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2020: James Taylor Sings "Moon River" From Breakfast at Tiffany's

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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James Taylor has , in the last week, put out an album of standards. I'd say I'm surprised that it took him this long. I think it was a couple of decades ago that Rod Stewart put out three albums of standards in a row and got a late career financial boost(fans of a certain age liked both Sinatra AND Stewart -- including me.)

I've followed James Taylor as a favorite for decades now, and I guess you could say that musical artists have the same problem that movie stars do. Taylor was giant in the 70s, did a slow fade in the 80s, hung on in the 90's, and released a pretty damn good album in the early 2000s(it had "September" or "October" in the title.) Basically a 30-year recording career and now he's a big concert act -- and he knows this ("90% of my career now is touring with my hits.") Someone dubbed him "Sinatra for the Baby Boomers" and he kinda/sorta is -- a great distinctive voice, a canon of work(and a talent with a guitar that Sinatra didn't have.)

I've also followed James Taylor long enough to watch him take on slings and arrows for his "overly mellow and sensitive persona," for music that drives some people (mainly men) nuts with rage -- and to see the sexy "Joe Cool with Long Hair and Moustache" cut the moustache, lose all the hair and become a rather grizzled old man with a young man's voice. No matter, I've stayed his fan based on memories of the 70's...much as I'm loyal to Psycho and NXNW from getting some of their biggest broadcast airplay back then.

Taylor put out an album of new songs a few years ago and I was very sad about it. It only had about two tunes with much melody -- it was as if he'd run out of music in his head.

Besides that "new" album, Taylor did a nifty Xmas album back in the 90's that he updates every few years with another song, and two albums of "Covers" -- which while not quite standards, were definitely somebody else's songs.

One of those "Covers" albums featured Taylor doing well by the Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell classic "Witchita Lineman," which I have always loved as a "movie level" song of yearning love. Campbell did it best; Sergio Mendes and his ladies did a sexy bossa nova version of it, and Taylor won a Grammy for his version. Its a great song.

But an even GREATER song is "Moon River" and when I saw that Taylor was finally singing that one(I read the album cover list)...I smiled. OF COURSE it was time for James Taylor to sing "Moon River." This song just could be -- for my generation -- THE movie song of all time. Its beautiful, its sad, it has lyrics that mean something and nothing at the same time("My huckleberry friend.") The music is by Henry Mancini, "the movie music man of the 60s" , the lyrics are by Johnny Mercer. A special on Mercer showed Mercer on Dinah Shore's show in the 70's , and she said to him "above all, Johnny, we thank you for that wonderful, wonderful song, Moon River."

The 1961 movie from which Moon River is taken is "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and we get an instrumental version over the credits(with Audrey TAKING that Breakfast at Tiffany's -- a bagel on the sidewalk); and Audrey singing it herself(without her "My Fair Lady" dubbing) and I think, a big chorus at the end. Breakfast at Tiffany's -- rather like the lesser "The Way We Were" of 12 years later is "a movie about a song" -- the song enwraps the movie from beginning to end and creates a mood that makes the movie a classic (for instance, the instrumental comes up very sadly as Buddy Ebsen's bus pulls away -- he's a middle aged man who married Hepburn's hillbilly teen and has to be thrown away by the sophisticated new Audrey.)

The years have been tough on Breakfast at Tiffany's because anyone trying to extoll its virtues has to deal with the fact that that the film has a running gag of Mickey Rooney as "a comedy Japanese man with buckteeth" for slapstick. Director Blake Edwards liked to do "ethnic accent humor" --- Peter Sellers as the French Inspector Clouseau, with Kato the Asian karate sparring partner in "The Pink Panther," Peter Sellers as a Hindu Indian in The Party but -- ethnic humor is over, and Rooney looks really BAD in those buck teeth. Oh, well -- movie history is history.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And "Breakfast at Tiffany" and "Moon River" are relevant in MY life, because I remember seeing the movie at a very young age, with my entire family, at a drive-in, in a car. And that song "Moon River" caught my young ears both at the movies and on the radio, and on the family record player -- it was always there, and always quite comforting -- a "movie on a record" of just a few minutes duration.

The movie has an opening instrumental(at the drive-in, the harmonica played over the opening credits prompted my mother to say, "this sounds like a Western" -- and I've never forgotten that critique), and a chorus, and Hepburn singing it -- but the tune got REALLY famous with the Andy Williams version. Williams was an easy listening giant of the 60's and he often got first crack at the Mancini movie tunes -- Moon River, Days of Wine and Roses, Dear Heart -- and the non-Mancini movie tune, Emily (Americanization of Emily).

Sinatra did all of those too, but didn't really get "first crack." That said, I've heard Sinatra's version of "Moon River" and it has a wonderfully sad strings orchestration put between the phrases "waiting round the bend..my Huckleberry friend" that makes it a different song, even aside from Sinatra's vocals. The Sinatra version of Moon River kind of has that "To Kill a Mockingbird" nostalgic pathos to it. I like it better than the Williams version.

But And Williams used it as his theme song, and -- in the 00's I think, an aged Williams sang "Moon River" on a TV salute to NBC and got the standing ovation of the night from the hardened show biz audience. I remember that -- it was like one century's last gasp in the next. Unless it was the 90s.

PS. Other than "Moon River," the "fun one" on "American Standards" finds JT taking on Stubby Kaye's rousing semi-gospel number "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat" from Guys and Dolls. Its 1955 all over again.