A serendipitous Intertunnel find. I’m Beginning To See The Light is a jazz standard. It’s older than it seems; it’s World War II vintage. Duke Ellington and three others wrote it. Bobby Darin’s take on it is the quintessential version, if you ask me. It was on the Swingers soundtrack, which is pretty good overall, and many people discovered it thereby. I think of the song as a fifties thing.
Bobby Darin was a very accomplished singer. He never starts on the last note and goes up from there; the song builds from beginning to end, never wanders. The whole style is often aped but rarely performed as ably. The video I embedded gets lost halfway through, and pulls over at a disreputable rest stop where bass solos hang around to ask for directions. Oh well. The guitar player is delightfully loopy in his facial tics, and can really blast away when called on. His comping is very effective, too.
The singer is Cyrille Aimee, just the sort of exotic that New York loves enough to get hired, but if the tepid applause at the end is any indication, plays in half-empty clubs, because no matter how cosmopolitan a city thinks it is, the vast majority of people everywhere are Philistines, and would rather line up around the block to see dreck while accomplished artists play to an audience of chair backs. Such is life.
Me? I go in for afterglow. It’s on YouTube, next to the Psy videos.
7 Responses
Bobby Darin link needs changing. Until I was well into adulthood, I didn't realize that the singer of Splish Splash also had an affinity for jazz.
As Unogranized Hancock does, also.
Hi Gringo- Thanks for pointing that out. I done fixed it.
My parents liked Bobby Darin records, and played them often when I was little. I was an adult before I realized he wasn't as famous as Frank Sinatra.
Bobby Darin is the man. Anybody that can get away with a knife murderer hit is okay in my book. Dude inhabited Film Noir, but in pop circles.
Cyrille may even have whisky on her breath, much less in her voice, and I'd be sold. But, then again, what do I know?
Speaking of Splish Splash, many years ago I heard a DJ announce the beginning of The Grovis Hour, an hour of fine poetry set to music, sponsored by Grovis, the chocolate cookie sold under the counter everywhere, and then began reading the lyrics of Splish Splash.
Clicking on the Darin link, I notice the vid is titled "I'm Begging To See The Light".
Grovis–and cool jazz in the background.
Some 40+ years ago my first wife and I eloped to Las Vegas. We went to a show at the Frontier. Flip Wilson was the warm up for Bobby Darin. Pretty good show but the dessert was better.