SEPTEMBER SPINS

WELCOME SEPTEMBER!

"Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four. The clouds were high and the swallows would be here for another month or so before they left for the south before they returned again next summer."
~ Ali Smith, The Whole Story and Other Stories

(Photograph: old door found in Nacogdoches, Texas; from husband's camera )





Definitive version of September Song, for me, is Frank Sinatra's - but it's always good to hear how some other artists have tried to "make the song their own". There's a long list of them at YouTube, a selection follows:

Ever wondered who Lotte Lenya (of Mack the Knife fame was?)

Now … Jenny Diver … ho, ho … yeah … Sukey Tawdry
Ooh … Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
Oh, the line forms on the right, babe
Now that Macky’s back in town.

I assumed it was a name made-up to fit the rhythm of the song, but as I searched for unusual versions of September Song I came across the version below, then discovered via Wikipedia that

In 1956, Louis Armstrong recorded the song "Mack the Knife", both as a solo number and as a duet with Lenya. Armstrong added Lenya's name into the lyrics, in place of one the characters in the play. Other recordings of the song, most notably Bobby Darin's in 1959, have continued this tradition.
Lotte Lenya (1898 – 1981) was an Austrian singer, diseuse (i.e. performer of monologues), and actress. In the German-speaking and classical music world she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language film she is remembered for her Academy Award-nominated role in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) and as the sadistic and vengeful Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love (1963).

Lou Reed's unusual version of Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson's
September Song:

And a rather classy jazzy interpretation of it by Sarah Vaughan and Wynton Marsalis:

Husband suggested this as the best Big Band version - Stan Kenton's Orchestra :

Chet Baker's rendition is wistful and lovely:

Finally - I do like Jeff Lynne's unstudied, unpretentious version. A commenter at YouTube mentions that the lovely guitar solo is George Harrison's - I wanted to hear more of THAT!

**PS~ We ought never to forget that.....