July 10, 2010

I did not know that

One of the musical clips on This American Life was from "Twisted," a song Joni Mitchell recorded on her "Court and Spark" album. I went to YouTube to find a recording of the entire song and was astonished to learn that Mitchell didn't write it. I've always assumed she wrote every song she performed on her albums; she pretty much defined the term singer/songwriter for me.

Nope. The melody was written by a tenor sax player named Wardell Gray; Jon Hendricks wrote the lyrics in 1952. He joined with two other vocalists, Dave Lambert and Annie Ross, and they recorded the song in the early 1950s on the Columbia label. If you want to hear the group in all its glory, try to find The Hottest New Group in Jazz [Compilation], recorded between May 1960 and March 1962.

Here's "Twisted" by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross at You Tube:

Posted by Linkmeister at July 10, 2010 02:24 PM | TrackBack
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