Late Life Jazz: The Life and Career of Rosemary Clooney (28 page)

Regardless of whether Rosemary had become a bona fide jazz singer, by the early ’80s there were undeniable changes in both the sound and the style of her singing. Some were to do with nothing more than the passage of time. In her youth, she had been blessed with a crystal-clear, bell-like tone to her voice. When set alongside her impeccable diction, it gave an almost clinically sharp edge to her vocals, her voice cutting through the lyrics of a song like a knife through softened butter. But, like any other part of the body, the vocal cords are not immune from the aging process. All singers experience a thickening of the voice as they move into their 50s, usually accompanied by some loss of range in the upper register which to a degree, can be compensated by greater depth at the lower end of the scale. Add to that the effects of a lifetime’s smoking and the consequence was that Rosemary developed a gritty raspiness to her voice. It was by no means
unattractive and in many ways, more suited to the autobiographical style of singing that she was moving toward. Nevertheless, the pure sound of a voice that had once mimicked the birds in the trees had gone for good.

If Rosemary had chosen to stick with the style of singing that had made her famous, it would have been no great surprise. Many of her contemporaries from the ’50s earned good money on the nostalgia circuit trotting out 30-year old hits in a 30-year old style. Indeed,
4 Girls 4
owed much of its success to that. What separated Rosemary Clooney from the pack was that as she moved into her fifth decade of performing, she was still capable of developing and growing her art. It was a quality that reviewer Peter Reilly drew out when assessing her
Cole Porter
album. “Rosemary Clooney’s greatest accomplishment here has been to take her voice, which for the last few decades has been one of the most distinctive and recognizable sounds in American popular music, and put it to the service of a hard-won new musical sensibility and style,” he wrote. “It’s one of those signs of growth that appear all too rarely in any kind of music, particularly pop. That she’s carried it off with the same laid-back good humor and easy warmth that helped make her a star in the first place is just another indication of the depth of her talent.”
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The transformation in Rosemary’s singing was an evolutionary process, but by the mid-1980s, Rosemary had developed into jazz and popular music’s supreme storyteller. Where once she had offered a glacier-like expression of a lyricist’s art, now she brought their subjects to life, inhabiting and interpreting the songs in a way that no one else could. The journey had no Damascene moment although there were several notable milestones along the way. Her stunning rendition of “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life” had stopped Merv Griffin’s TV audience in its tracks in 1975. A 1978 appearance on the
Jim Nabors Show
saw Rosemary sing “Tea for Two” as a tender love song rather than the knockabout treatment that it usually received, while her 1979 Gershwin album produced a version of “But Not for Me” that was delivered like an intricate jigsaw, attention focused on each word in Ira’s lyric while still painting an overall picture of self-pity and indulgence. Rosemary’s ability to grow, vocally, owed much to her rediscovered love of singing, something she commented on in several interviews in the early ’80s and which was never more apparent than in a series of virtuoso performances in Holland in 1981 at the North Sea Jazz Festival. Rosemary now looked for a personal meaning or message in every song she sang. “I need to be able to take something that’s happened to me that I can put into the dramatic situation so I can take that point of view,” she said toward the end of her life. “For instance, ‘Come in from the Rain’ is a love song about a man and a woman. Not to me. ‘Come in from the Rain’
is about my children and that’s what I think of.”
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New York music critic Stephen Holden expressed it more starkly. “Material solidity replaced the dreamy romanticism,” he said.
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As Rosemary’s rebirth continued, she often returned to songs that she had performed or recorded earlier in her career. Drawing a timeline through two or three versions of the same song offers a graphic illustration of the development of her art. On
Blue Rose
in 1956, she had sung Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady.” Originally written as an instrumental piece, the song’s fame came from Mitchell Parish’s lyric, added later. It was a song about illusion and disillusion. In 1956, Rosemary delivered a word-perfect vocal with the care and precision of a ballerina tiptoeing through a mine-field. What captivates in that recording is the enunciation of each syllable. The listener focuses on each word much as a stereophile might listen to the detail of individual instruments on a new set of speakers, the musical equivalent of failing to see the wood for the trees. Rosemary’s 1956 brushstrokes do create a picture of the “dining, dancing” sophisticate who is the song’s heroine, but it is a picture painted remotely and without empathy. Fast-forward 20 years to Rosemary’s part in the Ellington tribute on Concord. Rosemary’s vocal on the same song is now more relaxed, engaging, and closer to the subject. Where 20 years ago, Rosemary was looking in through the window of the ballroom where the song’s scene takes place, now she is inside and on the edge of the dance floor. Still, however, she watches and observes. Flip ahead again to 1995 and Rosemary’s third recording of the song for her
Demi-Centennial
album. What emerges then is almost unrecognizable compared to her
Blue Rose
offering. By then, the song had become the regular closer for her jazz club act. Now, she lives out the loss and longing of Mitchell Parish’s heroine, never more so than when she answers the rhetorical “is that all you really want?” with a half chuckled “No.” It was a been-there, done-that, got-the-scars moment in song.

Harold Arlen was Rosemary’s next Concord subject after Cole Porter. The album was short, nine songs with a running time of not much over 30 minutes, and was hastily compiled. Allen Sviridoff recalled that he and Rosemary had picked the songs during the flight to Toronto for the recording session in January 1983. Rosemary was kinder in her assessment of Arlen than she had been about Porter. “He seemed to write in a southern-kind of way,” she said fondly.
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Arlen returned the compliment, sending Rosemary a dozen white roses and a note that said, “You’re exquisite.”
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The album would be the last one that would be done just with head arrangements. Allen Sviridoff’s plans for building Rosemary’s second career meant that the Concord albums needed to provide the basis for her live engagements. That meant they had to replicate easily on stage, creating an album/tour
package that could be renewed and repeated each year. The free-spirited gigs such as the North Sea Jazz Festival of 1981 had been great fun for all concerned but essentially had relied upon the musicians remembering the treatment of the songs from the records. Something different was needed now and arrived in the form of a young musician called John Oddo. After graduating from the Eastman School of Music in 1978—ironically, the same musical alma mater as Mitch Miller—Oddo had joined the Woody Herman band as a keyboard player and arranger. Herman was a dinosaur from the halcyon days of the big swing bands in the ’30s. Fronting several generations of “Thundering Herds,” his latest incarnation had signed with Concord Jazz and by 1983, there were five Herman albums available on the label. When Rosemary expressed a desire do a big band album, Carl Jefferson suggested a pairing with Herman.

The sessions were arranged for August 1983. An album of big band swing was a departure from the informality of Rosemary’s small group sessions. Herman worked with a 16-piece orchestra, and a full set of charts was necessary for each of the eight songs that Rosemary, Herman, and Jefferson had selected. Ordinarily, the job of preparing the orchestrations for Herman fell to John Oddo, although Rosemary too had her own arranger. Frankie Ortega had handled all of the arrangements for
4 Girls 4
plus much of Rosemary’s solo work on stage but had been absent from her Concord albums. Jefferson’s proposal had Oddo doing four arrangements and Ortega doing the rest. The idea was an unusual compromise for the hard-nosed owner of the label and probably always doomed to failure, even had Ortega not fallen ill in the run up to the sessions. When the dates came around, his ailment meant he was too ill to be present. His charts were unfamiliar to the Herman musicians and it was soon apparent that for the first session, the only usable arrangements were the four prepared by Oddo. Overnight, the young Eastman graduate came up with three more arrangements for the next day’s recording. It left “The Glory of Love” as the odd man out on the album, Michael Patterson providing the emergency cover for that track.

The arrangements were arguably the album’s best feature. Herman’s musicians could swing with gusto and Rosemary was happy to stand toe to toe with them. The disc, however, never recovered from the weaknesses in its song list. Most titles were contemporary items, similar to Rosemary’s
With Love
selection but ill-suited to a swing band. The two strongest songs were both old standards. “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” an Ellington composition, benefited from an all-too-rare clarinet solo from Herman, while the album’s title track, “My Buddy,” gave Rosemary an opportunity to apply her interpretive skills to the venerable Kahn-Donaldson song.

Down the years, the album was far more significant for having provided the genesis of Rosemary’s musical partnership with John Oddo. The two had first met the year before in New York. The Herman band was playing at the
Fat Tuesday
club and Rosemary came in one evening during her appearance with Tony Bennett and the Count Basie band at the Westbury Music Fair. At the time, neither knew much about the other but by the time
My Buddy
was complete, Rosemary had Oddo in her sights. Stories that she had poached him from Herman were untrue, however. “I had done three years with Woody and had already given him my notice,” Oddo said.
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Herman had asked him to stay until the album with Rosemary was done and Rosemary called him soon after. It was the beginning of a relationship that would endure for the remainder of Rosemary’s life and career.

It is hard to overstate the importance of John Oddo to Rosemary Clooney’s career. He was an “impeccable” choice, said brother Nick, “the exact, right person. He did not need to be the star.”
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Impresario John Schreiber said that Oddo “knew what would enable her to shine.”
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Bass player Jay Leonhart said that Oddo was “the consummate musician” who took charge of everything and on whom Rosemary placed total reliance, especially as she got older.
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“I admire him more than anybody,” Rosemary said in 1995. “I love the fact that he breathes with me on stage.”
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When Rosemary resumed her songbook series of albums for Concord in June 1984, the impact of Oddo was immediately apparent.
Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Irving Berlin
was the first small-group album to have the parts for each musician sketched out in advance. Oddo’s work fell short of full arrangements, said Scott Hamilton, but it was enough to “change the nature of what we were doing in a very positive way.”
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The Berlin album was perhaps the most obvious songbook for Rosemary given her association with the composer that dated back to
White Christmas
in 1954. The set featured 10 tracks, the best two being the pair of songs that Rosemary sang just to the accompaniment of Ed Bickert’s guitar. “Be Careful, It’s My Heart” came from the 1942 movie,
Holiday Inn
, starring Bing Crosby. Ahead of the picture’s release, song pluggers had the song down to be the film’s big hit, until Berlin unveiled the specially written “White Christmas.” The other song with Bickert, “What I’ll Do,” was one of Berlin’s most tender songs, written in 1923 and a perfectly wistful vehicle for the new Rosemary. Despite Oddo’s influence, the album still contained the lengthy instrumental solos that had been a characteristic of the earlier Concord discs. They were a feature that not everyone liked, including Irving Berlin. Approaching his 96th birthday, the legendary songwriter was still sufficiently tuned in to raise the issue with Rosemary. “Why do you wait so long between choruses? Why don’t you sing right away?” he asked. “It’s a
jazz album and I have to let the musicians play,” said Rosemary. Berlin was not for turning. “I don’t know, I think it’s a long time for those instruments,” he said.
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Nevertheless,
Downbeat
’s assessment was that the instrumental solos were “beautifully crafted” and that “Clooney and company have come up with another small-scale gem.”
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After teaming up with John Oddo for the Herman album, Rosemary had embarked upon the ambitious touring schedule that she had mapped out to Jack Hawn in Los Angeles. First stop was Japan for three nights at the Aurex Jazz Festival, with appearances in Tokyo, Osaka, and Yokohama. Bandleader Harry James had been due to make the trip with Rosemary, the first professional reunion for the two of them since their Columbia recordings in 1952. Earlier in the year, however, James had been diagnosed with cancer. He had continued to work but died on July 5. His passing meant that the support orchestral role went to Les Brown and his Band of Renown. Rosemary was back in the states by the time her daughter-in-law, singer Debby Boone, gave birth to twins on September 17, 1983. The babies were Rosemary’s second and third grandchildren, a figure that would eventually rise to 10. The role of grandmother fitted Rosemary like a glove and she took to it with all her usual gusto and enthusiasm. “The most incredible grandmother—ever,” said Boone.
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By the time Rosemary flew off to London in November 1983, John Oddo was part of the touring ensemble. Rosemary would give few performances without him for the rest of her career. “I would fly 3,000 miles for a three-minute song on a TV show,” he said.
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The London trip included a performance at the Barbican Center alongside Vic Damone, Buddy Greco, and Kay Starr. It was the first significant appearance in Britain for the restyled Clooney. The London
Times
found her to be “something of a revelation. While it would be stretching a point to describe what she does as jazz, there was no doubt that her performance in London on Thursday night represented interpretative popular singing of a very high order. She showed herself to be the possessor of a sunny, slightly throaty contralto and a firm, straight forward line of phrasing.” The reviewer, Richard Williams, was less kind, however, when it came to describing Rosemary’s appearance. “A motherly figure whose voice emerged from the top of something resembling a red and purple brocade tent,” he wrote.
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