The Songbirds Archives

It’s hard to imagine what prompted Rhino Records, which apparently now has the rights to the ultra-prestigious Bethlehem jazz catalog, to reissue Frances Faye Sings Folk Songs (1957), or at the very least, to reissue it before her two jazz albums of standards for the label. Was it because they were able supplement it with five bonus tracks – rare alternate takes that primarily Faye-natics will find of interest? Perhaps.

In any case, Faye is largely forgotten except by gay men, who especially relish the dry, hip, camp repartee of her live albums ("I was gonna strip but I’m not feeling too well. [pause] I’m not pretty but I’m very wild, [pause] and if you ever saw me during the day in a black sheath and sneakers, you’d kill yourself."). Her two Caught in the Act albums, available on CD from GNP/Crescendo, are an important entry in, for lack of a better phrase, the lounge literature and logical candidates for rediscovery by the burgeoning Louis Prima cult, just as her entire body of work needs to be reassessed by students of popular music. Eight years after her death, it is time to begin acknowledging her greatness as a singer. The reissue of Folk Songs should go a long way toward that end.

The mere dozen LPs Faye (who pronounced her first name Fron-ces) recorded during her career showcase the breadth of her musical interests, including a jazz version of Porgy and Bess, albums of Latin-style tunes and blues, and of all things, a tribute to Fats Domino. Her standard repertoire embraced pop, jazz, R&B, and rock and roll. Folk Songs is no different, herding, as it does, a wide variety of songs under one all-encompassing umbrella: folk songs, both traditional (Clementine) and contemporary (Go ‘Way from My Window); ballads from the Middle Ages (The Three Ravens), the Civil War (Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier) and Tin Pan Alley (Lonesome Road); international folk songs (Oif’n Pripitchik, Come Back to Sorrento); Negro spirituals (Deep River); and the two cornerstones of American narrative blues, Frankie and Johnny and St. James Infirmary.

Granted, some are removed from their idiom altogether, thanks to jazz settings by the great Russ Garcia. Skip to My Lou and Clementine, for instance, are recast as swing tunes and, indeed, the album begins with a walking bass and plaintive trumpet, conjuring up the smoky saloons of Frankie and Johnny – hardly what you’d expect from a collection of "folk" songs. Garcia’s arrangements are by turns spare and vibrant, lyrical and punchy, bringing added color and drama to the songs. Performed by such jazz luminaries as trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, trombonist Frank Rosolino and drummer Mel Lewis, they virtually seem to have a life of their own.

Some of these arrangements would overwhelm a lesser singer, but not Faye. She swings – hard. Her strong affinity with blues shouters is evident, and startling in a Jewish girl born in Brooklyn in 1912 (though she could have been influenced, too, by the cantorial singing of her heritage). In live gigs she fronted what was essentially an R&B band, which she would urge on with cries of "Wail! Wail! Go!" When I played a friend the opening bars of "John Henry" – a stampede of blaring horns and clanking hammers that gives way to Faye’s clarion call – he laughed with delight, "It gives me chills!" And it’s true; one thrills to the soar and holler of her voice. Her voice is throaty – sawdust and sandpaper – with an urban twang; her delivery is declamatory and unrestrained; and her approach to a song is direct – the "take no prisoners" school of vocalizing. (It’s no coincidence that one of her greatest albums is entitled Frances Faye in Frenzy.) She opens her mouth and just sings. All these qualities combine with her relaxed sense of phrasing and swing to form a style that is not only completely natural but, more than that, organic.

At the same time, she is capable of unexpected vocal subtleties – adding an almost imperceptible tremolo, or sliding into a note from below, or softening the edges of certain notes – so that at times there is something very musical about her sound. Because of that, and because no mannerisms get between her and her reading of a lyric, her ballads are believable and surprisingly tender. On any one of half a dozen heartfelt songs, she might easily be a grandmother serenading a young child. She is genuinely affecting, whether she’s singing about Frankie’s dying Johnny ("Roll me over so easy / Roll me over so slow / Roll me over easy, boys / For my wounds they hurt me so") or the departure of another Johnny, who’s "gone for a soldier" ("Who could blame me, cry my fill / And every tear would turn a mill") or about spurned love ("I’ll go tell all my brothers / Tell all my sisters, too / That the reason why my heart is broke / Is on account of you"). And as for her deeply poignant medley of Negro spirituals...."forget it," as Faye liked to say when something was too overwhelming to contemplate.

To be sure, the album is not without flaws. The troubadour guitar accompaniment of Greensleeves is uninspired. (Faye was a masterful pianist; it would have been wonderful to hear how she might have accompanied herself on this.) Both The Three Ravens and Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier are immeasurably weakened by a dated and particularly insipid kind of mixed-choral backing popular in the 1950s.

But for that, Frances Faye Sings Folk Songs would be that rare thing: an absolutely
perfect album.

The Recordings of Frances Faye

Rhino Records (includes Bethehem Archives/Avenue Jazz)