Bing Sings "Beautiful Girl" and "Temptation"

The immortal Bing Crosby. Though I never thought much of his voice, he was 70-something years old when I first heard him, and was relying on crooner dynamics to salvage what was left of his voice - but here, oh my! The pitch, the tone, the dynamic strength behind that honeyed voice. He has every trait of the finest singers in the world, including power that he barely uses. The movie scenes are charming and prove his comic chops, as well as his ability to beguile an audience even some 90 years later.

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You were temptation

This isn't the first time I've posted this - maybe not even the tenth, because I love it, the sultry setting, the drunken Bing, that woman with her impossible face filling the frame. But the reason I'm posting it this time is that Temptation reminds me, oddly enough, of The Quiet Village, that "exotica" piece I recently posted along with the Tarzan and Jane gifs. 

There are no bird calls in this, but the boom-cha, boom-cha, boom-cha is somehow similar. Or not! I just hear it that way in my head. 

This has gotten me started, so here are a few related and wholly-unrelated videos. Nobody does it better than Bing, though Mario comes close. There's a kid who sings, and I'll have to find out more about him, because he's really good. I just found the "bolero ballad" version played on some sort of supernatural Hammond organ, which I have mixed feelings about. 

This last one, it's a killer. I know nothing of the artist - I assume the song is in Korean - but it kills me every time I watch it. It actually makes me cry. Though it seems to have no relation to the feverish passion of the original, it does. It's that despair, that sense of being caught in something hopeless, a trap you never want to get out of. You think I've never felt like that?

Don't Mess with Mr. In-Between: Bob Dylan's very first performance

OK, I finally won this battle, the battle to find an excerpt I remembered from one of the many biographies of Bob Dylan. Dylan was maybe my first hero/crush, and as a teenager I worshipped him. Images from his songs still pop into my head, and I marvel at them and realize I will never write anything that good ("Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule. . ."). 

I had this excerpt in mind from a book called Down the Highway by somebody-or-other Sounes. I don't remember if I reviewed it or not during my endless career as a literary critic (during which I covered about 350 titles for the Montreal Gazette, Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun, and various lit mags), or bought it. At that point I wasn't buying many books because an online mag I was writing for was presenting me with truckloads of books they didn't want. After a while I didn't want them either, so I became a sort of storage depot. But this Dylan book, I can't find it anywhere, not in my shelves of review copies (which I have always kept segregated in chronological order, probably because at the time they were the only identity I had as a writer and I was afraid of disappearing), or anywhere in my own collection, though I did find THREE other Dylan bios: the first one written by Anthoony Scaduto, a spiral-bound galley proof called Behind the Shades, and Chronicles, Dylan's first attempt at a memoir.

But soft! What's this? All I had to google was Bob Dylan Accentuate the Positive, and lo! This came up. I am sure it is in the public domain cuzzadafact that it was sitting there on the internet, just a-sittin' there saying "take me".

So I found it: the record of Bob Dylan's very first musical performance. As a child, he seems to have been unusually self-possessed. His parents seem loving, even devoted. One would expect horrible abuse, alcoholism, etc., but there was none of that. Perhaps that's why he's still around, tough as an old dandelion root.

The central hillside district of Duluth was predominantly Jewish and Polish, with a synagogue at the end of the road. There was a general store, a European bakery, the Loiselle liquor store, and a Sears Roebuck at the bottom of the hill. The weather was determined by Lake Superior, so vast and deep it remained icy cold throughout the year. Even in mid-summer, Duluth could be shrouded in frigid fog. There was a fresh ocean smell and the cry of seagulls. Ships approaching the landmark Ariel Bridge sounded their horns and a horn on the bridge blasted in reply. These were the sights and sounds Bob grew up with as the Second World War raged to its end.

    In 1946, a year after the war ended, Bob enrolled at the Nettleton elementary school two blocks from his home. The same year he gave his singing debut at a family party. Children were encouraged to perform for the entertainment of the adults. When it was his turn, four-year-old Bob stamped his foot for attention. "If everybody in this room will keep quiet," he said. "I will sing for my grandmother. I'm going to sing `Some Sunday Morning.'" It was such a success the audience demanded an encore. Bob obliged with "Accentuate the Positive." These were popular tunes on the radio at the time. "Our phone never stopped ringing with people congratulating me," said the proud Beatty.

    Not long after, Bob had a second opportunity to perform, at the wedding of Beatty's sister, Irene. The relatives wanted Bob to sing again. Bob was reluctant, even when an uncle offered him money, but Abe persuaded him. Once again he prefaced his performance by telling the excited relatives, "If it's quiet, I will sing." It was another great success. Everybody cheered and clapped and one of Bob's uncles pressed money into his hand. With instinctive showmanship, Bob turned to his mother and said, "Mummy, I'm going to give the money back." It brought the house down. "People would laugh with delight at heating him sing. He was, I would say, a very lovable, a very unusual child," Abe remembered. "I think we were the only ones who would not agree that he was going to be a very famous person some day ... When he sang `Accentuate the Positive' the way other children his age sang `Mary Had a Little Lamb' people said he was brilliant." As Beatty said, it was amazing her son was not spoiled by so much attention.

You were temptation

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

Levant and his "honeysuckle"

This is a bad version of a good clip. The clip I used to have (of the same song) mysteriously shrank, filling about 1/4 of the screen, which is too bad because THIS one leaves out a few seconds before and after the song which are completely charming. But this is a good example of Oscar's strange seductiveness, which does seem to apply to men as well as women. I mean. . . calling a man "Honeysuckle" is just a little too much, isn't it? Any nickname that has "suck" in it is suspicious to me.