Open Writing

We all get ‘em. Especially if you’re going to get up on to the bandstand and sing, or play. Especially singing. Most people know they can’t blow a trumpet, saxophone or trombone, or play the piano. A lot of people think they can sing, however – hence karaoke. So there you are, in a posh frock, with a great big sign on you that says “kick me”, just like those that kids would pin to the backs of the geeks among them, to raise a laugh. Except you’ve put it on yourself, and on the front at that.

But you still do it. You have to, or something. At least, I do. An itch that won’t go away unless you scratch it – regularly. I’ve had several periods where I didn’t sing, but wanted to. The result was what I call “frustration dreams”. These took several forms. There’d be the one where I fell flat on my face en route to the bandstand. Or the one where I was blissfully unaware that my frock was tucked into my knickers. And worst of all, the one where I’d have made it to the bandstand without bumps and grazes, and with frock in its rightful place – only to look into the audience and spy a beautiful (younger), woman, putting the evil eye on me. She’d stalk up to the mic, push me away from it and begin to sing – far better than me. I’d wake up in a cold sweat. These days, anyone trying that one on for real would get a punch up the bracket.

Well, that’s enough dreaming to satisfy even Jung, so now for some real knock-backs. Back in the days when Adam was a lad, and the trams were still running, I started singing with some bands in Birmingham where I was a student. I modelled myself on Billie Holiday and had perfected quite a few Billie phrases which I trotted out at every opportunity. One piano player I worked with (I’ll call him Fred Argualot), growled at me after one gig: “You copy Billie Holiday. Who are you going to copy next year – Ella Fitzgerald?”

The shrill whining noise I made next had nothing to do with jazz but everything to do with self-justification. However, I knew deep down that he was right, and that was when I started to think more about sounding like me. There was only one Lady Day, I concluded. Fred won that round on points.

My old Mum could dish ‘em out too – but only because she didn’t do tact. What she thought, she said, and the results were often comical. The first time she came to a gig of mine, she favoured me with this: “Oh – you were good! When you got up to sing, I was cringing in my seat in case you weren’t – and in case anybody asked if you were my daughter!” Gawd ‘elp us! I could do nothing but burst out laughing and call her a rotten old moo. It takes knowing the person, you see. Years later, on hearing my CD for the first time, she said: “It’s really nice – not like jazz, is it?” Again I folded up in the middle laughing, because I knew what she meant; that it wasn’t too far out for her.
Incidentally, she always used to describe herself as tone deaf, but I don’t think she was. When she sang to me, it was in tune and not lurching from key to key in the manner of people who really are tone deaf. And to digress a little, her reaction to a new hair style of mine (I had an Afro perm at the age of seventeen) was a classic. I boogied on down into the kitchen, thinking I was the acme of cool, and she delivered the following levelling comment: “You look like a bog brush on stilts!” So glorious an image that I couldn’t take offence. How could I, at something that made me laugh so much?

Some years later, the girlfriend of a band member bounced up to me and said: “What was up with you tonight? You were terrible!” I gulped a bit, then imagined fashioning her long blonde hair into a winding-sheet (that’s a shroud, loves), winding her up in it and sending her off to Happy Harpy Heaven. I said nothing, however. The bandleader, who’d overheard, muttered “How would SHE know” which was of some comfort.

The next one doesn’t really count as a knock-back because it was just par for the course for a gig like the one I’m going to describe. It was in a run-down old pub, not known for putting on jazz, and we were all struggling that evening. The clientele was rather mixed – not to say mixed up. “The woodwork squeaks and out come the freaks” would be a good way to describe them. All getting steadily drunker and not listening to us at all.

I was in the middle of a chorus when I saw an apparition out of the corner of my eye. No, not a ghost – his flesh was too, too solid and some of it was hanging over his broad leather belt. He was done up in cowboy gear. A Stetson hat with fringes, much like the one I imagine Stack ‘O Lee killing Billy De Lyon for. His jacket was suede (with fringes, of course). He’d tucked his jeans into his suede boots, and they had……..(you’ve guessed it). Clump clump clump he went as he walked right in front of me to get to the fruit machine which he proceeded to feed with 10p coins. It paid out – well it would, wouldn’t it – to the accompaniment of deafening clanging noises. The band were holding each other up and crying with laughter, me most of all. I never did do the diva bit – too keen a sense of the ridiculous, I suppose.

The last one wasn’t funny at all, and I was daft enough to let it throw me so much that I didn’t sing in public, except for guest spots, for several years (the old itch triumphed in the end, I am glad to say). I was doing a duo gig in a wine bar, with a piano player. At the bar was a drunken Scotsman, getting steadily drunker. He owned a trombone – which is an oblique way of saying that he couldn’t really play but ran a band just the same. I was doing some Bessie Smith songs, but not as straight copies of Bessie (few singers have her guts anyway. I didn’t). This didn’t please old North-of-the-Border who was something of a Bessie Smith anorak.

In the interval he addressed the piano player thus: “Tell that wummun that she cannae phrase, she doesnae swing an’ she’s got the kind of voice that empties pubs in Ab-arrr-deeen at closin’ time!” I was mortified especially at the implication that he didn’t consider me worth addressing directly. So much so that I forgot the origin of this piece of spite – a silly drunken man wanting to hurt for fun.

I sent back a few fairly trenchant comments, along the lines of his playing reminding me of the noise a horse makes at its rear end. However, I was thrown and cried all the way home. Why on earth I believed him is beyond me – at least beyond me from where I’m standing now. One man, one opinion and filtered through a haze of alcohol fumes at that. Later, I heard this man had a name for getting drunk and launching verbal attacks on anyone near him – once doing it to the wife of a well-known jazz musician, before realising who she was and trying to backtrack. A man with a problem.

So I let it throw me, but the time away from singing wasn’t altogether wasted. I listened avidly to all kinds of jazz – mostly instrumental jazz but during that time I discovered the recordings of Jeri Southern and loved them. I soaked it all up and it added something to the way I sing now, I imagine. I also had some coaching from an opera singer, then from my good friend Ruth Allen and a lot later I went to Trudy Kerr and Anita Wardell for jazz vocal coaching. I have a lot to thank them for – a solid foundation to sing from, which has given me lots more confidence.

The moral, if moral there be is get yourself some chops - and nil illegitium carborundrum (dog Latin for don’t let the bastards grind you down).

I have actually had some bouquets as well as brickbats, but I won’t bother you with that. I’m off for a ciggie (does wonders for the bottom of the range) so ta-ta and be as good as is practicable in the circumstances. Or whatever.