RIP - Blossom Dearie

Blossom Dearie, the great jazz vocalist with the little girl voice, died Saturday at age 82. New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett once said that her tiny wisp of a voice "would scarcely reach the second storey of a doll's house," but her phrasing was as sophisticated as anything the great Frank Sinatra crafted. Watch her above on The Jack Paar Show in the early '60s.

Francoise Hardy - Oui!

I have a fever called Francoise Hardy. Watch the video above, and you will be hooked, too.

BTW, my friends, Paul Boll and Angie Cassada have a band called Los Noviembres, and they play the old Hardy hit called "Le Temps De L'Amour." Angie more than does it justice. Check them out if you ever have the chance.

RIP Lou Teicher -- Makeout Music King

Lou Teicher, half of the piano duo Ferrante & Teicher, whose florid and sentimental versions of movie themes and love songs made them gods of easy listening and earned them wide popularity beginning in the 1960s, died on earlier his month in Highlands, N.C. He was 83 and lived in Sarasota, Fla.

The album cover above really expresses what Ferrante & Teicher were all about -- makeout music for your parents (or grandparents). After "Bonanza" was over, get the kids in bed, mix up a pitcher of martinis, dim the lights and cue up the Ferrante & Teicher. Yeah ... it was definitely Mom and Dad time.

Fort Worth, Meet Ricki Derek

Fort Worth, you may not know Ricki Derek yet, but you will. That's because the Dallas-based jazz singer is coming to Fort Worth in a great big way.

In December, Derek is bringing jazz back to Sundance Square, filling the void left when the old Caravan of Dreams club closed its doors in 2001. His club -- the Scat Jazz Lounge -- located in the basement of the Woolworth Building, will bring sophisticated cool to the heart of Fort Worth.

But who is Ricki Derek? In Dallas, you can catch his show at the Cavern on Sunday nights or the Library Bar on Mondays. Maybe you can see him at one of the many private shows he plays for the hip hipsters -- weddings and such. His sound is Vegas cool swinging Mid-Century jazz. It's east to say he's a little bit of Frank Sinatra, a dash of Tony Bennett. But he really succeeds at being Ricki Derek -- a local original.

So take a few minutes to get to know him before he opens in Fort Worth. Drop by his Web site and listen to his music. My full interview with Ricki is available at West and Clear. Check it out and get hip to this guy's vibe!

Robert Goulet, R.I.P.

I know I am only posting obits right now -- and I promise that will change soon -- but Robert Goulet went to the big casino yesterday. Above is one of my favorite Goulet album covers -- the man lounging in his Plycraft recliner, surrounded in a room wrapped in tin foil. I own that very same recliner, but even if I manage to wrap a room in tin foil, I could never be as suave as that cat.

Thanks for the memories, Bobby.

Serge Gainsbourg Moment

Well, not Serge Gainsbourg per se, but a song he wrote in 1965 for France Gall, "Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son." Here's France Gall performing the song for a 1965 Eurovision competition in Luxembourg.

Music For Dining

It’s Friday. You probably have plans for tonight. Perhaps a special lady friend is coming over for the evening. Start off with canapes and Martinis. A little Brubeck on the hi-fi. But before you sit down for your steak tartare, don’t forget the appropriate music. That’s where this little baby comes in. Put it on the turntable, and she will be putty in your hands by the cherries jubilee. You can thank me later.

Album Cover: Afternoon in Amsterdam

I go to a lot of estate sales in my voracious quest for cool MCM artifacts. I found this album at a North Dallas sale a few years ago. I thought it was kind of kooky. Why would someone have an album of Dutch caliope music? Who would want that? Well, me for one.

Anyway, a curious thing happened. After I bought it, I started noticing this album at many of the estate sales I went to over the next six months. I must have seen it 10 times. Evidently, Dutch caliope music was pretty popular in Dallas in the 50s and 60s.

Another similar episode happened two weeks ago in Fort Worth. I went to back-to-back estate sales in Ridgmar, and at both sales is this Winston Churchill Ezra Brooks bottle commemorating the Iron Curtain speech. I've never seen the thing before in my life, then I see it twice inside of a half hour.

That's estate saling. Sometimes you follow things, sometimes things follow you.

Ode to Julie London

Julie London told Life Magazine in 1957 that she had "only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate."

And intimate it was. Like so much of 1950s popular culture, there was a thin veneer of respectability on top and oceans of roiling sexuality underneath.

When she sings a line like “Don’t Smoke in Bed,” it ain’t no public safety warning. It’s enough to make Smokey the Bear blush.

It’s hard to believe she was married to Jack Webb and Bobby Troup -- two guys who seemed pretty square on the outside. In fact, I remember her on Emergency back in the 1970s. She didn’t seem that smoky to me then, but, of course, I was more interested in the fire trucks.

Upon further review, Webb and Troup were actually a couple of jazz hounds. In fact, Troup produced many of Julie London’s albums and even wrote such classics as “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” and “The Girl Can’t Help It.” And I became more interested in Julie London than fire trucks.

For more on Julie, check out Java’s Bachelor Pad and Brian’s Drive-In Theater. Below are some Julie London album covers from my collection (My favorite is the middle).