Blue Moon Rising

Blue Moon, director Richard Linklater’s cinematic meditation on the professional and emotional travails of Lorenz Hart, basically didn’t work for me. I found it stagey and stiff, unsure of what it was aiming for. Yet as a vehicle for virtuosic acting, the film is a triumph thanks to Ethan Hawke’s memorable performance as the ill-fated lyricist. Whether Hawke captures the essential heart of Hart we can never know, but he fully inhabits a creation of his own devising that expresses the uneasy mixture of verbal wit, ironic bitterness, creative pride, poetic imagination, and forlorn romanticism that made up Hart’s conflicted personality. He’s believable and affecting as a larger-than-life, if physically diminutive, man who knows his worth yet is trapped in a web of self-loathing, deception, and masochism. He carries the entire film on his shoulders.

But I’ve come not to bury Blue Moon but to praise the songwriting team of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Lorenz Hart. The three examples of jazz interpretations of Rodgers and Hart classics below—out of what must now number in the thousands—offer a general idea of how durable and adaptable the work of this team of artistic equals has been.

I don’t care much for contemporary jazz singers. I find far too many to be mannered, overly emphatic, and prone to leaning on effects rather than on unencumbered expression. Stacey Kent is different. Born in New Jersey, she relocated to Britain, where she established a continental career and married Jim Tomlinson, who plays saxophone in her ensemble. Kent has a small voice, which she uses wisely, never pushing it farther than it needs to go. Understatement is the tool she reaches for most often; she takes full advantage of an acute understanding of words and a gentle sense of swing to allow a song to breathe and blossom. (And she has no use for scat singing, which earns her an immediate free pass into my vocalist pantheon.)

“It Never Entered My Mind” is a Rodgers and Hart masterwork originally written for the 1940 musical Higher and Higher. There’s a near-definitive vocal version on the 1958 album Sarah Vaughan Sings Broadway: Great Songs from the Hit Shows, but comparison is not the point. Kent finds her own way into the song. After Tomlinson’s affecting introduction, Kent slips in for a compact reading that is all the more winning for its unfussy composure. She grants Hart’s heartbreaker of a lyric all the respect it deserves.

Ruby Braff is one of my favorite trumpeters, and the series of duet recordings he made with the superb pianist Ellis Larkins are all gems. These two ardently lyrical players paid tribute to the magisterial songwriting team in 1956 with the album 2 by 2: Ruby and Ellis Play Rodgers and Hart. “Little Girl Blue,” the gorgeous ballad that divas from Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone to Janis Joplin and Diana Krall have put their mark on, was written for the 1935 musical Jumbo. Braff’s golden tone is enhanced by Larkins’s delicate touch in a performance that speaks volumes through refinement and restraint. (In a clever turn, Larkins plays the song’s introduction after Braff states the melody.) Even without Hart’s poignant words, Rodgers’s wistful melody—enriched by Braff and Larkins—fully makes its point.

Of course, a version of the indestructible “Blue Moon” had to pop up. The 1934 standard has found its way into a host of eclectic recordings since its inception, including the 1961 hit doo-wop version by the Marcels and its cheeky appearance during Eric Clapton’s guitar solo on Cream’s 1967 hit “Sunshine of Your Love.” A fresh-faced Peggy Lee recorded the song for Capitol Records with fine assists from her husband, guitarist Dave Barbour. Lee sounds unaffected and dewy-eyed, far from the temptress of “Fever” or the cynical observer of “Is That All There Is?” If the song’s lyrics don’t represent the pinnacle of Hart’s inventiveness or Rodger’s melodic ingenuity, “Blue Moon” obviously has an imperishable charm. Lee extracts that charm, sprinkles on her own, and walks away a winner.