Latest / Timeless Songs with Eileen Ponich / The Blues Come First

Transcript

The Blues Come First · Timeless Songs with Eileen Ponich

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today's song sounds like pure joy, but it doesn't start there.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you where it really starts.
• 0:10
  [music]
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Timeless Songs.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eileen,
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: and on this episode,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I take one song from the Great American Songbook and really listen to it,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: the story behind it,
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: the singers who made it their own, and what it's like to actually sing it yourself.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Near the end of an all-Gershwin concert I sang in 2019,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I came to a song that made me feel almost giddy.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: After an evening filled with Gershwin,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: here was this exuberant invitation to leave your troubles behind and come along.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was singing I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: and when I reached the lyric, stand aside, I'm on my way, I felt exhilarated.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't just singing about joy.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: For those few minutes, I felt as though I was inviting the audience to come find it with me.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was seven years ago.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So why has this little song from the 1920s stayed with me all this time?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think the answer is hidden in something I didn't fully understand when I first sang it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: When I first sang I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise,
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I understood the feeling of the song immediately.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Joy, optimism, forward motion.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not sure I ever stopped to think about what George Gershwin was actually saying.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: A stairway to paradise sounds so romantic, but how exactly are we supposed to get there?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is right there in the lyric.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to get there by dancing.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: That suddenly made the whole song make sense to me.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Gershwin wasn't offering some distant, dreamy vision of paradise.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was offering something that was much more immediate.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Put on your dancing shoes.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Forget your troubles.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Start moving.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then I discovered something else.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because underneath all that exuberance, Gershwin does something I find fascinating.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: He brings in the blues.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why put the blues in a song that's telling us to leave the blues behind?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the more I listened,
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: the more I realized that the blues are part of what makes the joy believable.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Gershwin doesn't pretend that sadness isn't there.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: He acknowledges it.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then the music seems to say, The blues are here.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: What are we going to do about them?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to dance.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I love about this song.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: The joy isn't passive.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a choice.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe paradise isn't someplace we're waiting to reach.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we build the stairway ourselves, one step at a time.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's a wonderful moment in the movie An American in Paris that brings that idea to life.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Georges Gattari performs the song in a spectacular production number,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: surrounded by dancers on an enormous staircase.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, Gershwin's metaphor becomes something you can actually see.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're literally climbing toward paradise through music, movement, and dance.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And watching it reminded me that there isn't just one way to climb that stairway.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Georges Guattari gives us the big theatrical version of Joy.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then I listen to Sarah Vaughan.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Her stairway feels completely different.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's an ease in the way she sings it.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't sound as though she's trying to convince us that Paradise is waiting.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: She already knows it is.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's what struck me most about her performance.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: She sounds so relaxed,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: so certain,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: almost as if she's saying,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: no worries,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: just do what I say, come along, and somehow that makes the invitation irresistible.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's Patty Austin.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Her performance has another kind of energy, brighter, more contemporary, full of rhythmic life.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't announce the joy.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: She just lets it sit easy in the rhythm, like she's already there.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear these three side by side, they're all linked on the blog.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'll point you there again at the end.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Listening to these very different performances made me realize that none
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: of them changes the basic message of the song.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: They simply find their own way into its joy.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that brought me back to the way I felt when I sang it myself in 2019,
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: especially when I reached one particular line.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Stand aside, I'm on my way.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: I loved that line when I sang it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I responded to its confidence,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: that wonderful sense of moving forward and taking the audience along with me.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But listening to the song again now, I hear something more.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Gershwin doesn't tell us that the blues will never come.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: He gives us another possibility.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: We can acknowledge them and then decide they don't get the last word.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why this song has stayed with me for so long.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: That stairway to paradise isn't something we discover already built and waiting for us.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: We build it one step at a time.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's what I was feeling that night when I sang, Stand aside, I'm on my way.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't just singing about joy.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was choosing it.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And inviting everyone in the room to come along.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So let me leave you with a question.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: What song helps you choose joy when the blues come along?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear what it is.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Again, if you'd like to hear all three of these performances for yourself, Gatari,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Vaughn, and Austin, They are linked on the blog along with the full written piece.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just search Timeless Songs or find the link in the show notes.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time here, welcome.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Follow the show so you don't miss the next one.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: A new song from the Great American Songbook, every episode.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eileen.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, with a song in my heart.
• 8:00
  [music]