[Photo: Mural in Cincinnati painted to honor hometown star Rosemary Clooney]
That's not just because she and all of my aunts came of age in Cincinnati during the 1940s. All of their voices shared the midwestern "r" at the ends of words and a tone of voice that used to be called "brassy." There's affection and joy in her stories, and bluntness that makes you laugh. That's how my aunts were, and how aunts ought to be.
[Photo: Rosemary Clooney in the year after the interview, with her famous nephew George.]
We feel that Clooney draws on real feelings when she sings. Early in the interview, Terry Gross asked her guest to explain what "I'll Be Seeing You" meant to her. Clooney thought a minute, then said, "If I talk about it, I won't be able to sing it." Her "Danny Boy" moved Terry Gross to say that Rosemary Clooney makes a song new, even if you've heard it hundreds of times; Clooney's final "I love you so" moved me to tears.
She spoke with gratitude about a number of artists who helped her. She felt "sad and grateful" for the younger sister who quit the act so that Rosemary could be free to make her own career. She was thankful that producer Mitch Miller made her sing catchy pop songs that she considered to be beneath her: "Young people can take themselves too darn seriously," she said, meaning herself. Those popular hits made the rest of her career possible. (She did warn Terry not to listen to a song called "Canasta.") When she was hospitalized for addiction to prescription drugs, Bing Crosby sent a three-page letter of advice, and Bob Hope sent her flowers with a note, "I hope it's a boy" -- prompting her to laugh for the first time during that difficult period of her life.
Asked how she became addicted to drugs, Clooney said simply, "They make you feel real good." Everyone laughed. She added, "I miss them to this day." She bonded with the other patients. There was a woman, she remembered, who spent days painting on a canvas in one corner of their occupational therapy room. When Clooney looked, it turned out to be a portrait of the artist's drug of choice, "a pretty blue on top, and red," Clooney recalled, voice getting a little wistful.
Asked about Blue Rose, her 1956 album with Duke Ellington, Clooney shared her adoration of Ellington's under-appreciated collaborator Billy Strayhorn. Expecting, confined by doctor's orders to her home in Hollywood, she could not get to New York to record with Ellington. Instead, Strayhorn flew to her. "He would knock quietly on my door each morning," she remembered, and then he'd sit at the piano with her, finding the right keys and offering options for arrangements of Ellington songs. Back in New York, he re-arranged pieces and recorded the instrumental tracks with Ellington and the band. He flew back to Rosemary with those tapes, and coached her through her performances. He "made faces" behind the glass of the recording booth to convey what to do. Singing for Terry's interview, she finished "Sophisticated Lady" with a heartfelt dedication, "for Billy." [Read more on my blog about Billy Strayhorn 07/2008]
Clooney prefaced Billie Holliday's "God Bless the Child" with a memory of the great singer foretelling that the child Clooney carried then would be her first girl. Holliday wanted to be the godmother, "because it takes a bad woman to be a good godmother." That's what happened; Holliday died soon after.
Concluding the concert with "Our Love is Here to Stay," Clooney thanked the audience for their "attention" and "affection."
[Photo: During the hour of the interview, I listened on my phone as I walked Brandy along Marietta's new brick walkway, mostly deserted on a sunny Christmas afternoon.]
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