stifling those who strive

(Its now 1/26/07 Way behind here. Sorry.)

Day: 12/11/06 - 12/13/06
Song: Lush Life
Artist:Johnny Hartman & John Coltrane
Source: John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (album)

I rediscovered this song after a discussion about jazz got me digging out some of my old albums. I was listening to it so much, I actually had to force myself to put the album away.

However, I've been stumped for the past month or so trying to figure out how to do this song justice. I don't usually do this, but I'm going to resort to the lyrics. Take a gander if you are not familiar:

I used to visit all the very gay places
Those come what may places
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life
To get the feel of life...
From jazz and cocktails.

The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces
With distant gay traces
That used to be there you could see where they'd been washed away
By too many through the day...
Twelve o'clock tales.

Then you came along with your siren of song
To tempt me to madness
I thought for a while that your poignant smile was tinged with the sadness
Of a great love for me.

Ah yes! I was wrong...
Again,
I was wrong.

Life is lonely, again
And only last year everything seemed so sure.
Now life is awful, again
a troughful of hearts could only be a bore.
A week in paris will ease the bite of it,
All I care is to smile in spite of it.

I'll forget you, I will
While yet you are still burning inside my brain.
Romance is mush,
Stifling those who strive.
I'll live a lush life in some small dive...
And there I'll be, while I rot
With the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too..

Finished? Ok good. Another thing to know if you aren't familiar with the song is that the opening section, until "Now life is awful..." is what the liner notes call the songspiel, an intro loose melody that scrambles over the scale (think of the slow part about "Prutians landing on Plymoth Rock" part of "Anything Goes"). It sets the stage and establishes a milieu for the song proper which has a slower, more somber feel to it. Its important not only an intersting piece of melody and rhythm but it also give a context to the rest of the song, which needs a little help not to seem too over the top.

There is a tension in the song's lyrics that makes Lush Life compelling. The romantic sense of destruction that is shows up in lots of down-and-out songs (alt country and Tom Waits come to mind), is paired with an air of self conscious sophistication that separates the song from similar tales of woe.

The lyrics are incredibly bleak, yet also incredibly clever. The narrator is clearly destroyed ("life is awful", "while I rot with the rest"), yet there are intricate internal rhymes that would put most MCs to shame, and ridiculous couplets ("Now life is awful/again, I'm sure a troughful...") which suggest an aristocratic "dignity in the face of anything" ("all I care, is to smile in spite of it") that makes the whole thing bearable. It's as if the narrator is suggesting that heartbreak can be a game that can be enjoyed and perhaps won. Sure it hurts, but viewed from the right angle it can be savored. The finest scotch is 40% toxin.

But I can't help but wonder how far this show of dignity really goes. The lyrics are practically falling over themselves to show how clever they are ("relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life, to get the feel of life") to the point where they jar. No one rhymes awful and troughful. Does the narrator perhaps protest too much? Is he overdoing it, revealing the very thing he is trying to conceal?

When I first heard Hartman sing this I thought his delivery was too smooth, but I've come around. It is suave and sophisticated enough to obscure the rhythmic complexity of the lyrics and his tone is clean enough that the lyrics meanings are able to be front and center. As sung by Hartman, the song become stories within stories, with a vivid setting. This is literature. (Being accompanied by McCoy Tyner doesn't hurt, either.)

After Hartman finishes, Coltrane lightens the mood a bit with an almost jaunty solo. It's a nice change and normally it would be the thing I focus on, but Hartman's deft balancing act between suave sophistication, devistation, humor, detachment, bitterness and self mocking steals the show.