I’m sitting here
trying to look up the lyrics to a Betty Carter song. I know the phrases and the melody, but I
can’t find anything when I search with those word couplings: I have the line: “kids make blues, then fake
blues, then shake blues,” stuck in my head.
It is, a remarkably succinct way of describing the view from the parents
seat. Is it “Babe’s Blues”? I searched in iTunes, which is useless. I searched for the lyrics and not unlike my
kvetching yesterday about annoying search results; I came across a bunch of
‘lyrics sites’ which had the song title listed.
Cool. But upon following the link
it becomes clear that they just have the tune as a placeholder. Lovely.
How about the next one site? Same
thing. The entire first page of results is useless.
I pulled up Babe’s Blues on Rdio and that’s the tune. It’s lovely, swinging waltz-like number with
a stunning, scatting segue and lots of other parental pearls of wisdom that
suggest Betty is singing from experience.
Born in Flint Michigan, grew up singing in the Church choir, a peerless
performer and over time a professor of the “Betty Carter University,” of
younger players who came up through her exacting tutelage. Betty Carter always struck me as a
bandleader, like a Miles or a Duke Ellington, more than merely a performer. And whereas there are many stories of people
who didn’t necessarily enjoy time in either of those two academies, perhaps the
better comparison is between Betty Carter and Art Blakey, who, like her was a
virtuoso on his instrument, but always forced himself to play with and nurture
best in class younger musicians, because, as he suggested, it “keeps the mind
active.”
I write about Betty and “Babe’s Blues” not because I
happened to put it on this morning, though I did eventually when I wrote this,
but rather because I dreamt of it last night.
An odd mélange, as all dream settings are, I needed to go back to the
hotel room for something. I asked for
the key, even though I later remembered I had one in my pocket. The rest of the group, my wife, some others
were going to leave without me and I would catch up. And thus the requisite story-telling tension
necessary for any story was invoked. I’m
late. I must catch up. Leaving the room with whatever it was I’d
needed, I walked up a hill with enormous horse sized St. Bernard’s, which I
remember commenting on. Then, there was
a path down to rail tracks. The train
would allow me to catch up. I couldn’t see my party, but I knew they were
up ahead. No train, so I cut across the
tracks and made a few strange turns, and then it occurred to me in that dull
way things do in dreams that I was now very, very late for the dinner rendez vous. Still, I continued to trod. And then, there they were, and the melody of
“Babe’s Blues” filled my head and I assumed and absurd waltz-like gesture with
my upper torso, as I caught up with the group who were waiting for a train and
hand changed in composition.
Up late with a call to the U.S. last night. They’ll be another one tonight. Often times these people and those tensions
or releases, wind up in one’s dream scape.
Just finished a morning meeting at my home with an old friend. Engergized.
I’ll need it. I’m to head down to
the city in a moment for another few meetings.
I’d much rather sit here and keep listening to this lovely DustyBlue
album by Howard McGhee that I reached
back into the vaults and plucked out last night for dinner. “Flyin’ Colors” is so gracefully
sophisticated, like imagining all the disparate traffic elements in once
glance, staring down at a crowded city street. Pause, go, turn, swerve, kick something.
I’d better get up and walk around or I’m likely to drift off
into a DustyBlue dream. The tension
about being late, of being behind schedule for this, or that, is already
established and it will invariably be another dream of catch up. 人生如梦[1], just like the day of running around,
before me, sans the waltz and the theme music.
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