On the playlist today...

A Day In The Life Of A Fool

This song originally appeared in the 1959 Portuguese film Black Orpheus (which was fabulous by the way, though a bit creepy. It won the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival as well as the 1960 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the 1960 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film) under it’s Portuguese title "Manhã De Carnaval". Translated to English and re-christened "A Day in the Life of a Fool", it became a jazz standard that is performed regularly by a wide variety of musicians.

This cover of the song that I came across is sang by the late jazz singer Rosemary Clooney (yes if you were wondering she is related to George Clooney, she’s his aunt) who died of lung cancer from smoking in 2001 (sigh, another sad victim). The former mentor of Diana Krall, her rendition of the song is hauntingly beautiful and stunning with her deep, expressive voice seamlessly brings out the lyrics of the song.


City Of Love

Contrary to what the song title implies, nope, it's not some tacky we-love-the-world song. "City Of Love" is the first LP from the Oakland electronic pop group Persephone's Bees. Its lead singer, Angelina Moysov grew up in Pyatigorsk, Russia and after immigrating to America in 1993, she formed Persephone's Bees with Tom Ayres (who plays guitar), Paul Bertolino (drums), and Mike Farrell (bass). This song is also included in their studio album Notes from the Underworld.

I first came across this song in the Bewitched soundtrack which I bought some time last year after watching the movie, in which the song was the opening sequence. It reminds me of the 1980 song "Funkytown" by the disco band Lipps Inc, but this time with lyrics that actually make sense and a lot less irritating tune.




L-O-V-E

Yes I know that it has the same title as that silly tuneless Ashlee Simpson song. Many of you would have heard L-O-V-E as the background music to the oh-so-heartwarming family matters! television commercial that made rounds on channel 5 and 8 last month. This song was most notably recorded by Nat King Cole (which was the version you heard in the commercial) in 1964 just a few days before entering the hospital for lung cancer treatment and released just prior to his death in 1965.

22 years later his daughter, Natalie Cole, an accomplished jazz singer herself recorded her 1991 album Unforgettable... with Love featuring her own arrangements of her father's greatest hits. The album went on to win Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards and needless to say, a personal favorite of mine.

Fly Me To The Moon

Fly Me To The Moon was first written in 1954 for the cabaret circuit under it's original title, In Other Words. It was not until 10 years later in 1964 that Frank Sinatra recorded the song on his It Might as Well Be Swing collaboration with Count Basie, becoming the rendition that most people identified the song with. Since then the song has gone one to become one of the most popular and recognisable jazz tunes and continues to be performed by many other jazz singers and even (gasp!) the Irish boynamd Westlife.

In this cover, Brazilian bossa nova singer Ana Carem gives the popular swing song a bossa nova feel, taken from her album Blue Bossa. Her smooth silky voice gives Fly Me To The Moon an elegent touch, giving the queen of Bossa Nova Astrud Gilberto a run for her money and without bordering on the risk of sounding like elevator music. Definitely one of the best covers of this song.


Gailos Abertas

Early in his career, the then budding musician Ramón Leal, who would go on to become the undisputed king of Bossa Nova, decided to establish an alliance with the Italian singer and actress Beatrice Binotti and created a bossa nova quartet with two Uruguay brothers Juan and Jose San Martin. Together with Binotti's unique voice, they recorded Bossanova1999, from which Gailos Abertas is taken from, between 1997 and 1998. This became one of the most enlightening albums of his career.