The first time I heard this song was on a warm July afternoon. I was immediately struck by the lugubrious nature of the piece. The soft rhythm had an ethereal quality that was missing in the other covers I had chanced to listen to. The depth and clarity of each note caught my attention and since then it has been my guilty pleasure. The original, by Elvis Costello, drops you into a vastly different setting. His vocals pushes you to focus on the tempo but Baker lets you marinate in a bucket of wistfulness. Costello was inspired to write this song when he heard Chet Baker sing ‘The Thrill Is Gone’. Costello’s song, in return, found its way to Baker who fashioned this piece that voices tones of regret, loneliness and despondency. It is not all black and grey as the piano notes fill your mind with the essence of a night blooming cereus.
Gently do the stories waft out of the speakers flavouring the four walled room, teasing your subconscious with a lilting melody that settles down on your skin and permeates the fortress called ambivalence. A gift to present to yourself when the dark of the night ceases to enliven your fantasies.
Baker’s voice reminds you of an autumn evening where the leaves fell in unison and took you by complete surprise. There you stood in the middle of the road with your very own leaf shower. One of a kind. Evoking a kindred feeling as the notes creep up your back with musical efficiency, one is humbly led to the seat of solitude. In the words of my jazz loving friend, “(There is) a very subtle melancholia tugging at the heartstrings of yearning, casting a glance backwards with a longing to step forward.” The trumpet echoes of a love lost in the clutches of time, sporadically trying to seep into the future. It wraps itself around your memories and colours it a shade of grey-blue, like the dimming evening sky.
In between the glaring reality of white screens and natural disasters lies the pleasant memory of this song that reverberates a will to live despite the unchanging folly of human nature. Brittle as one’s mind is, damning as this race is, Baker gives you the chance to experience a moment of pure delight as his trumpet expertly hits the low notes with artistic perfection. Above and beyond the cornucopia of mental images, this rendition can be therapeutic (to your soul that is).
If you have never listened to this, don’t wait for that perfect rainy day and a cup of coffee. Instead just retire into the sweet confines of your mind and let Baker do the magic.
“Almost blue, as haunting as it is, evokes perhaps nothing new,
just reveries from within you”.
Text by Merrin, photograph by Ashraya Maria
Article 19 