11/5/10 Rosemary Clooney

This morning on the radio, I heard her rendition of "The Lady is a Tramp." It must have been from her later years, because her voice had that growing huskiness of weight, the smaller range and lack of sustained tone of age (or maybe of too much touring with a tired voice). But still she swung it.

Okay it's a little embarrassing for me because I like to think I love progressive, abstract jazz--world saxophone quartet, threadgill, mingus, bird, coltrane, geri allen, betty carter, etc. All the hip & cool & cats (which really, I should get more disks & study their stuff more). So it's embarrassing for me to love someone as corny as Rosemary. But I do. I hereby adopt her as my second mom. No, wait, that designation is already taken by my aunt Jan, third, no...fourth, no...Okay, I think Rosemary has to be my fifth or sixth mom, but no remoter than that. And I'm definitely officially posthumously adopting her as such. Herewith.

Rosemary is an exquisite ecstasy. Raised in small-town Kentucky, she has that homespun feeling of not-perfect physical appearance that attained fabulous glamor. And the non-perfect, non-buttery voice, but an oomph that makes whatever she sings sound like a statement. That you want to believe too.

And her dresses, the wasp-waisted nightclub frocks of her early years, all taffeta and chiffon. The caftan-y muu-muu-ey things of her later years. I want to drape myself too. I want to wear them (I know many stars of that era wore them, so it's not just Rosemary's that I envy. But her a girl from Kentucky!) And she sings so much of the songbook. The songbook. Rosemary. Awwww. (still regret not going to that last concert here in town in 2001). Love ya mom #6.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gzLQZ0PHes