{"id":148,"date":"2021-03-30T15:49:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T15:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sohothedog.com\/previnjazz\/?page_id=148"},"modified":"2021-10-05T14:46:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T14:46:23","slug":"1958-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.sohothedog.com\/previnjazz\/1958-2\/","title":{"rendered":"1958"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

New collaborators, new horizons\u2014and new angles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dory Langdon: The Leprechauns Are Upon Me!<\/strong><\/em> (Verve, 1958) (recorded February-March 1958)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dory Langdon was a survivor. She grew up with an alcoholic mother and a father whose World War I PTSD left him\u2014and them\u2014battered by wild mood swings and bouts of paranoia. (At one point, Langdon\u2019s father imprisoned her and her mother in the family\u2019s dining room for months.) She had dreams of becoming an actress, spent some years touring as a chorus girl, made it through an abortive marriage, and, along the way, honed her skill and passion for writing lyrics. She finally landed at MGM, at the tail end of the Hollywood musical era. Langdon clicked with Previn, both professionally and personally; in 1959, Previn married her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before that, they made this album, with Langdon on vocals, joined by Previn, guitarist Kenny Burrell (uncredited on the original release), and an unidentified bassist (I suspect it might be Doug Watkins). The numbers, all Langdon\u2019s own, with music by, among others, Previn, David Raskin, and Langdon herself, mirror Previn\u2019s own proclivities, in a way: highly-polished yet distinctly off-center extensions of American pop standard traditions. Previn acknowledged such in his liner notes. Langdon\u2019s lyrics \u201care thoughtful, sensitive, and often surprising,\u201d he wrote. \u201cShe is literate and painstaking, but has full cognizance of what constitutes a popular song.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, that cognizance was becoming a bigger deal to Previn, it seems. His liner notes frame Langdon\u2019s efforts in opposition to that other, ascendent strain of pop: rock-and-roll. Previn’s attitude toward rock is rather like Joan of Arc\u2019s toward the English in Henry VI<\/em>: this too shall pass. \u201cWhile it is certainly an unpleasant truth that the mainstay of the Hit Parade today is the kind of material best sung and performed by unkempt young men with large guitars and no voices,\u201d Previn laments, \u201cit is also true that there always has been a fad of some kind or another plaguing the musical public since the first American pop song hit the crystal sets.\u201d Previn was hardly alone in assuming rock to be yet another in a long line of ephemeral novelties; there\u2019s an argument to be made that rock\u2019s subsequent longevity is, in fact, one of the great anomalies of music history. But one gets the feeling that rock\u2019s arrival and success either consciously or unconsciously spurred Previn to pick sides, and he came down firmly in the Great American Songbook camp. And that will shape his approach to both pop and jazz in the years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polemics and posturing aside, The Leprechauns Are Upon Me!<\/em> is a thoroughly diverting album. Langdon\u2019s voice is slight, but with an incisiveness and expressiveness that, not surprisingly, perfectly matches the material. And Previn provides sensitive, lively, intelligent accompaniment throughout. To indulge in a pun: he\u2019s fully engaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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