Today,
being Saturday and most things that needed to be done being so done yesterday,
there was some time in which to do not much, so HBO was tuned to and a movie
called “The Last of the Blonde Bombshells” caught my attention. A simple musical I thought… easy to pass the
time. Well, it was a musical -of sorts- with a top cast, including Dame Judi
Dench and a singer I had not thought about for quite some time, albeit one of
my years ago very favorites: Cleo Laine.
Mind you,
I didn’t know she was on the cast, it just happened along the way to a happy finish.
The storyline is about an all-female (plus
a male drummer with blonde wig and all) English swing band (“swing” as it pertained to those times)
which had become famous during WWII. The movie is taking place in the present, so
that long past story had taken place some 50+years ago, the plot switching back
and forth between then and now. The main character somehow meets up again with
drummer-boy (another
story-within-the-story) and they set out to bring whatever is left of the
band together again.
When they
got to the singer, there was this older lady (well… we all get there sometime, don’t we?) who began to belt this
number with an incredible low/mid-range voice. My little man brain (the one sitting somewhere back there inside
my head) kept closing out the visual and concentrating on the sound part.
- “I know
that voice!! It kept on repeating…”
- “But I
don’t know that face, I kept answering…”
The sound
just kept coming and being enjoyed… Eventually, the movie came to its end and,
out of total curiosity, I stayed on to watch the credits roll by…
OMG!!!
You fool!!! Her name appeared on the screen and in my memory banks… Cleo Laine…
to me, one of the great jazz/blues singers/voices of all time.
Along
with her voice came memories of sitting by a pool somewhere, sipping a cool
drink and listening to a cassette (Yes, a
cassette, what of it???) with her voice trailing over the pool waters unto
the sea and the sunset, skipping over a few palm trees along the ways … “the little ordinary things every one ought to
do…” from Ray Noble’s “The Very Thought of You”…
I did a lot
of long winded travel in the late 70’s into the mid 80’s. But it wasn’t all
work… Once in a while, there were sublime moments when the world would graciously allow itself to fall away and
there was only a drink, the whisper of the water, the sunset and the glorious
sounds of Cleo Laine cleansing my soul.
There are
memories and then… there are memories…
Be Well … Be Back!!!
Final
Notes:
· Pray for those who are fighting an illness
which may take them away from their loved ones… Every request is heard, and
counts!!
· Follow us on Twitter … @RJAsPandora
