Weird question

[anarky]

Not sure where the hell to start with this.

I found a cheap CD compilation (on a usually reputable import label from the UK) of old pop songs ("old" meaning stuff like Sinatra, Dean Martin, Billie Holiday, etc). It's all quite good stuff (yeah, I'm weird, I actually like that old stuff).

Trouble is, one track is mislabeled. It's that old chestnut "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered," and it's credited to Doris Day. The song title is right. However, it's most definitely not Doris Day (or any other woman) singing it. (First, it doesn't sound like the Doris Day version, which I have on another compilation already. And the whole "girl covering a song about being in love with a girl without switching the gender of pronouns" thing wouldn't have gone over well back then.) The voice isn't one I can immediately recognize, either.

So, given how many singers in the 50s covered this song, how the hell do I figure out who's performing it so I can label it properly when I import it, short of going through a few million YouTube videos?

Yeah, I'm probably going to get a lot of "you like that old shit, you're ghey" responses, and everyone else will think "what the fuck does this matter, you anal prick?"

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Whatever. I love Sinatra and Dean Martin and Bobby Darin and all them old crooners. I totally dig Johnny Horton, too.

I love the video game Mafia II. They spent more money securing the rights to old music to have playing on the radio when you're driving around than they spent on the game itself. It's hundreds of old songs from the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Groovy.

[anarky]

Turned out to be way easier than I expected. I was going to look up the obvious crooners, and stuck the disc in the Mac so I could listen and compare. Lo and behold, whoever entered the info on Gracenote had typed in that it was Mel Torme. I pulled up his version on YouTube, and it was.



Harry Anderson would be pissed that I didn't recognize it.

[Ran]

Glad you found it. There is an app called "Shazam" that supposedly can identify songs.

[anarky]

Yeah, I wasn't sure if that would work, though. I know the song, it's just (or "was just") which of the umpteen million crooners who sang it it was.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

10 Demerits for not recognizing The Velvet Fog right off the bat, peckersnot!!

[anarky]

True, he is a weak spot in my crooner knowledge.

[anarky]

If this is going to become the default "Dead Crooner" thread, I found two Sammy Davis albums on CD at Deseret (sorta like Goodwill, but run by Mormons) for a buck apiece. Even if Frank and Dean hung out with ten million black Jewish guys, Sammy Davis would still have been the coolest black Jewish guy in the Rat Pack.

They were both promo copies, too. Can't imagine why anyone who would have gotten those (they were only released on CD in 2004) would've parted with them unless s/he died and their kids had no taste. (And I still think he's the weakest of the Rat Pack; it's just that they were so fucking awesome that he was still cooler than 99% of current singers.)

[anarky]

I'm probably going to have to turn in some sort of geek card or metalhead card or something, but, after poo-pooing them for years, I actually listened to the first four albums in Rod Stewart's American Songbook series. I finally gave in and listened because I figured Rod singing these songs sounded like a good idea in theory, so I owed the old lead screamer of the Jeff Beck Group at least one spin. (I'd written them off as a stupid gimmick that he kept on doing over and over because old ladies liked it. When his "Great Rock & Roll Songbook" album came out and sounded like karaoke shit, I figured this was all the same. I also gave them a listen because the liner notes to his new album--yes, I'll admit it, I've been a fan of most of Rod's rock stuff for a long time--say he simply hadn't written anything in the decade before the latest one but didn't want to stop recording.)

Holy shit, they're actually pretty damned good. Granted, it's obvious that he kept doing them (and put variations on the title on his R&B and rock cover albums from the same time period) because they sold, and they get weaker as they progress, but the first two are actually amazing.

[Jargo]

Rod Stewart isn't dead, doofus. You can't have an official dead crooner thread and then bang on about a living one.

[anarky]

Point taken. Rod Stewart is not dead; it's just every woman he's been with who's dead inside.

No voice can make up for how scary-looking that fucker is.

[Jargo]

Ugh, years ago the SUN newspaper, (one of Rupert Murdoch's rags) printed a picture of Rod in speedos on a beach. The image has been burned into the public consciousness and as a nation we have nightmares to this day..... *trails off in despair*

[anarky]

He gave you his love touch, ooh-ooh-ooh-ohh?

[Jargo]

[anarky]

If we can strike the "dead" and just make this the crooner thread, I decided to branch out a little and listen to some other recent jazz musicians and crooner types I'd ignored, based on what a surprise Rod's stuff was (and because Norah Jones is a recent jazz musician, too, and is all kinds of awesome).

I must say, I'm rather impressed with what Diana Krall and Michael Buble can do. Diana's a pretty incredible pianist in addition to singing like a black jazz diva from the 40s, and Buble has very good taste in covers.