Milestones

Julie London

Name: Julie London – Julie Is Her Name
Item: Julie Is Her Name
Author: Damiano Pandolfini

Julie Is Her Name

1955 (Liberty)

vocal jazz

by Damiano Pandolfini

Julie, one of a kind and inimitable, the prototype of the pin up girl of the '50s, with her dizzying curves, perfect hairdo and intense gaze. But above all, Julie the intimate, elegant performer, who keeps the room on the edge of its seat with a whisper. It's easy, in short, to fall back on the usual calling card when talking about figures from Hollywood's golden age like Julie London. After all, the sensuality here is openly suggestive, as shown by her album covers – depending on how it's cropped across different formats, the image on "Julie Is Her Name" can momentarily give the impression that the cups of her dress are the initial hint of two bold nipples, which was already enough to send postwar America into an uproar. But inside this flawless package of Hollywood actress and chanteuse for refined tastes lies an intelligent, sensitive woman, sarcastic and lethal when the occasion calls for it, able to dive into the heart of a song with incredible naturalness and probe the depths of a layered, complex femininity.

And to think Julie was never even meant to be a singer; discovered while still very young precisely for her good looks, while working at a Los Angeles department store as an elevator attendant, she made her film debut at just seventeen in "Nabonga" (1944), launching a curious but promising acting career that briefly placed her alongside the era's other great blonde icon, Marilyn Monroe.

But by the first half of the '50s, Julie's American dream had already fallen apart; her marriage to Jack Webb, the well-known filmmaker with whom she had two daughters, ended in divorce right at the moment he found success and stopped coming home. While family would always remain at the center of Julie's life – she would have three more beloved children from her second marriage – her image as the perfect housewife and devoted little wife was nothing more than a projection of that era's American values. Loneliness, depression and rock-bottom self-esteem were always lurking, as if to mark out the limits within which she was allowed to live and express herself.

When you're a woman and your marriage falls apart, you hit rock bottom […] I suddenly felt old, stupid, uninteresting and no longer attractive. I gave up my career when I married Jack – that was a mistake. I believed it wasn't possible to have a job and be married, but giving up my work ended up backfiring. Going out, meeting interesting people, makes a woman more attractive to her husband […]

In a sense, the show is already over.

The Elusive Chanteuse

It will be Bobby Troup, jazz musician and author of that "Route 66" made famous by Nat King Cole and soon also by Rolling Stones, who notices Julie's unusual vocal talent; during an evening spent with a group of mutual friends listening to records in the living room, the now nearly-former actress stands up and sings "Little Girl Blue". Everyone falls silent. There's something unique in the way Julie approaches the song, in her ability to dissect its meaning and reinterpret it in her own way, cutting away every frill and avoiding comparisons with other singers. For Troup it's love at first sight, and within a few years he and Julie will be happily married. What proves harder, if anything, is convincing her there and then to make a record; forever shy and unconvinced of her own abilities, Julie will always find something to object to, even once success comes knocking again.

I honestly don't have much of a voice, it's more of a whisper, and I always have to stay right up against the microphone or else no one can hear me

Which doesn't do her justice, since it actually takes real nerve to present yourself to the world with no frills whatsoever. Up to that point, in fact, the jazz canon had unwittingly demanded a fair amount of sheer power from its performers, enough to cut through the sound of the customary orchestra and reach the ears of audiences in the big theatres. Legendary voices such as Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland and Sarah Vaughan had to reckon with volume, resulting in elaborate studio productions and performances often backed by a small army of musicians onstage. But to capture the essence of London's intimate interpretations, Troup has "Julie Is Her Name" recorded with nothing but a guitar and a double bass, resulting in thirteen bare miniatures of smoky sensuality and shadowy confessions in which it's essentially impossible to hide. Against all expectations, the record soon becomes a smash hit, selling three million copies.

It takes very little to fall in love with it: the atmosphere of "Julie Is Her Name" has something eternal and otherworldly about it. Barney Kessel, among the most influential jazz guitarists of his era, has an innate gift for weaving harmonies like embroidery seen against the light; his touch is never intrusive, careful not to step on the singer's toes, yet his complex, oblique sonic textures fill exactly the space needed, wonderfully standing in for what would otherwise be split among the thirty members of an orchestra. Rounding out the trio is Ray Leatherwood on double bass, also always elegantly tucked into the background, yet effectively the sole stand-in for the entire rhythm section of a record that doesn't feature a single beat , and which still doesn't miss a beat.

The heart of the record lies in tracks such as "I Should Care", "It Never Entered My Mind" and "Say It Isn't So", where Julie, Barney & Ray converse as a trio as if sitting on a porch watching the moon on a warm midsummer night. Julie is a master at giving voice to this sense of quiet intimacy and melancholy passion; her relationship with love is romantic, but tinged with the wary maturity of someone who has already tasted its bitter aftertaste – "I'm In The Mood For Love" and "I'm Glad There Is You" paint the picture of a woman certainly hungry for attention but by no means naive, let alone passive. "Can't Help Lovin' That Man" drives the point home even further: a light bass line and a handful of guitar creaks are all it takes to let Julie step bitterly into painfully autobiographical territory.

In just over half an hour, "Julie Is Her Name" turns minimalism into something close to an art form, though that doesn't mean the mood stays the same throughout; on "I Love You" and the vaudeville ,"No Moon At All", bass and guitar mutter out a brisker rhythm, while the voice shines above it in all its splendor. The tempo really picks up on the perky, sparkling "'S Wonderful", a classic showstopper that, with an orchestra behind it, would take on ,Ravel-esque , tones – here, instead, it's just Barney working miracles on guitar alone.

As a total emotional counterpart to the above, Julie sings the first forty seconds of the spectral "Laura" entirely a cappella, and the sound of her voice alone takes on the texture of smoke in the half-light.

Julie's revenge

In 1953, songwriter Arthur Hamilton published the sheet music for a new song titled "Cry Me A River". The piece was initially offered to Ella Fitzgerald for the soundtrack of the film "Pete Kelly's Blues", directed by none other than Julie's ex-husband, Jack Webb. But the production company became convinced that, in a segregated America, many wouldn't believe Fitzgerald singing the word "plebeian". Hamilton tries to revise the lyrics and change the melody of the verse, but in the end decides to leave everything as it is, and the song is cut from the film.

In a flash, Julie records her own version, et voilàin under three minutes, with nothing more than an oblique interplay of guitar and double bass dragging along in the background, "Cry Me A River" becomes a devastating anthem of dispassionate coldness and melancholy revenge. It would be easy to turn the piece into a melodrama, but Julie instead colors her lament with an unprecedented bitterness, delicately edged with spite: the image of a woman abandoned in her own apartment, sad and disappointed, yet quietly possessed of a steel-veined self-control.

These are the images of Julie, superbly performing her own song in the famous 1956 film "The Girl Can't Help It", like some sinister ghost wrapped in soft chiffon:

The audience is instantly captivated, and the song becomes a hit that reaches the Billboard Top Ten, transforming its performer's image with a double somersault, from beautiful actress to unexpectedly beguiling singer.

Ella Fitzgerald's longer, vocally pyrotechnic version was then released in 1961, helping keep the song's success alive in the public imagination – over the years, "Cry Me A River" became a jazz vocal standard, eventually earning a place in the prestigious National Recording Registry, held at the Library of Congress in Washington.

But the original version remains unsurpassable, so bare and essential that it leaves no room for any vocal tricks or gimmicks whatsoever: her name is Julie London, the performer who, with a whisper, could tell the whole glamour and its opposite of 1950s America. Rarely has the sound of three people in a room reached such depth.

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22/08/2021

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Damiano Pandolfini, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition