Songs to Celebrate
Squeezed between the MICF, the MIJF, and the forthcoming Melbourne International Cabaret Festival, the Melbourne Recital Centre presents The Great American Songbook Festival. Coral Drouyn urges you all not to miss it and talks to one of the stars, Johanna Allen, about a very special show.
Miles Davis (just to drop a name) said, “music and life are all about style,” and it’s no secret that the musical style of the Great American Songbook transformed the sounds of America in the 20th century.
Glorious musical standards from Broadway, roaring jazz parties, red-hot cabarets and pop icons - 20th-century America gave birth to a swag of singers, songwriters, composers and musicians who have defined American popular song: George Gershwin, Etta James, Harold Arlen, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Burt Bacharach and Frank Sinatra, just to name a few. It really started back in the early 1930s, and without the composers and lyricists who pushed the boundaries and broke new ground back then, there would be no pop music, no jazz, no torch songs, no musical theatre and we would all still be listening to Sigmund Romberg or even Mozart (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
This year’s festival presents a wide variety of terrific artists – from Mary Wilson of the Supremes, to Mama Alto (the Counter-tenor) channelling her inner Billie Holliday (it’s 100 years since Lady Day’s birth) and our own Bobby Fox and Michael Falzon re-creating Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello’s Painted From Memory – with a band in the main hall. But for me, the most interesting of them all is a special cabaret called The Songs That Got Away, which explores the days of The Cotton Club and the music of Harold Arlen, presented by a “1930’s Chanteuse” played by the super eclectic vocal powerhouse Johanna Allen.
“Who is Harold Arlen?” I hear some of you say, and don’t feel bad. Arlen’s name has been largely forgotten because he was a composer, not a lyricist; but what is a song without a haunting melody? Just a bunch of words. Many of us don’t remember lyrics – but we can hum a tune that is lodged forever in our psyche. So if I ask you to hum the melodies to “Over The Rainbow”, “Blues In the Night”. “The Man that Got Away”, “Come Rain or Come Shine”, “Stormy Weather” and nearly 500 other songs that are now standards, you’d be humming a Harold Arlen melody.
Johanna Allen is passionate about the era and Arlen’s music. “Even when I was a kid I was far more interested in the music of the thirties and forties than I was in pop music,” she tells me. “I remember visits to my Pop’s, and he was an avid Duke Ellington fan – so I actually knew about The Cotton Club far better than I knew about The Cavern and the Beatles background.”
Johanna hails back to the great songstresses of the past, Judy Garland, Billie Holliday, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald – each one a legend. “The thing about Arlen is that, being the son of a cantor, he adopted as a signature that melancholy sound of minor chords backing strong melodies, that is so prevalent in Jewish religious music. There is something inherently sad about his music and that’s why his greatest successes have been in songs for women to sing – we’re drawn to them, although one of his greatest “hits” is “One for my Baby, One More for the Road” – and there was nothing girly about Frank Sinatra. And yet, despite all that, so few even know his name, and his life is an enigma. But I remember, as a kid, watching The Wizard of Oz, and ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ made me cry. It wasn’t the lyrics….that came later for me… it was the beautiful touching music”
It’s Allen’s enthusiasm and love for the music that has seen her carve out a career internationally and, with her first album – “Calling Card” -released to critical acclaim, it’s still hard to put a label on her. She’s sung in Opera, jazz clubs, Cabarets and in Musicals on Main Stages. She’s also a founding member of the acclaimed Cabaret trio “’Gentlemen Prefer Curves’. “I love it all,” she explains. “I’m just hungry for the music…all good music, but I guess, physically (she is deliciously curvy in a perfect way) and vocally I am something of a throwback to another era, and if I can help keep that music alive, well, I’m happy.”
For a girl from Adelaide with no performers in her family, it’s a long way to studying music at Julliard in New York. “I spent my formative years thinking I would be a solicitor or a teacher because…well… you just didn’t say you were going to be a singer. But somehow, I just knew I couldn’t ever be happy if I didn’t pursue music.”
There are enough great songs for Johanna to sing, without also devising a scenario to put them in, but that wouldn’t have been enough for Johanna. “Great songs tell a story when you sing them,”, she says. “Take ‘The Man That Got Away’ for example. But if you can create a scenario, a context, and tell another story to go with the obvious, well, for me, that’s all entertainment.”
So Johanna’s new show – which has already played the Hayes Theatre in Sydney and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival to rave reviews – sees her as “The Storyteller” living the halcyon days of The Cotton Club and the stars that visited. She doesn’t impersonate Lena Horne or Garland, but she FEELS them when she performs – she’s part of that magic and mystique that is talked about with love and respect. Time Out New York said of one performance of hers, “It is rare to find a performance where acting instinct and voice are so finely crafted. Allen’s instrument is extraordinary - See it for her alone.”
Johanna will be taking the show to Noosa and, just maybe, to New York. “Harold’s adopted son Sam saw a DVD of the show and we’re working together on a New York Season.”
In the meantime you can see The Songs that Got Away at The MRC tomorrow and Saturday June 12 & 13, 2015). I’m thrilled that I will get to share my love of Arlen with such a great performer, and that keeps Arlen’s name alive. But, as Johanna tells me, “Harold never cared that he wasn’t famous like George Gershwin or Cole Porter. He used to say, “I don’t care if they don’t remember my name, as long as they remember my music.” That’s the mark of true greatness.
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