Music under the sky

I Remember; Dianne Reeves

My friend Elaine B. shared one of her favorite CD’s with me one day while aboard the Crown Odyssey. I paid attention whenever she recommended something. She had a keen knack for rooting out recorded musical finery. We had a day at sea and on such days we typically found each other up on the top deck in the afternoon with our discmen (!) and headphones. “Hey, Erik, listen to this.” What’ve you got, a trumpet player? “Nope. A singer.” Is she good? “Oh, ho ho ho, ho, ho, ho, baby.” Sometimes a simple “yes” just doesn’t deliver the goods.

Dianne Reeves revved my music motor from the moment I turned the key. Wielding her thick yet agile voice, Ms. Reeves sketched magnificent, arresting masterpieces in the musical air, breathing rhythmic life into her creations. Using her voice as an instrument, rather than just as a harbinger of stories and expressions of sentiment, she approaches improvisation from the standpoint of a horn player, a single voice that finds artistic freedom within the confines of measured rhythm, scale and key. And always, always, always – style – and groove.

The third track features the title song. “I Remember Sky” comes from a peculiar musical written by Stephen Sondheim called “Evening Primrose” based on a short story by John Collier. Like Menotti’s “Amahl And The Night Visitors”, Sondheim wrote this musical for television, and, indeed, it aired on November 16, 1966. The musical focuses on a poet who takes refuge from the world by hiding out in a department store after closing. He discovers a whole community of people who live in the store and he falls in love with a beautiful young girl named Ella, who, by the way, has lived in the store since she got separated from her mother at the age of six when she fell asleep in the women’s hat department. In the song “I Remember Sky”, Ella claims that, though she has not seen the sun in thirteen years, she can …

… remember sky

It was blue as ink

Or at least I think

I remember sky…

I remember leaves

Green as spearmint

Crisp as paper

I remember trees

Bare as coat racks

Spread like broken umbrellas…

I remember days

Or at least I try

But as years go by

They’re a sort of haze

And the bluest ink

Isn’t really sky

And at times I think

I would gladly die

For a day of sky

Ms. Reeves and her colleagues bring such thoughtfulness to what otherwise might be considered a rather silly song. I’ve never seen this "Evening Primrose", but I understand that it shifts from the peculiar to the bizarre toward the end, yielding a sort of Twilight-Zone surprise, where two new bride and groom mannequins, eerily resembling Ella and the poet, appear in the store the next day.

I heard an interview with her many years later, and the interviewer prompted her to tell her story of stage fright. It seems that Ms. Reeves has no problem shutting out the image of an audience while she sings, but in her early performance days, when it came time to introduce the members of the band to the audience, she would stutter like a maniac. A friend offered that maybe she shouldn’t tell the audience the band members’ names as much as maybe she should sing the band’s introductions to the audience. So, she tried it, having the rhythm section set up a groove and she found that she could sing each band member’s name without the stuttering problem. She has since shed her fear of talking to the audience, but she had such a good time introducing the band in this fashion that she still does so as a kind of trademark.

I remember listening to “I Remember Sky” while looking at the sky above the Crown Odyssey. This was the type of “life imitates art” moment that I would enjoy for a long time.

Credits: To Stephen Sondheim, wordsmith extraordinaire. And to Rod Serling, for master storytelling. Thank you for the musing musicals and the twisting Twilight Zones.