Colours create moods. A truism. How depressing would it be if every haberdashery sold cottons and buttons in grey and blue only? How fanciful might it be to walk on city footpaths which were painted in every colour of the rainbow, and a thousand and one hues in-between?
“Hues" in visual perception are analogous to the “timbres” (or “sound colours”) heard in music and other auditory sensations. The brief vocal at the end of “Blues” in this double feature is an attempt to imitate a line in a Louis Armstrong vocal recorded in 1930. The track is “Blue, Turning Grey Over You”. It was composed by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf—also recorded by Waller and his band (1938), but without vocals on that occasion.
Brian Rust, in a 1983 liner note for a Swaggie LP, “Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra 1929-1931”, offers this stylistic comparison:
Waller’s sense of the ridiculous was perhaps more eloquent than Louis’s; his asides were more nimble and his scope much wider. Louis, confronted with lyrics that Fats would have—sometimes later did—lampoon mercilessly, seems content to reduce them to gibberish, freely seasoned with “oh baby” and “uh-huh” or similar expressions.
Gibberish or genius? Take your pick.
Watch it here.
Comments