Sleepsongs: A Sleepin’ Bee

Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley: A Sleepin‘ Bee

[purchase]

Hey, did you know that Truman Capote wrote a musical? It’s true. It was called House of Flowers. The music was by Harold Arlen. The show debuted in December of 1954, with Pearl Bailey as the established star, and Diahann Carroll the up and coming star in the cast. Even with all that talent involved though, the show was a flop. So why even mention it?

The reason is that the songs survived and thrived. In particular, A Sleepin’ Bee became a standard, recorded by many jazz singers to this day. This version by Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley is a fine example of why the song survives. The song has both tender and playful aspects. Some singers perform it as a ballad, but this swinging version is closer to the tempo in the original version from the show.

Sleepsongs: Sound-A-Sleep

Blondie: Sound-A-Sleep

[purchase]

Blondie headlined the first rock and roll concert I went to. It was an all-day bill that also held Duran Duran and Elvis Costello. Not a bad deal for $15 American, no?

I'd like to say that I fell asleep with Debbie dreams, later on that night, but I didn't. I was so tuckered out that I don't remember what my sleepy-time included. Over the next few months, though...

All my lawn-mowing money (hey! I was 13 - I got cash where I could) was sent to the Columbia Record And Tape Club... one of the lps I wore out, over the next couple years, was Eat To The Beat.

I love the placement of this song, on that album - 3rd to last. Lull us listeners into dreamy-land before finishing us off with what - to me, anyway - is a sweet 1-2 lullaby kiss-off to punk rock.

Sleepsongs: (Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All

The 5th Dimension: (Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All

[purchase]

Are all of us SMMers nocturnal? Let me add my vote to the night owl category. Add the fact that I'm a female of a certain age notorious for sleeplessness. I sing this song wa-a-ay too much for my liking.

The 5th Dimension was an American pop vocal group that had many noteworthy hits in the late 60s and 70s. One key to their success was choosing some of the best songwriters of the day---Jimmy Webb, Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Ashford & Simpson, Neil Sedaka, and especially Laura Nyro. They had more hits of Nyro's songs that she did herself. Just goes to show, if you start with the best you can't go wrong.

Sleepsongs: You Might As Well Go To Sleep / Sleeper

Greg Brown: You Might As Well Go To Sleep

[purchase]

Eliza Gilkyson: Sleeper (orig. Greg Brown)

[purchase]

As a chronicler of the human condition, Greg Brown is well-known for a particular emotional depth and wonder-at-the-world attitude which rests heavily on concrete, often wry imagery. He's strong in every life-stage, too, from death to parenthood, from hormone-crazed lust to love's end - and his deep signature growl only frames the journey all the better. Sleeper, which we hear here covered by his contemporary and labelmate Eliza Gilkyson, is a great example, running through a patient sequence of life's moments and metaphors verse by verse and stage by stage fluidly, like the streams and hills of his native rural Iowa.

But although Brown's songs of age increasingly resonate with me, my favorite parts of his songbook are those which take on the lens of parenthood in all its hopeful, aching glory. And where Say A Little Prayer - perhaps my favorite from his songbook - lulls us slowly through a sick child's love lullaby, on You Might As Well Go To Sleep, we get the other side of love: I love you, but it's late, and my job is to get you to let the day go and get some sleep, so let's get moving, already.

Both Say A Little Prayer and You Might As Well Go To Sleep, of course, reveal the father figure as deeply sensitive, caring and gentle, the dad each one of us yearns to be at his best moments. But like Sleeper, the former is pure poetry, while in his kiddie sleepsong, the long, repetitive language culminates in what amounts to a paragraph of highly recognizable too-wired-to-sleep kid language bounced back gently yet firmly from the bedside. That the punchline still doesn't break the tone of lighthearted, slightly exasperated poignancy is just one more piece of evidence for his genius - and one more perfectly articulated facet of the "how to live right" model which Greg Brown provides for us, over and over again.

The moral: though several of us have proselytized about him before, it's time to buy some Greg Brown. The whole catalog is solid, but if you, too, have kids or just know some, Greg Brown's Bathtub Blues, the 1993 kids album which today's track comes from, makes a wonderful addition to the library. And if you, too, love strong female singer-songwriters and coverage, it's worth noting that the Red House collection Going Driftless: An Artist’s Tribute to Greg Brown is on this coverblogger's eternal top ten.

Sleepsongs: Sleep Away Your Troubles

The Softies: Sleep Away Your Troubles

[Purchase]

The Softies are what some might call the definition of the term "twee". Two girls, Rose Melberg and Jen Sbragia, of the Pacific Northwest who often wore babydoll dresses and sang sweet, delicate music using only two guitars that harmonized, as did their vocals. They sang of love and friendship and childhood memories all with an innocent beauty, and anything else that could leave you with a warm tingling feeling of nostalgia.

This song comes from their album "Holiday in Rhode Island". The song is lovely, but the subject matter heartbreaking. She sings about a lover potentially leaving her and feeling sad but wishing him sweet dreams as he sleeps away his troubles.

I choose this song after seeing the weather report yesterday and seeing that there's only one day in the next 7 with no chance for snow. I sort of wish we could do like the bears and just sleep until April and not have to worry about all this mess. Wouldn't that be nice?

Sleepsongs: Behind the Wall of Sleep

The Smithereens: Behind the Wall of Sleep

[purchase]

Just try to sleep to this one. The Smithereens play it loud. In the 1980s, someone felt the need to come up with term “power pop”, and it stuck. But, as far as I’m concerned, this one is rock n’ roll, pure and simple. Here is a guy dreaming of his perfect girl. She plays guitar in a rock band, and I’m hoping this wasn’t written about Joan Jett. In any case, there’s nothing profound about this song. It’s just a burst of lust fueled rock music, and one of the best examples of the genre I know.

Sleepsongs: Sleepy Cowboy

The Five Sharps: Sleepy Cowboy

(No recordings in print, it seems)

This is the b-side of what is reputed to be the world’s most collectible record. The Five Sharps were a New York-based a vocal group – precursors of doo wop, really – that released only one record, in 1952.

The Five Sharps’ version of the standard Stormy Weather, backed with their original composition Sleepy Cowboy, was singularly unsuccessful. Indeed, to the members, just owning a copy of their single was a loss-maker: they had been paid for the recording in hot dogs and soda pop, but had to buy their single (Jubilee #5104).

The single was soon forgotten even by the few who had bought it. Fast forward a decade, and the notion of records as collectible items had started to take hold. One such collector, Billy Pensabene, in January 1962 lent the New York radio presenter Irving ‘Slim’ Rose his precious 78rpm copy of the Five Sharps solitary single – and Rose broke it by accident (there are various accounts of the record’s provenance and ruin; let’s stick to the most commonly told story). Lesser men would have shrugged their shoulders, and perhaps pay Pensabene a suitable amount of money in reparation. Rose, however, advertised for copies of the single, offering a handsome sum in compensation.

Weeks went by, and nobody came forward even as Rose increased the bounty from generous to crazy money. A visit to Jubilee Records with a view to re-pressing the single was fruitless: the masters had been destroyed in a fire (or perhaps water damage; as so often in such stories, the details change with every re-telling).

Jubilee had issued the single in both 78 and the new-fangled 45rpm formats. A few 78s are still circulation, but no 45 has ever resurfaced. A re-recording was produced by Rose in 1965; nobody really cared about that.

The highest price fetched for the single was $19,000 in a private sale in November 2003.

The story of how we are able to hear the b-side of what is said to be the world’s rarest single is quite long (and interesting). That, the full story of the Jubilee #5104 and the fate of the Five Sharps is recounted on Marv Goldberg’s fine R&B Notebook, from which we borrow the two illustrations.

Sleepsongs: I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning

David Bromberg Band: I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning

[purchase]

Like Boyhowdy, I am nocturnal, and like him, I should fix that for similar reasons. So this song seemed to me to be the perfect follow-up to his post. Sleeping late follows directly from being up too late, on a good day.

This song was released on a major label in 1975. Today, that could never happen. Sleep Late starts out sounding like a folk number with a hint of blues. Before it ends, there are gospel-inspired background vocals and Dixieland jazz instruments joining in. David Bromberg’s music of that period also had a strong rock element, but all of it was fair game, sometimes in the same song. Later in his career, Bromberg would also add Celtic folk to the mix. Bromberg is still out there performing, but he doesn’t record much any more. His most recent release, from 2008, was a live recording from 1982. He had a studio album in 2007, and the one before that was from 1990. So I’m hoping to get the chance to see him live one of these days. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Resolutions -> Sleepsongs: Go To Sleep

Sarah Harmer: Go To Sleep

[purchase]

I love this 2004 lullaby from Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer. But today it serves a stronger purpose, reminding me that of all the resolutions I've ever made regularly -from quitting smoking to spending more time with my children - the one that ultimately would make the biggest difference in my life would be going to sleep earlier.

Being naturally nocturnal runs in my family: I have strong childhood memories of my siblings, my father and I all drifting through the house like ghosts until the wee hours of the morning, when exhaustion finally overtook us. But my chosen vocation calls me to consciousness when the world is still dark, and the combination of those two elements - up late and up early - means that most nights, I get four or five hours of sleep, tops.

As a result, I often find myself struggling to stay awake in the afternoons, most dangerously and famously on my drive home each afternoon. Naps help, a bit, and I tend to crash on the couch a few days a week before supper, though it means being out of it for those few precious hours when I could otherwise be with my kids before their own bedtimes. But the fundamental problem remains: I'm a mess, in person, and I owe it all to sleeplessness.

I know that even an hour more a night would ease this process immensely. I know that I'm not my best self most of the time; know, too, that a lack of sleep strains the heart, shortening my lifespan. But try as I might, I can't get my butt off the couch and into bed until midnight or afterwards most nights. And each year, as I resolve to do better, I know in my heart of hearts that it's a losing proposition to promise myself that someday, I'm going to get it right.

Note the time on this post, folks. It's Saturday night, sure. But that's no excuse. I should be sleeping. And I probably could be, too, if I weren't so fatalistic, and so stubborn about it.

Resolutions: Outskirts of Town

Jimmy Witherspoon: Outskirts of Town

[purchase]

Outskirts of Town is a classic blues song. B B King, The Allman Brothers, and Big Bill Broonzy are only a few of the artists who have recorded it. Here is a man who loves his girlfriend or wife so much that he can’t imagine how any other man could resist her. So he resolves to move them out of “harm’s way”. As much as he loves her, there is a lack of trust,, to be sure. But when the song is done right, you don’t judge him, because his pain is so real. When I hear the song in my head, I hear Jimmy Witherspoon singing it.

‘Spoon, as he was called by many, perfectly demonstrated the overlap between blues and jazz. He worked with small jazz combos, like the Gerry Mulligan Quintet heard here, but his singing was always pure blues. His delivery was smooth, but it ached with emotion, especially on the ballads. Outskirts of Town is a perfect example.

Resolutions: We're Gonna Change The World

Matt Monro: We're Gonna Change The World (link DMCAed)




For most people it’s enough to resolve to lose weight, quit smoking, save money, find a job or stop swearing. Matt Monro took the bigger view: in the post-heady days of 1970, he made a belated resolution of the Zeitgeist on behalf of a collective plurality which would change the world.

Monro was a British crooner (and a very good one) not famous for his revolutionary aspirations. Apparently he not even owned a beret or a Che beard. In short, he was Mom’s favourite, not a prototype Obama campaigner.

Here I may point out my regret that the Obama campaign failed to adopt We’re Gonna Change The World as their campaign tune, even if it might have made promises that the president could not possibly keep.

There is a persistent but untrue rumour that the song was created for another agent of unfulfilled promises: as a commercial for Corn Flakes, the breakfast cereal of dubious nutritional value, peddled by a corporation of dubious moral values (and which was founded by an utter madman). One can see cause for the rumour. The merry sing-along melody would not seem out of place in a commercial (hence my recommendation to Mr Obama), and then there is the opening verse: “Shirley Wood gulped down her breakfast, shut the fridge and joined the throng. Margaret Beatty snatched the milk in, scanned the news and went along...”

But before too long, Matt has his various female protagonists involved in a public protests, probably an anti-Vietnam demo, Shirley Wood's throng of the first verse. We encounter her again later, being “dragged, still sitting, by a policeman from the road”. Newspaper-reading Margaret Beatty “had her face slapped by a man she tried to goad”. But there is pathos, too. Anne Harris (also mentioned in the first verse), observes the protest from her office, and thinks of Don, her man, killed in combat. Monro observes, presumably with a healthy dose of irony: “Died for others to live better.”

Monro also addresses the women passing by the demo: “Harried, busy shopping wives; try to stir their ostrich notions, whip them up to wild emotions, put some fire into their wretched lives.” It is these harried, busy shopping wives who might just have purchased Matt’s latest album, for some post-housework easy listening relaxation.

All the more subversive then the stirring chorus: “So, come with us, run with us – we’re gonna change your world. You'll be amazed, so full of praise, when we’ve rearranged your world. We’re gonna change your world!”
What’s the way to the Bastille?

Resolutions: I’m Gonna Be an Engineer

Bobbie McGhee: I‘m Gonna Be an Engineer

[purchase]

I don’t usually post quizzes here, but I have a few questions for our readers as we go along. Please respond in the comments. Thanks.

I had two introductions to folk music growing up. One was what I heard at the peace demonstrations I attended, starting at age eight. The other was a program that was broadcast on WQXR out of New York City when I was young. The show was called Woody’s Stepchildren, and I don’t remember the name of the host, so that’s question 1. Does anyone else remember the show? At any rate, that was where I first heard I’m Gonna Be an Engineer. I believe the song was written by Peggy Seeger, and hers was the version I heard. It was my introduction to feminism, before the term had even been coined. I never thought about what kind of engineer the singer was going to be. My father was an electrical engineer, so that must be it.

The version here is by Bobbie McGhee. Who was she? I have no idea, so that’s question 2. All I know is that I like her version better than Seeger’s. McGhee sounds more determined to me, perhaps because feminism had made some strides by the time McGhee recorded it. I can tell you that McGhee’s album came out on Collector Records in 1981, and was reissued by Smithsonian Folkways in 2006.

Years after I first heard this song, I dated a woman who was a mechanical engineer. That was the mid 1980s, and she was still paid less than her male colleagues. I hope things have continued to improve since then. If there are any female engineers among our readers, feel free to report. I hope there will come a day when we no longer have to talk about someone being a female anything; that is what true equality will mean.

Resolutions: Tamara

Juliana Hatfield: Tamara

[Purchase]


There's lots of quotes about tomorrow, most of which are about change, about how tomorrow will be better than today. There's no time like the breaking of a new year to really feel like tomorrow has arrived.

In this early Juliana Hatfield b-side, from her "Forever Baby" single/EP, she has almost created tomorrow as a person, an entity. In that way, she names the song "Tamara", a play on the word "tomorrow". The song is about plans for betterment in general. In the song, she has big plans to make herself better tomorrow than she is today, but by the end of the song she's already started to give up hope that tomorrow/Tamara can ever really change anything and is destined to always be the same.

Resolutions: I Won't Be Your Dog Anymore

Paul Kelly: I Won't Be Your Dog Anymore

[recent web-only recording; purchase alternate live version here]


For every battered woman who keeps promising herself that this time, she's going to leave.

For every man who compromises his ethics daily just to make that next paycheck.

For everyone who has ever been a dog.

May this be your year.

In Memoriam/ Resolutions: Gregory Isaacs - Write Myself a Letter

Gregory Isaacs: Write Myself a Letter

[purchase]

In 2010, the world lost three important reggae artists, Yabby You, Sugar Minott, and Gregory Isaacs. Isaacs was probably the best known. He is credited with creating the reggae style known as “lover’s rock”, which obviously involved love songs. Isaacs wrote many such songs, and he set the mark in reggae for how to sing them. But Write Myself a Letter is an unlikely cover. The original version, which you will find below, was a classic early jazz song by Fats Waller. The conversion of the song into a reggae number shows the rare musical imagination that Isaacs possessed. He also did a fine version of House of the Rising Sun.

Isaacs’ stage persona was all lover, except when he performed his protest songs. But off-stage, he battled an addiction to cocaine for most of his life, and he spent time in and out of jail. This hard lifestyle finally claimed him in 2010.

Bonus track:

Fats Waller: I‘m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

[purchase]

To be honest, I did not set out to do a transitional post at all. The first song I thought of for our new theme was this classic by Fats Waller. The singer’s resolution is to not allow himself to be lonely. I wanted to find an interesting cover version to go with it, and that’s when I discovered the Gregory Isaacs version. He certainly deserves to be honored, so I’m glad it worked out this way.

In Memoriam: Alex Chilton

The Box Tops: The Letter

[purchase]

Big Star: I'm In Love With A Girl

[purchase]

Alex Chilton: Baron of Love Pt. 2

[purchase]

Chameleonesque singer-songwriter Alex Chilton, a legend of the Memphis music scene, died in March on the cusp of a comeback, perhaps the fifth or sixth such comeback in his long career - more if we include such personal notes as his escape from Hurricane Katrina, and his scheduled high-buzz set with a resurrected group performing under the name of the grungy proto-altrockers Big Star at SXSW in 2010, which went on as a tribute without him just days after his passing [and which included was also originally intended to include Big Star cofounder Andy Hummel, who in a curious synchronicity of events, would pass a few months later].

But though his post-seventies turn to post-modern jazz tinged with Memphis soul never brought him the same recognition as his earlier work, Chilton, who at sixteen had made a splash with The Box Tops - the first recording artists to have a Memphis recorded, nationwide, number one hit - and then in his early twenties resurged at the helm of Big Star, is still recognized widely for his role in the evolution of modern Rock music; both bands featured prominently in the annals and archives of both the Stax museum and the Smithsonian museum of Rock and Blues, which I just came back from visiting down in Memphis, and their song On The Street found fitting placement as the theme song for That 70's Show. I shared my own tribute over at Cover Lay Down in the days after his death, but fittingly, today's post also marks the sixth time we've visited him here at Star Maker Machine since our inception. Surely, it won't be the last, either.

In Memoriam: Kate McGarrigle

Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Tell My Sister

[purchase]

Happy new year to all of our readers. Before we leave 2010 behind completely, let me say that this week of tributes would not be complete for me without Kate McGarrigle. After the beauty of her music, Kate McGarrigle makes me think of family. That may seem odd, given the fact that her marriage to Loudon Wainwright III famously ended badly. But McGarrigle was at the center of a series of annual Christmas concerts which included her children, Martha and Rufus Wainwright, her ex-husband, and various members of the Roche clan, who were included because of Loudon Wainwright’s later relationship with Suzzy Roche. So even if the structure was far from conventional, this all tells me that family was important to Kate McGarrigle. And the bond between her and her sister Anna was clearly very strong. So, I’m not sure which sister wrote Tell My Sister, but it seemed appropriate. The line in the song, “I’m coming home”, perhaps takes on a new meaning in this context, but that seems appropriate as well.

This is not, perhaps, the usual kind of writing for a tribute post. Other people have written some tributes to Kate McGarrigle that are far more beautiful than anything I could do. To conclude, I would like to refer you to one those, here.

In Memoriam: Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln: Talking to the Sun

[purchase]

Give a listen to Talking to the Sun. The song opens with just the drums. That’s just one drummer, but he’s playing an intricate pattern that sounds like it came from Africa. The band joins in, and the music is definitely jazz, but that African feel is still there. Abbey Lincoln starts to sing. Her voice sounds like a second horn, (is there such a thing as an alto trumpet?). She perfectly captures the emotion of the lyric, and her words are clear. After stating the theme, she takes a solo. She skats at the end of the song, but, before that, she is singing the words over, but working magic on the music. The emotion of the piece is only enhanced.

The description above, for me, perfectly captures the artistry of Abbey Lincoln. The connection to Africa did not show up in all of her work, but it was important to her. During the 1960s, she would become active in the Civil Rights Movement. At the time, she also pursued an acting career, and there was hardly any music. In the 70s, even the acting stopped. Her marriage to Max Roach had ended, and she withdrew from the spotlight. When she returned in the 80s, however, she more than proved that she still had it. She focused on the music from then on. Talking to the Sun is from 1984. Lincoln was never afraid to experiment with a wide variety of musical settings, but she never forgot that it must always be about the song. In her early career, from 1956 to the early 60s, she sang other people’s songs. But the later part of her career also proved that she was a fine songwriter as well. Lincoln is gone now, but thirty-five years of music remain. I suspect that jazz singers will be listening to, and learning from, that body of work for a long time to come.

In Memorium: Hank Jones, Herb Ellis, and James Moody

Hank Jones – Herb Ellis – James Moody

Hank Jones: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

[purchase]

Herb Ellis: Sweet Georgia Brown

[purchase]

James Moody: Moody's Mood For Love

[purchase]

The world lost three major American jazz legends in 2010. Hank Jones was 91 at his death, Herb Ellis, 88, and James Moody, 85. All three began their long careers just after World War II in the mid 40's, and all three continued playing and recording well into the 90's and later—Moody recorded a new CD just this year.

Hank Jones, brother of equally famous and talented Thad and Elvin, was a pianist who worked mainly in New York City. Among many of the artists he recorded with are Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman, and Lester Young. The song featured here is a solo effort on a CD by his intermittent group, the Great Jazz Trio, from their 2004 album, Someday My Prince Will Come.

Herb Ellis, guitarist, was another post-WWII musician who toured and recorded with Ella, as well as Jimmy Dorsey, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Byrd, but he was best known as a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio in the 50's. This version of Sweet Georgia Brown is from the 1980 self-titled album of the Monty Alexander (piano), Ray Brown (bass), and Herb Ellis Trio.

James Moody was a saxophonist best known for his 1949 hit song, Moody's Mood For Love, an improvisation of I'm in the Mood for Love. Moody was a long-time collaborator of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie but also played with Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton, and Eddie Jefferson. I'm spotlighting his hit, although I'm not sure if this was the 1949 version or (more likely) a later remake.

In Memoriam: Robbie Jansen & Tony Schilder

Tony Schilder Trio feat. Robbie Jansen: Montreal

(Album out of print)


The jazz scene of Cape Town, South Africa, is quite unique. A port city, it has consolidated the sounds of the Malays who once were imported as slaves by the Dutch with the jazz and soul music collected at the docks from visiting American sailors, the harmonies of Africa with the need to move impelled by the music from Brazil and Cuba, riding the influences of Stan Getz, Miles Davis and Hugh Masekela — and, above all, because it is jazz, the riffing with the collaegues on the scene. It is a scene like no other, a genuinely multicultural melting pot in which the artist is equally at home producing experimental jazz or fusion as he (usually it is a man) is with getting people to dance. Cape jazz has even produced its own form of dance, called the Jazz, which borrows from the Latin types of ballroom dancing. Though never really salacious, it can be very sexy indeed.

Few exponents of Cape jazz sought their fortunes outside their country, or even country. The few who did with success include Jonathan Butler and Abdullah Ibrahim (who before his conversion to Islam was known as Dollar Brand; the nickname acquired because he always had a stash of US currency to buy jazz LPs from sailors). Many of the jazz men who stayed behind became local legends; most have died in undeserved poverty, true martyrs for their art.

The ultimate Cape Town jazz song is Dollar Brand’s Mannenberg, named after the ghetto Manenberg, which is populated by the mixed-race people classified under apartheid as “coloured”, dumped there because their previous homes were located in areas declared “white”. Brand’s multi-racial backing band included the saxophonist and singer Robbie Jansen, a man of prodigious talent and bad habits. Like most of his peers a political activist, Jansen was known to be a generous man who encouraged young talent.

His recorded output was scant; a couple of LPs under his name, a few more on which he appeared (such as those by Pacific Express, Butler’s old band, and briefly Juluka). Above all, Jansen was a live performer. And as such, at a nightclub in ca. 1988, he delivered the greatest interpretation of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On I’ve heard (he later recorded the song; alas, I’ve not heard it).

Jansen died on July 7 at 60. Less than half a year later, on December 8, his frequent jazz collaborator and friend Tony Schilder died at 73, after a long illness.

Tony Schilder was known as the gentleman of jazz; always impeccably dressed with polite manners, he played the keyboard like few could. Dollar Brand wrote his jazz symphony about Manenberg, but Schilder made the place his trademark through his co-ownership of and residency in the 1980s at the stylish nightclub Montreal, incongruously located in the rough township. The club’s theme song, a lovely slice of music (with, it must be said, pedestrian lyrics), was recorded twice: in 1985 with Robbie Jansen on vocals (it is that version featured here) and in the 1990s with Jansen and Butler sharing the microphone.

Like Jansen, Schilder built a reputation as a live act. As far as I know, he recorded only three albums, the first of which, titled Introducing Tony Schilder (1985), was produced by Jonathan Butler, who also sang and played guitar on it (and had a song, JB's Back In Town, named after him). That set, with great vocal tracks and Latin-flavoured instrumentals, remains one of my all-time favourite jazz albums – objectively so, even if that preference may be clouded by the nostalgia for my younger, more handsome nightclubbing days...

After Jansen died, a trade unionist proposed that the city of Cape Town name a street after him. I believe a whole district should be named after the greats of the Cape Jazz scene.

Read an excellent post on Schilder at this outstanding blog.