Theme and variations on “Little Girl Blue”
I first heard the song “Little Girl Blue” when I was in high school, sung by Nina Simone. My high school boyfriend introduced me to her records, and I was immediately taken with her unique musical style. No one sounded like her back then or even now. Her rendition of “Little Girl Blue,” a Rodgers and Hart song from 1935, was heartrending but also controlled and classical – not surprising, because her piano accompaniment bore the marks of her Julliard training (she originally had wanted to be a concert pianist). I don’t know which I liked better, her singing or her playing, but luckily I didn’t have to choose.
I was recently exploring the song on YouTube and came across this Sinatra version, which doesn’t overly appeal to me – it seems quite bland – but is an interesting contrast (I’m cutting out the old-fashioned intro and going right into the song):
Ella Fitzgerald has a lovely light touch that never fails. But again, for me anyway, it’s not as good as the intensely dramatic Nina Simone, although I like it a lot better than Sinatra:
I was shocked to find out that Janis Joplin did a version. A whole different kettle of fish, as you might imagine. I often like Joplin quite a bit, but to me her approach takes away from the song’s delicate sorrow, although it’s certainly different from the others:
And here – finally – is Nina Simone in 1959, very similar to the version I’ve known so well and loved so long. Note the finesse and beauty of her piano playing, too. You can hardly miss it:
Later on Simone went through a period of displaying anger at the audience – or at the world, or at something undetermined – during some of her concerts. It think that some of it was the turbulent times, and/or some may have been that she later was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I once went to a Nina Simone concert during those years, and it was uncomfortable, but her music hadn’t lost its brilliance and beauty. I’m including this live version of “Little Girl Blue” from that period – 1976 – to show what I mean, changed lyrics and all. She used stillness and quiet to remarkable effect:
From Nina Simone’s Wiki entry:
Besides using Bach-style counterpoint, she called upon the particular virtuosity of the 19th-century Romantic piano repertoire—Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and others. Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis spoke highly of Simone, deeply impressed by her ability to play three-part counterpoint (her two hands on the piano and her voice each providing a separate but complementary melody line).
I’m still deeply impressed by that very same thing, but also by her ability to express restrained yet naked emotion with her voice while simultaneously conveying Apollonian classicism through her piano.
Nina Simone was a great talent. I knew about the anger (and much or all of it may have been justified), but I did not know she was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.
Really neat treatment of “Good King Wenceslas” at the beginning. I guess because it’s a Christmas Carol and the theme is not contemporary it doesn’t get much play, but it’s a fun song to noodle around with. One of the Carols I play most often. Simone takes great advantage of the structure here.
Lest you doubt Nina and me, here’s Jazz great Mel Torme and the Milwaukee Symphony playing with the song: https://youtu.be/CCE3P8CqYVg
The lyrics of “Little Girl Blue” are haunting because they echo so much of the unhappiness of Lorenz Hart’s own short life (he died at 48 of pneumonia contracted following an alcoholic binge). He considered himself unlovable because he was short– barely 5 feet tall– and gay in an era when that was a life sentence in the closet. The line “Why won’t somebody send a tender blue boy/To cheer up little girl blue” sounds (to me at any rate) like a plea from Hart himself for a “tender blue boy.”
Sinatra’s rendition has a detachment about it, like he’s singing of a niece down in the dumps a bit with the expectation she’ll get over it in an hour or a day.
Technically perfect Ella, to a lesser degree shares that detachment.
Viewing it like a passing phase.
Simone is singing as if from remembrance having been that little girl blue… I too strongly prefer her performance.
Nina was a great but often hate-filled musical artist. I loved her voice: ” You can have him, I don’t want him….”.
I lived for a few years in the ’70s very close to the little black ‘hood in Tyron, NC where Nina grew up, aka Black Bottom.
Tryon has for many years housed wealthy Mid-westerners who stopped there and discovered it on their pre-Interstate winter travel to Florida, plus the local Scots-Irish pioneers, grunts who made the mistake of selling their land to Yankees for $5 per acre in the 1940s-50s and providing them cheap labor, and a very small # of blacks. There was no slavery there because it made no economic sense, and the pioneers who settled there in the 1840s were true hard-grit self-sufficient pioneers. So the few blacks probably came up there to be servants of the wealthy after the War, who had discovered the natural beauty of the region near Asheville, which also had milder winters, thus the moniker “Thermal Belt”. Now it is an intense scene of equine activity, the “Hunting Country”.
Nina’s anger had multiple sources, but where she spent her childhood was a minimal factor.
Lorenz Hart gay? I guess so, but I’ll always think of him as the much-married Mickey Rooney, who played the unhappy “little guy” in the movie. Wikipedia tells us that the poet Heinrich Heine was his great uncle.
The song is wistful and sad. You have to be in the mood for it and not for something catchy and up-tempo. “Little Girl Blue” is also the name of musical based on Nina Simone’s life that may or may not still be playing in New York. Maybe see the documentary, “What Happened, Miss Simone?” or the other documentary “The Amazing Nina Simone” first to see if she’s your cup of tea.
One of my Desert Island Discs is the 1956 Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book.
neo:
Thanks for the Simone link. I had read of her greatness (Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs raves about Simone) and I bought a greatest hits compilation, but it was mostly Angry Simone and I had no use for that.
Loved the “Good King Wenceslas” piano intro she used! O irony.
I only knew “Little Girl Blue” as the stand-out track IMO from Joplin’s “Kozmic Blues” album. Other singers sing, but Janis takes you there.
PA+Cat:
Thanks for the info on Hart. I did not know. But I sure got there was a real pain at the bottom of that song.
One of Joni Mitchell’s great songs is “River” from her great album, “Blue.” (There’s that color again!) It’s about her guilt at ending her relationship with Graham Nash.
________________________
I’m so hard to handle
I’m selfish and I’m sad
Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
Oh, I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
________________________
The songs starts with a piano intro of “Jingle Bells” in a minor key and, like Simone, Mitchell maintains the Christmas carol as a counterpoint to the song’s melody.
It’s not a completely original idea and I imagine Mitchell could have come up with it on her own, but I’ll bet she thought of Simone’s “Little Girl Blue” as she wrote “River.”
–Joni Mitchell, “River (Official Music Video)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLHxxBTl71I
Seems subdued from some of simones otherwork that i noticed the new thomas crowne affair and later man from uncle
Here’s a cover of Simone’s “Feeling Good” by a 10 year old Norwegian girl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8kAL-sGJx8&list=PL2v8kgVeo4EbQD6l_WAVjOfItquzW7oEc&index=28
If I may speak further on behalf of Janis Joplin…
She was an acne-scarred, overweight, white, middle-class girl who lost weight, and managed to leverage her vocal skills into national prominence.
But being admitted to Juilliard, like Nina Simone or Miles Davis, was never an option for Janis. She achieved what she did on her own raw talent, ambition and devotion to the blues.
When I listen to music as experience, as opposed to technical proficiency, Janis always gets top marks.
She blows me away. I feel sad about that because I know she could never have sung the blues as she did unless she was inside the blues — not singing *about* the blues.
Which ultimately destroyed her.
___________________________
You were famous, your heart was a legend
You told me again you preferred handsome men
But for me you would make an exception
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty
You fixed yourself, you said: Well, never mind
We are ugly but we have the music
–“Leonard Cohen – Chelsea Hotel #2 (Official Audio)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmbFZA16nrE
Simone got into Juilliard, but didn’t get into the Curtis Institute, which was (and possibly still is) tuition-free, and blamed her losing out on racism. She might have had problems getting the money together for Julliard, which would be very unfortunate, but maybe it would have been better for her to concentrate on her successes. Curtis was (and is) very, very exclusive, and even excellent musicians don’t always make the cut.
My favorite version of the song – more for their harmonies, what else? – than emotional depth, is by the Four Freshmen.
Never been a big Nina Simone fan. Between what I consider over-stylized vocal tics and her much-publicized inverse racism, I’ve felt no desire to listen. However, I didn’t realize that she often played her own accompaniment. That recording and video showed real talent there. I’ll have to explore.
I did a search ( Song ‘Little Girl Blue’ ) on Allmusic and found 634 entries, including instrumental versions by Sonny Stitt, Stanley Turrentine and Gene Ammons. Even though instrumental versions leave out Hart’s lyrics, every player knows them, which becomes a major component of what s/he is trying to communicate with their playing. I’ve only heard Stanley’s version, but I hear that there. I’m going to look for the other two.
This is one from thomas crowne redux
https://youtu.be/QH3Fx41Jpl4
This one by roberta flack opened the film
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wDUk9Lsy_yQ
Fascinating Cohen song about Joplin.
I had never heard of Simone until the ’90’s. Her music is not easy listening music, but I like it very much.
I occurred to me watching the live version, that she perhaps wants to treat her voice as another instrument in a duet of sorts, rather than the usual in-your-face (ear) singing with the piano as mere accompaniment. In both versions the vocal volume is quite soft, and in the live version you can see her push the microphone away to make it even softer.
Her vocal style in the studio version is masterful and wonderful. On many of her long notes she gets to the perfect pitch, but she takes a half a beat to get there from the flat side. Terrific for the blues.
In the live version it also seems to me that she does not have a natural or automatic vibrato. She has to wring one out. I like the occasional or spare use of vibrato in a vocal piece.