what about mildred bailey?

“So Help Me” was originally written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Eddie De Lange and performed by Mildred Bailey and Red Norvo and his Orchestra. Mildred Bailey was a popular jazz singer throughout the 1920s and 1940s.

“So Help Me” was released in 1938 and charted number 2 the same year. The lyrics focus on expressing one’s love for a significant other. And if their love if found to be a lie, the lyrics invite God to strike down upon them. It invites natural phenomena to occur if this love is a lie.

At the time of the song’s release, Mildred Bailey was still married to her third husband and fellow performer, Red Norvo. Did Mildred Bailey ever sing this sweet candor of feelings to Norvo? We may never know, but at least we have the opportunity today to sing it to our partners.

Mildred Bailey earned the nickname “Mrs. Swing” during her career as a jazz singer. As a Native American performer, she has been attributed to paving the way for other female singers. In her early teens, Mildred and her brother Al Rinker became close friends with Bing Crosby. Mildred touched many within the jazz community and while she died missing out on praise, we can grant her that praise now.

Miller, John. “Idaho Tribe: ‘Mrs. Swing’ Was Indian.” Associated Press, 16 Mar. 2012.

Bush, John. “Mildred Bailey | Biography & History.” AllMusic, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/mildred-bailey-mn0000423437/biography.

Davis, Francis. “MUSIC; A Female Singer In Holiday’s Class And in Her Shadow.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 July 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/arts/music-a-female-singer-in-holiday-s-class-and-in-her-shadow.html.

mildred bailey says so help me (if I don’t love you)

“So Help Me (If I Don’t Love You)” is a typical jazz song of the late 1930s, music written by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Eddie De Lange, and performed by Mildred Bailey. The music was performed by Mildred’s third husband,  Red Norvo and Orchestra. Mildred worked numerous times with Van Heusen and De Lange throughout her career. As a Native American jazz singer, she had been described as, “the first white singer to absorb and master the jazz-flavored phrasing…of her black contemporaries,” by The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. “So Help Me” was released in the most likely the height of Mildred’s career and it charted number 2 that same year, 1938.

The lyrics are expressive of one’s love. They focus on this idea of so help me if I don’t love you, let all these phenomena happen to me. She goes on to list things like, never seeing the moon or stars or never seeing spring. All these happy sorts of examples are used to justify her love for this person. And if it is found that she is lying? Well, “And if I lie then rain should fall / From heaven, and blight each day with its teeming / Night should never bring sleep / With its dreaming, sweet dreaming”. Essentially, she gives it up to God to strike her if found lying about this love. “So Help Me,” tells a tale of expressive a love so whole, that she invites God to strike her if found guilty.

This song grabbed my attention with its soft jazzy instruments and beautiful lyrics. When I love, I do so intensely, just as the lyrics of “So Help Me” express this sort of loving. I am possibly doing a story about the lyrics, and the examples chosen are interesting. I am possibly doing a story about Mildred’s identity, and her gaining the description as the first white singer to absorb and master the jazz-flavored phrasing.

Trophy Eyes wants to be more like you, but what do you want to be?

The Austrailian punk-rock band, Trophy Eyes, has always had a flair for showcasing those negative thoughts and feelings everyone has. As they have released their third full-length album, The American Dream, frontman John Floreani explains,

“This record is about my life in present time and a reflection on who I was and how I got here. As much of the other Trophy Eyes works have been the hate, violence, addiction and heartbreak I fought so desperately to leave behind, this record is about shedding one’s past, transitioning from boy to man, making a home and wanting nothing more in life than to sit and enjoy the silence.”

Their newest single, “More Like You” focuses on the reflection into the past. Floreani shared on Twitter, “I find it hard to listen back to this song. When I hear it, I see the me that wrote it. I feel sorry for him – Nobody should ever feel like that.” The song opens with heavy guitar and backing vocals and wastes no time getting to the meat. The chorus repeats “more like you, less like me” throughout the song. While the “you” has never been specified the song circles this idea of wanting to be someone, anyone else.

The band’s Twitter account explained, “This song is about hating yourself so much, that your only wish in life is to be anybody else but you.” Lyrics like “How can you tell me that I’m special when I’m just another man?” really highlight these feelings of inadequacy, like that existential crisis you become familiar with in the late hours of the night of never being good enough. Trophy Eyes explains it perfectly when they shared, “Simply because you can’t bare to wake up as you anymore.” It isn’t about wanting to be someone else, it’s about simply not wanting to be yourself.

half•alive isn’t feeling floaty anymore, and neither are we

Newest single by the alternative-indie band half•alive has listeners dancing in their seats to this funky beat. “Still feel.” transports you to a hybrid universe that’s both stuck in the 1970s and in present time. Frontman, Josh Taylor has an incredibly close relationship to this song, “I wrote this track during a period of my life when I felt very removed from myself. I started getting used to this ‘floaty’ feeling, not being grounded in anything and consequently not being the person I was meant to be at that time.”

The “floaty” feeling is constant through the synth instrumental feeling. The first half of the song has you on this floaty, gravity-less journey with Taylor. Then after the second verse, the change in floatiness changes. By the end of the bridge, and the last chorus, it is clear that the floating feeling has evaporated. Along this journey, you and Taylor have felt hopeless and helpless. By the end of the bridge, the synth gives way and you feel your feet plant firmly on the ground and well, feel alive.

 

Podcast Power Couple

The Jenna + Julien Podcast is a podcast created by a Youtube couple, which airs weekly, every Monday. Jenna Marbles is a wildly popular Youtuber and her boyfriend, Julien Solomita is a semi-popular YouTube vlogger. The couple has been podcasting for about 4 years, and recently hit 200 episodes. Over the course of these 4 years, the physical structure of the podcast has changed tremendously. It started in a room with their laptops on a table and a simple audio system. Now, they have a Podcast Room with an impressive audio and visual set up. Each episode is filled in front of a green screen with a different image for each episode. Not all images are tailored to the topic of the podcast, but if the topic, such as “Know Ya Boo (Couples Jeopardy)“, they included the iconic Jeopardy icon. The Jenna + Julien Podcast doesn’t have a clear content theme to it. They simply talk about the things that interest them. They have discussed problems in the Youtube community, both the community in general and specific Youtuber’s scandals. Lots of the time they’ll play games like Snake Oil, multiple types of trivia, and even a Choose Your Own Story. The couple has discussed the game streaming world and the culture surrounding it. There have been guests that include Jenna and/or Julien’s family members, some of their streamer/Youtube friends, Scott Rogowsky from HQ Trivia, and a guest from Tanacon (Youtube convention that was a disaster earlier this year). Some guests included with the entertainment and some are included in a larger discussion about some topic. Jenna and Julien mix fun and games with current events and hard discussions in their weekly podcast.

In Paul Sawer’s article, “2017: Year of the Podcast”, he explained, “even if it means rethinking how advertising is delivered through podcasts,” when discussing the change in podcast popularity and advertiser’s push in their direction. Immediately, I thought about the Jenna + Julien Podcast where with their weekly sponsors, Julien will introduce them in the very beginning and then about halfway through he will segway from their current topic back into their sponsors for the week. His creative segways escalated so much that they actually had an entire podcast called “Segway-Off”. They randomly picked a few things that they would have to segway to during the conversation. Of course, Julien segway-ed to the sponsors in this podcast, as creative as ever.

In terms of multimodality, the Jenna + Julien Podcast is full of different modes. As a viewer, I have been able to see their audio and visual setup change over their 4 years since creation. From laptops on a dining table to a separate room with an elaborate audio system and a separate monitor to all record each episode with the most professional quality. There’s also the green screen, where it will directly relate to the episode, or it will just be a neutral image that does not distract from the episode. Jenna and Julien will even play with the sound and talk far or close to the microphone for effect, sometimes even yelling or whispering.