Saturday, December 5, 2009

Baby Won’t You Please Come Home

My wife left yesterday for a conference down in Atlanta so I’m here all alone.  And I’m miserable, all at loose ends, pacing the house, not able to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes at a time, feeling lonely and blue.  I wasn’t always like this.  I was on my own for more than a decade before I was married and I never got lonely when alone but I guess twenty-plus years of marriage will change you.  If she were here it would be different.  We might ignore each other all day – me reading on the couch, her working on the computer (she’s very busy these days) but at least SHE’S HERE.  So, baby won’t you please come home?

I searched YouTube for an appropriate rendition of that great song and I came across this by some jazz band at a Bix Beiderbecke festival earlier this year.  And it’s not bad.  The cornet player actually has a little bit of Bix’s style and lyricism.  Enjoy:

And below is the man himself, who was breaking from traditional jazz and creating his own style during the 1920’s at precisely the same time as Louis Armstrong.  The two men’s playing were radically different but according to many sources they admired each other tremendously.  I’ve already mentioned how I wished I were a fly on the wall the night they jammed together.  There’s plenty of Louis to listen to in earlier posts on this page but here’s Bix with Frank Trumbauer’s Orchestra on probably his most famous recording, “Singin’ The Blues,” from May, 1927.  His cornet solo picks up at about the 1:03 mark, immediately after Trumbauer’s C-melody sax intro.  This is lovely stuff:

Oh my, I just looked outside and it’s snowing.  A couple of inches are expected.  I guess this is a good time to put on some music and put up the tree.

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