You probably don't own this 1958 album. Which is a shame because it's brilliant. And it's really hard to find. We had to have it imported from the Netherlands. Through Basement Discs in Melbourne. Aren't we cool. Yes, given we don't actually dig to find albums very often and because we love it so much there is a particular smugness in our relationship with it.
It's late March in Canberra so it is one of the last nights we'll comfortably sit outside. So we're smoking cigars and we'll probably have a bourbon after our martini. This is a night for nostalgia. For an era you don't really know anything about but wish to be a part of all the same.
Like so many blues greats, these songs are infused by tragedy. Bessie Smith grew up in the deep, deep south, developing her talent in a 'travelling minstrel show' and confined to performing to black audiences. Her popularity with white audiences really only grew after her death. Her decline was brought about by alcoholism but her death was the result of racism. After a car accident, she was denied treatment at a 'white's only' hospital and bled to death on the way to find another.
We think of Dinah mostly for her sentimental, slow, love songs. There's a couple on here, but her tribute to Bessie, recorded twenty years after Bessie's death, is blues and dixie jazz. Her voice is powerful, raspy and seductive. Most often it's Nina Simone we turn to for oomph, but Dinah more than brings it.
Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair is wonderful because, in a time when many blues numbers were about killing your cheatin', disrespeccin' lady, it's about a woman proudly owning up to "slitting her good man's throat" and asking to be slain rather than rotting in jail.
You've Been a Good Old Wagon is a serenade to a broken wagon. It's a testament to Dinah's singing that lamenting a broken cart sounds so sorrowful and wrenching. We're going to write a tune about L's late 1984 Sigma. It will break your heart.
The tremendous thing about these tunes is that there's four or five instruments playing lead at the same time. The vocals, keys, clarinet, trombone and trumpet all battle the others for the spotlight, each playing their own intricate melody but still fitting together to create ornate songs. And as much as we love the clarinet, Dinah's voice wins out every time.
We discovered this album after hearing Back Water Blues on a plane. Even through the crappy Qantas headphones, her voice blew you away. It's an astonishing song, breathtaking every time. It's about the flood in New Orleans in 1911, when the black community was left to fend for itself. Almost one hundred years later America, while so much had changed, there is still a ways to go.
This is a beautiful album with style and grace and guts. Go and find it for your next Saturday night at home with your gin.
