Letters from Radio Quotidia- the Blues 2

Welcome to Radio Quotidia, episode 2 of The Blues, 12 minutes of music and musings. Quentin Bega here at the helm. I’m broadcasting from our studio located somewhere in the depths of Quotidia inside a digital onion. My aim to keep you entertained for a while. Let’s continue now with a couple of great tracks.

In 1971, a month or so before I got married, my brother Brendan, who had bought me Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited six years before, organised a night for our family and friends at a small, cosy, hotel in Cushendall. We had a meal and retired for drinks to a small lounge area where a piano was set against the wall. A pleasant-looking matronly guest who was staying at the hotel- not one of our little group- sat down and began to play. Emboldened by wine, I asked did she know Summertime.

The previous year I had devised a lead break for the song on my Burns short-scale jazz guitar instead of studying for my exams. I was rather proud of it and still had dreams of rescuing that Burns short-scale, my first electric guitar, from the pawn shop where I had traded it for rent arrears. Historical note- I never did get round to it. Maybe, that’s why I requested that song- I can’t remember now- but I remember with gratitude her rendition of this classic for a rather bleary-eyed young man. Memory renders it right up there with the great interpreters. And, for what it’s worth, here is my take on it: [insert song]

The song is from Porgy and Bess Its lyrics are by DuBose Heyward, of whom Broadway legend, Stephen Sondheim, wrote, he has gone largely unrecognized as the author of the finest set of lyrics in the history of the American musical theatre – namely, those of Porgy and Bess. The music, of course, was written by George Gershwin.

The setting of the song was Catfish Row, a dockside area of Charleston, South Carolina in the 1930s, Clara, a young, black woman, sings to her baby. Her husband Jake is a fisherman, and, like all the people of the settlement, they live hardscrabble lives. This scenario, of life, of death has been repeated throughout history and indeed prehistory. Through all the noise and nonsense, the conflict, the clash, we hear the soothing tones of mother to child as she seeks to shield her offspring from the unruly universe by resorting to a lullaby.

21-year-old Billie Holiday recorded the first cover of this song in 1936. She was part of the Harlem Renaissance spanning the 1920s and 30s including such important black artists as musicians Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong and writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.  According to Wikipedia some people would argue that the Harlem Renaissance never ended and has continued to be an important cultural force in the United States through the decades: from the age of stride piano jazz and blues to the ages of bebop, rock and roll, soul, disco and hip-hop.

A great song and I still remember vividly the rendition at my Buck’s night in 1971. The year before, in 1970, I was in Belfast’s Smithfield Markets rummaging for cheap second-hand records when over the speakers in the record store I heard Christine McVie’s haunting performance of I’d Rather Go Blind. And, of course, I had to buy it.  When I heard of her death at the end of November last year, I listened again (and again) to the track that had captivated me over half a century ago. So, in tribute to this great artist, I present this version [insert song]

And, remembering that the blues is about more than crying or being sad, here is a poem by Joyce Grenfell, born to an affluent Anglo-American family. I remember her as an amusing anecdotist and reciter of her own verse on light entertainment shows in the late sixties and early seventies. Joyce was a monologuist of real talent, who had an international career spanning four decades. I present here a short verse of hers. While in no way fitting the mould of a typical blues versifier, I think the acerbic wit displayed in these lines would fit right in, If I should die before the rest of you,/Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone./Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice,/But be the usual selves that I have known./Weep if you must,/Parting is hell./But life goes on,/So sing as well. [749 words]

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 9 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.