Moon River was my Grandpa’s least favorite song, I grew up hearing this. I have no idea why it was his least favorite song, as it has lovely lyrics, and has always struck me as very melancholy – a lot like Two For The Road, they both have that same wistful quality.
In normal circumstances, I cannot sing Moon River, it’s one of the hardest pieces to accomplish vocally. Like ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ it has a lot of strange jumps – it sounds simple, but it isn’t. It’s also very much an alto song, and I’m not a true alto.
Except occasionally. Very, very occasionally.
The deal was, that I would sing one more song with Stryker, in exchange for getting that picture taken of us on the piano. He let me pick the song. I’d already done Cabaret earlier in the evening, What I Did For Love was out because it’s a soprano song and my soprano range is currently not in very good shape due to a variety of factors. Besides, I get tired of the same two charts every time. I have a bigger repertoire than that.
So there’s a small amount of discussion, a quick testing of which key will work, and I clamber up onto the stool and adjust the microphone, take a deep breath, and cross my fingers that the audience will at least be able to hear the lowest notes.
Only to find that they aren’t just there, they’re solid. And where they risk not being, where they risk getting growly, or unstable, I find that I know where to take the melody so that I can accommodate it in my mezzo-range instead.
Nights like this, you realize that you don’t see the audience. You know they’re out there, you register their presence, you give yourself to them, but you don’t see them. Not really.
It took me a second, to come back to myself after I finished, to realize that I was in fact not in a real bar, that I wasn’t peering through a layer of blue-smoke like my father used to talk about back when he was playing with my Grandpa (everyone smoked then, even if you didn’t, it’s often shocked me that my dad didn’t take up smoking for real considering how much he must have breathed in second hand as a teenager).
One of those nights, when I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to turn around and see my Grandpa standing at the bar, looking at me as if to say “I still hate that song kid, but I’m proud of you…”
Two drifters…off to see the world…there’s such a lot of world to see…
We’re after the same…rainbow’s end…
Although it is a song with strange jumps, as you say, it’s one that makes me glad I’m an alto. That’s my territory, Shaugnessy!