what Frank is listening to #48 – HELEN MERRILL – Autumn Love – (Catalyst) – 1967
I know of Helen Merrill and actually collect her records … why I got hooked on her will become apparent. Over the course of buying her albums I learnt to love her music, and she is, I think, arguably, the finest white female jazz vocalist … ever. Others may be more well known or recognizable (Peggy Lee) and others have had more crossover success (Anita O'Day, June Christy, Annie Ross, Helen O'Connell) but I would argue that Merrill out sings them all and is probably more influential. So much so that she ranks with the best of the black female vocalists.
I can hear people saying "well why haven't I heard of her". Well, despite the fact she has put out over forty LPs (a lot of them scarce) she never crossed over into television or film work (like Peggy Lee) and never had mainstream pop chart success like June Christy or Helen O'Connell. Her popularity was exclusively within the jazz scenes, and not the jazz scene of casual listeners sitting around New Farm or West End* smoking Gitannes and having a cappuccino but with the hard core jazz followers, who, though small in number, were extremely purist, loyal and feverishly culty.
Helen was born Jelena Ana Milcetic to Croatian immigrant parents in New York City, 1930. Now I know you are going to say well that's why you like her – cause she is part of the Croat Diaspora. True enough, that's how I first discovered her, but after I started listening to her I realised she was notch above the others singers regardless of shared ancestry.
Now it may be a big call to put her above Peggy Lee or rank her alongside some Afro-American vocalists but the proof is in the music and in her "music mates".
At the age of 16 she was sitting in on jam sessions with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Bud Powell.
By the 50s she was recording with Earl Hines and was being sought out by aAro-American musicians as well as the cream of the white jazz community to vocalise on their records – Clifford Brown, Gil Evans, Dick Katz, Oscar Pettiford, Quincy Jones etc.
She went on to work with Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Charlie Mingus, Thad Jones, Charlie Byrd, Bill Evans.
Peggy Lee may have done one or two albums with jazz notables but otherwise her career tended to be one of singing reasonably "clean" white jazz with popular white bands playing in the jazz idiom rather than singing with jazz bands themselves. That's not to say she didn't have many fine recordings but when it comes to jazz vocalists Merrill was more well regarded.
It is also, perhaps, a result of her jazz purisms that she hasn't been as commercially successful in the US and England. The music is not easily accessible and definitely not for those looking for a swinging lounge vocalist. Merrill can swing but she also pushes the envelope in bringing all sorts of external influences to her jazz. She is well known for being a "experimenter" and has been defined probably best as a "jazz vocal modernist". Certainly she has a tendency to totally deconstruct a song and look for its emotional heart and then rebuild the song from there. Sure it sounds pretentious but that is what she does and that is what a good vocalist does. It's as hard to sing a song well as it is to write a good song despite rock music's attempts to dumb down the vocalist. Of course a good vocalist also usually knows exactly what sound they want from all the instruments around them, or who they want, and Merrill has always shown taste in her choice of collaborators.
The older Merrill got the more she experimented – she even did an album of Beatles songs in 1970 (not that that was that unusual as I think Ella Fitzgerald has already attacked the Beatles repertoire) and one of her recent albums (she is still going and releasing records and touring) called "Jelena Ana Milcetic a.k.a. Helen Merrill" draws on jazz, pop, and folk as well as traditional Croatian music! Merrill isn't afraid to attack pop tunes, soundtrack songs, contemporary songs as well as all the usual Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin, Sammy Cahn type stuff. Having said that she always takes the songs on her own terms and rarely interprets them in a familiar way.
I have spent more than a normal length of words in discussing Merrill's influence as I don't want to be attacked for liking this album on the basis of some sort of cultural ancestral cronyism.
If that ain't enough then:
From allaboutjazz.com
"One of the most distinctive jazz singers ever"
"One of the most distinctive jazz singers ever"
From allmusic.com
"A fine singer with a warm, expressive voice, Helen Merrill's infrequent recordings tend to be quite special with plenty of surprises and chance-taking".
"A fine singer with a warm, expressive voice, Helen Merrill's infrequent recordings tend to be quite special with plenty of surprises and chance-taking".
Otherwise you can do your own research.
Merrill also spent long periods in Japan (in the 1960s) and in Italy (In the early 1960s) where she has devout followings and recorded a number of albums. "Autumn Love" was recorded in Japan in 1967 using top notch Japanese jazz session men. The album is just about all ballads and really is the type of stuff that Peggy Lee was doing and doing very well. Merrill however is still too far out in left field to do anything straight … the songs that were upbeat are now sad and sometimes sparse and the songs that were sparse are now sparser still. The whole album is melancholy – the idea was to do an album of "Autumn Love" (late love) type songs – hence the melancholia. In that it succeeds, though some of it is static. Still, don't listen to this when maudlin or drinking.
Best Tracks:
- Someone to Watch Over Me
- September Song
- Autumn Leaves – the Johnny Mercer classic.
- You'd be So Nice to come Home To – which she did back in the mid 50s quite differently to this – she has changed the mood of the song to fit the mood of the album.
- Days of Wine and Roses – the Mancini song from the film of the same name.
Needless to say I was quite excited when I found this as Merrill's albums in Australia are scarce and … I will be keeping it.
Sound:
and attached
Early Helen:
Internet:
Biography:
Trivia: Mine is a reissue of the 1967 album – I have the less sexy sleeve unfortunately
More trivia: Helen Merrill's son Alan Merrill co-wrote "I Love Rock n Roll" (later covered by Joan Jett) whilst he was in the band "The Arrows".
A footnote on Frank and jazz : I was actually quite hostile to jazz in my youth. The trouble was I kept finding jazz records for $1 and found myself getting into it … especially when drawing the jazz line back to vocalists like Sinatra, Crosby etc whom i liked. I then realised I wasn't actually hostile to jazz but to the jazz audience (the people who think they know jazz). I still don't revere jazz as much as my other favourite genres but I certainly have a lot of time for it (from ragtime, trad, down to bop, cool and modern) … and I still think the mainstream jazz audience are fuckwits.
*New Farm and West End: suburbs in Brisbane with a high percentage of superficial arty types.
(originally posted: 17/06/2009)
