The gig was going well. It was a trio gig with RH on piano, Jon Hamar on bass and of course, yours truly singing. We were in the restaurant of an old hotel in Port Townsend. It’s a nice funky room, the piano is decent enough and the ferry ride and road trip up had been fun. The first set was fine: We were swinging, the room was full and people seemed to really be listening.
A few songs before the first break, a guy wandered up to the bandstand. He looked like an old and weathered Tom Mesereau. He had a thick puff of white hair and was wearing a Hawaiian print shirt. He asked somewhat gruffly if I could do Skylark. I told him no, that it wasn’t in my repertoire. He was clearly displeased and wandered back to his seat, grumbling loudly from the table something about Skylark being a Hoagy Carmichael classic that I really should know. OK, fine. I could live with that. But then, as we were getting ready to start up after the break, he approached the bandstand again. This time he directed his question to RH, as I was dealing with yet another weirdo old man. (More on him later.) This time Mr. White Poof wanted to know if I could sing How Deep is the Ocean. This time, RH had to break the bad news that no, How Deep is the Ocean wasn’t in my repertoire either, but that they could play it instrumentally. Poof immediately turned his sights on me and right there in front of the bandstand, he began. He started holding up fingers, “For one, you don’t know Skylark. For two, you don’t know How Deep is the Ocean…” I knew where he was heading with his diatribe- That I was somehow deficit as a jazz singer if I didn’t know those tunes- and I cut him off before he could whip out finger number three. I explained that I had a pretty big book of tunes and that I was doing the best that I could to cultivate my repertoire. Poof snarled something back as he returned to his table. I'd had about enough of White Poof but all the same, RH and Jon opened the set with an instrumental version of How Deep Is The Ocean. We aim to please, sometimes even if the person we're playing for is a glory hole.
OK, at the risk of having my jazz singer's license revoked or in incurring ridicule from my fellow vocalists, I have to make a confession: Neither of the tunes he requested have actually ever really spoken to me. This is probably why I haven’t ever learned them. Skylark is somewhere on my musical “to-do” list but pretty far down on the list. Truth be told, I probably could have stumbled through both of these tunes, but it wouldn’t have been pretty. On Skylark there are some harmonic areas that are fuzzy to me. I could have pretty easily scatted through How Deep is the Ocean but couldn’t, for the life of me have pulled out all the lyrics. So what was the point? Singing something badly just to make some cranky old fart happy? Surely, he would not have cared for my delivery of either of these tunes. Then what? More grumbling?
There were two other requests that night, and I accommodated both of them. One woman wanted me to sing The Very Thought of You. I did, and she was happy. I spoke to her during our second break. She’d never heard the Shirley Horn version of that song. I told her that the minute she got home, she absolutely had to download it from i-Tunes. If she likes The Very Thought of You, she should have the quintessential recording of it. I hope she did. Anyway, I was happy to accept her request, and she was gracious and appreciative.
The other request of the evening was (sigh) Fever and it came from Weirdo Old Man Number Two. Now Number Two was very sweet, albeit slightly befuddled. He came up the bandstand during our last break and raved about how great we all were but also gave one critique: That the bass was “so overpowering” that it was making it hard to hear the vocals. We were all a little surprised by this. Jon is a tasteful player, and I could easily hear myself all night. All the same, we smiled, nodded and thanked him for his input. When I sang Fever in the last set, Number Two enthusiastically waved a big “thumbs up” to me from his table in the back of the room. No sooner had we finished the tune than he was front and center on the bandstand, waving his arms around and basically reiterating his praise from earlier, this time without the remarks about the bass. Number Two seemed to have no concept that he was interrupting the set by standing in front of us and going on so. But I’m not even sure if Number Two was 100% sure of where he was in the first place. He was sweet and harmless but a little confused. His wife, however, left a generous tip on our music stands as they were walking out.
The whole idea of taking requests is a tough proposition for me. I don’t know of any other musical genre where there is an expectation that the performers will know and can play any tune an audience member asks for. I used to have a regular gig in the lounge of a hotel downtown, and we frequently received requests. As always, I performed the ones I could, which I think was pretty often. But I also had to deny many others. The whole concept of requests puts the singer in an odd position. Of course, I want to please people and accommodate them if I’m able. On the other hand, there’s something very awkward about not knowing some tunes and ultimately disappointing people or in some cases, like as it was with the old fart at the gig the other night, having your validity as a jazz vocalist challenged, based merely on what songs you do or don’t know. And in some cases, the intent of the person making the request is questionable. There was one guy that used to come into the hotel gig and make request after request. There was an edge to this guy, and it always felt like he was testing me or trying to trip me up by asking for a tune I didn’t know. It felt mean. One night, he asked me to sing “Strange Fruit”. I know the tune but refused to sing it for him. I explained that it wasn’t my song to sing. Ultimately, I am not a circus dog doing tricks for tips nor am I a human jukebox with an endless repertoire of tunes ready for the asking. I only know of one singer around here with such a vast repertoire -my teacher Greta Matassa. She possesses an almost encyclopedic knowledge of most jazz tunes ever written. (For more on Greta, read my previous post.) There is no doubt about it: Watching Greta field requests is a very exciting and amazing thing, and I myself get a huge thrill out of it. But I can’t do that, and the question is; should I have to?
On the drive back to Seattle, RH and I talked about the situation with Mr. White Poof and about the issue of requests in general. RH said that back in the old days, a piano player wasn’t judged on his/her improvisational chops but instead on how many tunes they knew and could play off the top of their heads. He speculated that Mr. White Poof may have come from a generation of listeners that still had that sensibility. He also speculated that sometimes making song requests is an odd bit about control: About controlling what music would be in the room and what the people in the band would sing and play. We also joked about people that make requests but leave before we have a chance to actually play them and about the sloppy, drunken couples that are so into making out that they’re unaware when we’re actually playing their song. We talked about it for quite a while but didn’t reach any particular insights on the matter.
One thing that’s for certain is that I as long as I’m singing jazz, I will continue to get requests, and I believe that how I respond will continue to be on a case by case basis. In the situation with Mr. White Poof, we’d performed three full sets of great songs and plenty of standards. However, he could only focus on the two tunes that I didn’t know. There would be no pleasing him. Number Two, on the other hand, was a goofball but also a sweetheart. Fever isn’t my favorite tune to sing, but I did it. I guess for me, it all boils down to the attitude of the person making the request. It's fundamental stuff here. If someone approaches me with a sense of entitlement or seems to simply be challenging me, then I may or may not take their request. It will depend on how I’m feeling and the variables of that particular day; if my morning run went well, my teenager behaved and my checkbook balanced, etc. If, however, the requester approaches with even the slightest measure of kindness, then the sky’s the limit. I’ll deliver the goods sweetly or swingin’, depending on the song. And you never know- I might even be convinced to take a shot at Skylark or How Deep is The Ocean.
A few songs before the first break, a guy wandered up to the bandstand. He looked like an old and weathered Tom Mesereau. He had a thick puff of white hair and was wearing a Hawaiian print shirt. He asked somewhat gruffly if I could do Skylark. I told him no, that it wasn’t in my repertoire. He was clearly displeased and wandered back to his seat, grumbling loudly from the table something about Skylark being a Hoagy Carmichael classic that I really should know. OK, fine. I could live with that. But then, as we were getting ready to start up after the break, he approached the bandstand again. This time he directed his question to RH, as I was dealing with yet another weirdo old man. (More on him later.) This time Mr. White Poof wanted to know if I could sing How Deep is the Ocean. This time, RH had to break the bad news that no, How Deep is the Ocean wasn’t in my repertoire either, but that they could play it instrumentally. Poof immediately turned his sights on me and right there in front of the bandstand, he began. He started holding up fingers, “For one, you don’t know Skylark. For two, you don’t know How Deep is the Ocean…” I knew where he was heading with his diatribe- That I was somehow deficit as a jazz singer if I didn’t know those tunes- and I cut him off before he could whip out finger number three. I explained that I had a pretty big book of tunes and that I was doing the best that I could to cultivate my repertoire. Poof snarled something back as he returned to his table. I'd had about enough of White Poof but all the same, RH and Jon opened the set with an instrumental version of How Deep Is The Ocean. We aim to please, sometimes even if the person we're playing for is a glory hole.
OK, at the risk of having my jazz singer's license revoked or in incurring ridicule from my fellow vocalists, I have to make a confession: Neither of the tunes he requested have actually ever really spoken to me. This is probably why I haven’t ever learned them. Skylark is somewhere on my musical “to-do” list but pretty far down on the list. Truth be told, I probably could have stumbled through both of these tunes, but it wouldn’t have been pretty. On Skylark there are some harmonic areas that are fuzzy to me. I could have pretty easily scatted through How Deep is the Ocean but couldn’t, for the life of me have pulled out all the lyrics. So what was the point? Singing something badly just to make some cranky old fart happy? Surely, he would not have cared for my delivery of either of these tunes. Then what? More grumbling?
There were two other requests that night, and I accommodated both of them. One woman wanted me to sing The Very Thought of You. I did, and she was happy. I spoke to her during our second break. She’d never heard the Shirley Horn version of that song. I told her that the minute she got home, she absolutely had to download it from i-Tunes. If she likes The Very Thought of You, she should have the quintessential recording of it. I hope she did. Anyway, I was happy to accept her request, and she was gracious and appreciative.
The other request of the evening was (sigh) Fever and it came from Weirdo Old Man Number Two. Now Number Two was very sweet, albeit slightly befuddled. He came up the bandstand during our last break and raved about how great we all were but also gave one critique: That the bass was “so overpowering” that it was making it hard to hear the vocals. We were all a little surprised by this. Jon is a tasteful player, and I could easily hear myself all night. All the same, we smiled, nodded and thanked him for his input. When I sang Fever in the last set, Number Two enthusiastically waved a big “thumbs up” to me from his table in the back of the room. No sooner had we finished the tune than he was front and center on the bandstand, waving his arms around and basically reiterating his praise from earlier, this time without the remarks about the bass. Number Two seemed to have no concept that he was interrupting the set by standing in front of us and going on so. But I’m not even sure if Number Two was 100% sure of where he was in the first place. He was sweet and harmless but a little confused. His wife, however, left a generous tip on our music stands as they were walking out.
The whole idea of taking requests is a tough proposition for me. I don’t know of any other musical genre where there is an expectation that the performers will know and can play any tune an audience member asks for. I used to have a regular gig in the lounge of a hotel downtown, and we frequently received requests. As always, I performed the ones I could, which I think was pretty often. But I also had to deny many others. The whole concept of requests puts the singer in an odd position. Of course, I want to please people and accommodate them if I’m able. On the other hand, there’s something very awkward about not knowing some tunes and ultimately disappointing people or in some cases, like as it was with the old fart at the gig the other night, having your validity as a jazz vocalist challenged, based merely on what songs you do or don’t know. And in some cases, the intent of the person making the request is questionable. There was one guy that used to come into the hotel gig and make request after request. There was an edge to this guy, and it always felt like he was testing me or trying to trip me up by asking for a tune I didn’t know. It felt mean. One night, he asked me to sing “Strange Fruit”. I know the tune but refused to sing it for him. I explained that it wasn’t my song to sing. Ultimately, I am not a circus dog doing tricks for tips nor am I a human jukebox with an endless repertoire of tunes ready for the asking. I only know of one singer around here with such a vast repertoire -my teacher Greta Matassa. She possesses an almost encyclopedic knowledge of most jazz tunes ever written. (For more on Greta, read my previous post.) There is no doubt about it: Watching Greta field requests is a very exciting and amazing thing, and I myself get a huge thrill out of it. But I can’t do that, and the question is; should I have to?
On the drive back to Seattle, RH and I talked about the situation with Mr. White Poof and about the issue of requests in general. RH said that back in the old days, a piano player wasn’t judged on his/her improvisational chops but instead on how many tunes they knew and could play off the top of their heads. He speculated that Mr. White Poof may have come from a generation of listeners that still had that sensibility. He also speculated that sometimes making song requests is an odd bit about control: About controlling what music would be in the room and what the people in the band would sing and play. We also joked about people that make requests but leave before we have a chance to actually play them and about the sloppy, drunken couples that are so into making out that they’re unaware when we’re actually playing their song. We talked about it for quite a while but didn’t reach any particular insights on the matter.
One thing that’s for certain is that I as long as I’m singing jazz, I will continue to get requests, and I believe that how I respond will continue to be on a case by case basis. In the situation with Mr. White Poof, we’d performed three full sets of great songs and plenty of standards. However, he could only focus on the two tunes that I didn’t know. There would be no pleasing him. Number Two, on the other hand, was a goofball but also a sweetheart. Fever isn’t my favorite tune to sing, but I did it. I guess for me, it all boils down to the attitude of the person making the request. It's fundamental stuff here. If someone approaches me with a sense of entitlement or seems to simply be challenging me, then I may or may not take their request. It will depend on how I’m feeling and the variables of that particular day; if my morning run went well, my teenager behaved and my checkbook balanced, etc. If, however, the requester approaches with even the slightest measure of kindness, then the sky’s the limit. I’ll deliver the goods sweetly or swingin’, depending on the song. And you never know- I might even be convinced to take a shot at Skylark or How Deep is The Ocean.
