The lee side starts with Brenda Lee: The Definitive Collection – maybe not all the hits but enough for me. ‘I’m Sorry’ is a classic, melodramatic, over-the-top song as she sings her codependent heart out. Her gumbo rock is fine & she survived being a child star quite well too. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree is a season fav too. Her life was no ‘normal’ there’s been no movie bio 🙂
Now to the cocktail lounge with an mp3 collection that includes. Julia Lee: And Her Boyfriends. This is an lp to cd transfer. I bought the lp based on the sweet cover – a portrait of her in a mink. The songs are ‘suggestive’ i.e. My Man Stands Out. Her voice is sexy & she knows an innuendo where she sings one. With her is Risky Blues – an lp compilation of even more suggestive songs ‘Big Ten Inch (record).’
Here too are a couple of lps by Blossom Dearie: Once Upon A Summer Time, Cafe-apres Midi. Blossom is on the less raunchy side of nightclub singers. A sweet, light, playful voice she is worshiped by jazz singers. her material pulls mainly from Broadway with some jazz standards thrown in. You can almost hear the cocktail shaker in the back ground.
The opposite is a pair by Mable Mercer: Sings Cole Porter, Merely Marvellous. I first heard her on a jazz magazine sampler singing Ballad of all the Sad Young Men. Mable has a nice alto range & is relaxing & fun. She doesn’t push jazz boundaries. Emotional without showing off. her material is similar to Blossom’s with a dash of more modern stuff – ie 59th Street Bridge Song.
More show-offish is Jane Morgan. I have the wonderfully over-produced Jane In Spain, & Time. Jane has a classic clear night-club voice. Spain is a delight with its hitch Latino flourishes of castanets & some of the songs, Granada, are ‘Spanish’ sung in English. Time is more diverse & ‘modern’ with songs like Moon River, Tammy given the nightclub treatment.
Final Lee is Peggy Lee – an inspiration for all the above – she started as a big band torch singer whose career changed with the times. I have in various mp3 collections: Beauty and the Beat (w: George Shearing), Latin Lee, Ole Lee, Fever, Christmas Carousel, Is That All There Is – her Some are standard issue lie Latin Lee but all are elevated by her delivery. Her Christmas Carousel is one of my seasonal favourites.
Chocolates
this is the week
when the universal currency is
hearts & flowers
chocolates & regrets
traded with eager expectations
I’ll give you a glimpse of this
if you give me a glimpse of that
I’ll put up with your doing that
if you allow me to do do this
I’ll treat you like crap
love you & put up with your crap
because you love me
we exchange these representations
of our willingness to continue
our little patterns of regret dispute
in the name of tender loving
compassionate cooperation
because our relationship is perfect
bouquet trade-offs
of explanations for reality
how far we compromised
our teenage ideals
for our forty-year-old realities
so many of us
are still ruled by bitter teenagers
who didn’t get the pretty girl
or great guy we idolized in high school
we still cart that fractured dream
around as a measure of what we want
as if we’d stop some teenager
in the street today and ask
‘is this the one for me’
not that a stranger
can actually to talk
to a teenager in the street today
without getting charged for something
but that’s another story
another compromise
to protect us from one another
so where was I
ah yes
the new universal currency
of regrets fears retribution
being more satisfying than love
who wants to see things flow
without the elegant
encumbrance of expectations
without the sunny
undercurrent of resentment
mental telepathy doesn’t work
and it is your fault
I should not have to tell you
what I want
you should just know
from the way I wear my hat
oh right I don’t wear hats
well that should tell you something
it tells you I love you
March
March 5 – Hot Damn! It’s Queer Slam – Buddies and Bad Times Theatre
April
April 3 – Hot Damn! It’s Queer Slam – Season 6 finales Buddies and Bad Times Theatre
May
Richard III – Stratford Festival
June
June 25-26-27 – Capturing Fire 2020 – Wooly Mammoth Theatre -Washington D.C. 
capfireslam.org
July
All’s Well That Ends Well – Stratford Festival
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at Ted’s Bulletin in Washington DC
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TOpoet 