Interviews
Am Musically Promiscuous Says Jazz
Singer: INTERVIEW by Norman Warwick
Middleton based musician John Ellis recently spoke to all across the arts about how great songs defy classification, so having heard her eclectic albums we took the opportunity to meet up with American singer Marilyn Middleton when she appeared in the Borough earlier this month.
She strutted her stuff in lively fashion as she delivered what the late Steve Goodman would have called ‘a red hot rendition of the Saints’, and at one point she stepped into the front row of the sell out audience to play with my leather tie and whisper playful sweet nothings in my ear. She showed me her New Orleans Wiggle and I tried to show her my Middleton Manoeuvre and even before I could begin my interview with her after the show she laughingly confessed to being ‘musically promiscuous.’
That was her response to my earlier comment that I had first come to hear of her name some thirty five or more years ago when she had recorded songs written by my folk-song writing pal, Stanley Accrington. I had been surprised then, that this lady born in Chicago, included on that same album such a wide range of genres.
She sang sometimes sensually and sometimes sweetly but always soulfully, and never once did she lay claim to songs that she otherwise made her own. Instead she name checked writers and performers like Sophie Tucker and Ma Rainey who, way back in the last century, tended the very roots of jazz as we know it today.
Obviously, then, I couldn’t let the confession to being musically promiscuous pass us by and I asked her to explain.
“Jazz and blues are American folk music, as far as I’m concerned,” Marilyn elaborated. “Thankfully, Fellside, my record label, agreed with me. I started out as a rock ‘n roll singer, without realising that it was jazz that gave birth to that.”
Of course, all these classifications of music then have sub genres attached to them, like urban and rural or traditional and contemporary, and I wondered how these classifications come into being.
“The industry imposes them, to help sell records,” she says, “and then of course there are fans, and critics, who are purists. I’ve sometimes been told I’m not singing a jazz number in the traditional way, and that somehow I’m getting it wrong. Some people think the first recording of a song naturally reflect its traditional delivery, but they forget that there were all sorts of time constraints and financial considerations in the studio that might have dictated how the song was recorded. It’s all about feeling and it all comes from the heart and all about how I want to sing it.”
What has impressed me most tonight has been Marilyn’s ability to wring every drop of pain out of songs like St. Louis Blues, and I asked if she is brings her own life experiences to such readings.
“I bring in personal experiences, for sure,” she reflects, “and I feel off the audiences. If I haven’t experienced something there’s always someone out there who has. Sometimes, too, when I listen to original recordings I can hear and feel what the singer was going through. If you hear a song in your heart, then you’ve got it. You’ve got the end product.”
I referred Marilyn to Hugh Moffatt’s assertion that ‘we must intend what we write for light years of travel” and she smiles when remembering that she recorded his song Old Flames.
“I have difficulty writing songs,” Marilyn admitted, “but a writer has to send his song out there, ready for it to work in any genre and touch as many people as possible. And Old Flames does that. It’s such a lovely song. I used to sing it in The Irish clubs in Chicago, because they love Country music.”
Covering folk, blues, jazz, and country and Irish, Marilyn Middleton crosses musical borders making new friends along the way.
Middleton based musician John Ellis recently spoke to all across the arts about how great songs defy classification, so having heard her eclectic albums we took the opportunity to meet up with American singer Marilyn Middleton when she appeared in the Borough earlier this month.
She strutted her stuff in lively fashion as she delivered what the late Steve Goodman would have called ‘a red hot rendition of the Saints’, and at one point she stepped into the front row of the sell out audience to play with my leather tie and whisper playful sweet nothings in my ear. She showed me her New Orleans Wiggle and I tried to show her my Middleton Manoeuvre and even before I could begin my interview with her after the show she laughingly confessed to being ‘musically promiscuous.’
That was her response to my earlier comment that I had first come to hear of her name some thirty five or more years ago when she had recorded songs written by my folk-song writing pal, Stanley Accrington. I had been surprised then, that this lady born in Chicago, included on that same album such a wide range of genres.
She sang sometimes sensually and sometimes sweetly but always soulfully, and never once did she lay claim to songs that she otherwise made her own. Instead she name checked writers and performers like Sophie Tucker and Ma Rainey who, way back in the last century, tended the very roots of jazz as we know it today.
Obviously, then, I couldn’t let the confession to being musically promiscuous pass us by and I asked her to explain.
“Jazz and blues are American folk music, as far as I’m concerned,” Marilyn elaborated. “Thankfully, Fellside, my record label, agreed with me. I started out as a rock ‘n roll singer, without realising that it was jazz that gave birth to that.”
Of course, all these classifications of music then have sub genres attached to them, like urban and rural or traditional and contemporary, and I wondered how these classifications come into being.
“The industry imposes them, to help sell records,” she says, “and then of course there are fans, and critics, who are purists. I’ve sometimes been told I’m not singing a jazz number in the traditional way, and that somehow I’m getting it wrong. Some people think the first recording of a song naturally reflect its traditional delivery, but they forget that there were all sorts of time constraints and financial considerations in the studio that might have dictated how the song was recorded. It’s all about feeling and it all comes from the heart and all about how I want to sing it.”
What has impressed me most tonight has been Marilyn’s ability to wring every drop of pain out of songs like St. Louis Blues, and I asked if she is brings her own life experiences to such readings.
“I bring in personal experiences, for sure,” she reflects, “and I feel off the audiences. If I haven’t experienced something there’s always someone out there who has. Sometimes, too, when I listen to original recordings I can hear and feel what the singer was going through. If you hear a song in your heart, then you’ve got it. You’ve got the end product.”
I referred Marilyn to Hugh Moffatt’s assertion that ‘we must intend what we write for light years of travel” and she smiles when remembering that she recorded his song Old Flames.
“I have difficulty writing songs,” Marilyn admitted, “but a writer has to send his song out there, ready for it to work in any genre and touch as many people as possible. And Old Flames does that. It’s such a lovely song. I used to sing it in The Irish clubs in Chicago, because they love Country music.”
Covering folk, blues, jazz, and country and Irish, Marilyn Middleton crosses musical borders making new friends along the way.
