s UK: artists like Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson, Adelaide Hall, Al Bowlly and Jessie Matthews were all the rage, often singing with a large dance band orchestras. It might have been just a chapter in her extremely long career but it sounds extremely interesting.

22.2.19

"Divas Volume 1. 1906-1935" by Various Artists (Nimbus Records)

This was the compilation that started my love affair with old 78 rpm recordings from a century ago. Back than, some two decades ago, I knew classical music just vaguely, had nobody to point me to that direction and was at that age where pop music was all I cared about. But the experience of working on the radio and seeing how it all works behind the scene soured my enthusiasm for pop music to the point that at home I turned to old jazz & blues recordings that I liked immensely precisely because it was another world. The sound of old, scratched recordings actually thrilled me and transported me to another dimension, it was like time machine - besides, after 1980s I got so tired of ubiquitous synthesisers and drum machines that were all the rage, hearing that sound everywhere made it all somehow plastic and uniformed. So I dived into old 1920s recordings of earliest blues artists and from here it was just a step into this.

Like always, it was nothing planned: I strolled casually trough my local library, looking for something else and voilà this compilation caught my attention.

Took it home and enjoyed it immensely, because it opened new door to me - it also had nice liner notes with explanations who these people were and why they were so important in their times. In the meantime I became very familiar with British record company Nimbus Records whose sub-label Prima Voce lovingly restores these old, pre-WW2 classical recordings and keep them on the market for connoisseurs of this type of music. We are talking about gramophone with giant acoustic horn and recordings that had one song per side - something that Sherlock Holmes would have played at home (I was thrilled to discover that Romanovs in their court loved and collected some of the music compiled here).

We are far removed from the times when these recordings were originally created; where classically trained soprano was once the most familiar and popular of voices, eclipsed by other forms of modern music, operatic soprano today is one of the most alien - it came to sound pompous and affected to majority of audience long removed from its popular appeal. Although authors like Rupert Christiansen claim this was the popular music of its time, I am not absolutely convinced that its appeal ever went beyond limits of urban cities and audiences who had access to theatres (and gramophone), however there is no doubt that people like Mozart and Bellini were hit makers of their time. Ladies represented here were huge stars with international following and although these recordings were very important in shaping future generations of singers (young Maria Callas idolised Claudia Muzio who is included here) we must not forget that in reality they were primarily live performers who cautiously approached this new recording business as novelty, never expecting the future will evaluate them on the strength of these recordings. Just a magical time machine experience and I am very glad to find this compilation again.