This Week on Jazz Spectrum - 7/26-7/28

Song of the Week – “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” – Music by Manning Sherwin ; lyrics by Eric Maschwitz

July 24, 2024

By Fritz Byers

Each week, Fritz exchanges thoughts with Aly Krajewski about the Song of the Week featured on Jazz Spectrum Saturday.

Dear Aly,

At a recent Let’s Get Acquainted team-building exercise (don’t ask), the moderator stole a question from the NYT Book Review regular feature, By the Book, in which a writer is asked a series of probing queries. She presented the group with the inquiry: “You’ve having a dinner party. What three people, living or dead, do you invite?” (Fair enough – it’s an excellent question.)

We had to write the answers down, so no would crib from others or shape their answers to be even cooler than the last person. What are the odds of this – among the seven people who answered, two of us named Eric Maschwitz. Well, strictly speaking, I named Eric and the other person named Holt Marvell. Same person – Holt was a pseudonym. At least I think I have that right – maybe it’s vice-versa.

Talk about team-building, or at least a Noah’s Ark variation, two-by-two.

Turns out our thinking was parallel, or maybe the word is complementary. My focus was on Eric’s having written the lyrics to two of the great songs: “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” and “These Foolish Things.” I’ve always felt a sense of bewildered awe that one’s legacy as a songwriter would comprise those two tunes, without any others that fall anywhere near that top tier of the pantheon. Years ago, I invented a whole story about how it happened and why he declined to try write a third. It’s not the same, of course, but the legacy reminds me of Norman Maclean, writing the masterpiece novella A River Runs Through It and then more or less saying, “No more. I’m good.”

In contrast to my slim knowledge, the other person knew all about Eric, or Holt, or whomever. I think I have at least some of this partly right: British prep school, a few screenplays of modest success, some stage and radio-theater acting, a stint as a magazine editor, and so on.

I didn’t learn till later the coolest thing about Eric – he served in the British Secret Service, MI-6, the equivalent of the CIA. You can read all about it in his autobiography, No Chip on My Shoulder. Hard to find, but worth it, totally worth it.

One more surprise, and then we’ll get to the song: He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire – hence, you’ll occasionally encounter OBE after his name. But as best I can tell (he’s cagey about it in his autobiography), he received the honor BEFORE he joined MI-6. Well-played, British Monarchy: acknowledging artistic merit without requiring war-time patriotism as a precondition!

All this real-time sharing about Eric occurred before my recent trip to London, but it greatly enriched the experience of walking through Berkeley Square on the way from our hotel to a dazzling Italian restaurant on an adjacent corner, which we did twice during our week there. But, food destination aside, walking through the square is a . . . the only word for it is, it’s a lovely experience. There were birds, and they sang because, like us, they know that singing is the thing to do. But no nightingales.

We have the great song instead, written in 1939, Eric’s lyrics set to the music of Manning Sherwin – another artist with a slim resume, of which “Nightingale” is the centerpiece, if not the only line. There’s much to be told about the circumstances of song’s creation, but let’s just get to the versions we’ll hear this week:

We start with one of the first recordings, from 1940: the Glenn Miller Orchestra, backing Ray Eberle. I think the twittering clarinet that opens the tune is an aural reference to the singing bird of the song’s title, but it recedes quickly, and then you have Ray’s rounded elocution of the lyrics. As a first assay of the melody and the elegant lyrics, it’s a serviceable version. I offer it as a table-setting.

Then, the be-bop piano legend, Bud Powell, deconstructs the tune, adds a few Art Tatum arpeggios, and then skips to double-timing. I’m not sure why this version grips me so. I think it is because, knowing a bit about Bud’s life, I imagine him, sitting at the keyboard, searching, not for a way into and through the melody, but for something ethereal, which this song and this version are.

Anita O’Day just slays me when she sings at this tempo and you can hear her appear to be stretching to the limits of her range to hit just the right tremulous note. As is almost always the case with her, this version is personal, deeply felt, and indelible.

And the first set concludes with a spare cool version, opening with the light legato tone of Stan Getz’s tenor, which is soon counterpointed by the valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, who gently elbows Stan aside and takes over the melody statement, and then begins playing around with it. From there, the track reflects a familiar West-Coast kind of slow-cadenced airy interplay whose profundity becomes more evident the closer you listen.

The second set begins with Rosemary Clooney, who grew into a great ballad singer. So we should be happy that, late in her career, she recorded Rosemary Clooney Sings Ballads. That recording has a handful of brilliant performances; this one, on which Rosemary is backed by only the marvelous guitarist Ed Bickert (another JS favorite), is among them.

Then the organist Sam Yahel, long a Jazz Spectrum favorite, from his 1993 trio date with Peter Bernstein on guitar and the drummer Brian Blade. I don’t understand anything about techniques of playing the Hammond B3, so the sounds Sam coaxes from the instrument during the middle intervals of the tune, leading into Peter’s precise solo, which is far from flashy but only just perfect, are to me an enduring mystery. I love this version.

Next we have Carmen McRae, singing in 1958 on her record Birds of a Feather. The arrangement of Ralph Burns presents Carmen, as he so often did with favored singers, in a sort of lofty prominence. At the time, Carmen had settled into her it-girl status, having been voted best new female vocalist by DownBeat a few years earlier. And her unique way with a lyric, which she credited to her years scuffling through Chicago clubs, was now abetted by her immense confidence in phrasing.

And the survey concludes with Sonny Rollins turning in the kind of tour-de-de force ballad statement and improvisation for which he has long been revered.

O, Aly, a final thing: it’s really true that, on one of the nights we crossed Berkeley Square to eat the world’s best burrata, there was a moon lingering over London town. I know, ‘cuz I was there.