Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Jordan — Stone Cold Dead in the Market

I went along to Club Tromolo at Glasgow's Classic Grand Club the other evening and was bowled over by the duets performed by Miss Leggy Pee and her partner, Charlie. The evening went from pleasant to sublime when I, your original never-won-a-thing-in-me-life chap, won the grand prize in the raffle: a half bottle of Buckfast!

So, in this non-PC duet spirit, here’s some more ersatz calypso: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan’s 1947 hit Stone Cold Dead in the Market. Ah, those good old carefree Andy Capp days of humourous domestic violence.

Listen:

Download Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Jordan — Stone Cold Dead in the Market MP3 (rapidshare)

I haven’t been able to find any information about the song’s history: not even whether it’s a Truly Trinny calypso song, or a piece of tin pan alley fakery; but here’s the song on one of those forties proto-promo-video “soundies”: in this case performed by Gracie Barrie.

George Martin – She Said She Said

It’s August 1965: The Beatles, touring America, are resting at 2850 Benedict Canyon Drive, Beverley Hills, where they are trapped by a beseiging army of fans. One day, they're visited by the Byrds and Peter Fonda. Everybody (except one goody-goody Beatle—yes, that one) drops acid. Discussing fear of death with George, Fonda starts talking about his near-fatal self-inflicted childhood gunshot accident, and how his heart stopping three times on the operating table. “I know what it’s like to be dead, man”.

The lysergically enhanced John Lennon finds this deeply disturbing: "Who put all that shit in your head?".

John deals with the trauma in his usual way: by turning it into music. It gets mentally chewed, torn, digested, reassembled, transformed and regurgitated, until it becomes a Beatles song: She Said She Said”, on arguably their best LP, Revolver (1966).

Then Fabs producer and Sixth Fifth Beatle* George Martin further transformed it in to this lush and swoony instrumental: from his 1966 LP of his interpretations of Lennon & McCartney songs: George Martin Instrumentally Salutes The Beatle Girls, using flute, strings, piano and bongos.

*After Stuart Sutcliffe, Pete Best, Brian Epstein, Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, but before Jimmy Nichol and Billy Preston. Derek who?

Listen:

Download George Martin – She Said She Said MP3 (rapidshare)