Crooners & Co Gregory Porter's Popular Voices

# Boy, you hear me calling your name

# The bridge is your time

# Your engine rolls hot

# If the bridges fall down, don't lose your head of steam... #

The voice. It's the one instrument we're all born with.

We all love to sing.

# Oh, young man... #

Singing is my life. It's what I do and who I am.

# Boy, I didn't make it too far But baby you are

# The family star... #

I'm going to take you on a 100 year celebration of the mystery,

joy and pain that lies behind the soul's instrument.

I'm Gregory Porter and these are my Popular Voices.

# Young man, I'm counting on you

# And whoa, young man... #

What does this singer have in common with this one?

Hello. Are you the new butler?

And how do they both relate to these?

PIANO PLAYS

Crooning is about getting up close and personal with the microphone,

and whispering softly, as though into a lover's ear.

Because when I say, "Croon,"

what I'm really talking about is caressing with the voice.

Welcome to a century of rich, golden voices.

# Ma n'atu sole

# Cchiu bello, oi ne... #

You know, less than 100 years ago, if you wanted to be heard in the

back of the theatre or over the band that was playing on the record,

you had to...

HE SINGS LOUDLY

But that's not necessary any more.

In the 1920s,

one invention turned our idea of music-making upside down.

The electric microphone.

For the first time in performing history,

singing wasn't solely about power,

it could concern itself with subtlety.

HE HUMS SOFTLY

The electric microphone allowed for

a new style of soft and intimate singer.

The crooner was born, and he first appeared on cinema screens

in 1929's The Vagabond Lover.

# If you were the only girl in the world

# And I were the only boy... #

Gee, honey. This sure is a beauty.

The birth of radio and cinema ushered in a new age of celebrity.

Early stars like Rudy Vallee were suddenly real, crooning softly,

directly into your ear, like never before.

# In the same old way... #

I'm going to explore how the subtle art of crooning

has influenced a century of pop.

And my first stop is an unlikely one -

the Lower East Side of New York City, to meet a former punk rocker.

-Hey, man.

-How are you doing, Lenny?

-How's it going?

-Pleasure.

-Really good.

-Pleasure, pleasure.

Welcome to my hole in the wall.

-Oh, right. I'm glad to be here.

-Shall I let you in?

-Right.

-Let's go talk music.

-Yeah. Apres vous.

-All right.

Lenny Kaye is still Patti Smith's guitarist,

and is also a scholar of sweet singers.

What is crooning to you?

Well, for me, it's the most intimate form of singing.

It's, in some ways, one-on-one.

In my mind I think of it as a man singing to a woman in her language.

# Some day when I'm awfully low

# And the world is cold

# I will feel a glow

# Just thinking of you

# And the way you look tonight... #

It sounds like what it is.

You know, we croon. We woo.

We swoon.

We rhyme with the moon.

# There is nothing for me but to love you... #

That type of singing, that type of smooth, quiet delivery,

it's almost like pigeons cooing.

For me, it's crooning.

I always think of like a frog mating.

HE COOS

A sort of...

-HE COOS

-..or something!

# Just the way you look tonight. #

Not since the arrival of the railway

had America been made to feel so connected.

Cinema and radio brought new intimacy.

It was as though new singers could see through the radio waves,

right into your living room.

MUSIC PLAYS

Where is my alcoholic beverage?

# Oh, give me land, lots of land under the starry skies above

# Don't fence me in... #

Of all early pop stars,

there was one whose ease and conviviality suggested

a new way of being.

Bing Crosby, the first modern singer.

# Let me be by myself in the evening breeze

# And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees

# Send me off forever But I ask you please

# Don't fence me in... #

Mary Crosby famously shot JR in the TV hit, Dallas.

She is also the keeper of her father's musical legacy.

-Hello, Mary.

-Hi.

-Wonderful to meet you.

-My pleasure.

Your father made a revolutionary change

to the way that people were singing.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

I think that dad was completely honest in the way he sang.

There was, no pun intended, no false note.

And so that touched people.

And that reached people in a way that you couldn't with a megaphone,

or you couldn't if you were, you know, flash.

He could be romantic.

He could be sexy, he could be all of these things that before Dad,

and before the microphone, and before intimacy,

they just weren't available.

Maybe I'd better pick up the thread of the story.

Bing Crosby rose to prominence in the 1920s with The Rhythm Boys,

a vocal trio attached to Paul Whiteman's jazz band.

Every man wanted to be Bing.

And every woman just wanted him.

You see a picture of Bing Crosby from 1928, 1929,

those beautiful blue eyes, that very soulful sense of performance,

you know, he was of his moment.

He was a heart-throb.

Through the night, have you got that, there?

-Yeah.

-And if you're Bing Crosby, put in those whistles.

Bing, Bing, sing!

Crosby's voice suggested freedom and leisure,

and when I hear him sing, I hear American pop opening up.

# Where the blue of the night

# Meets the gold of the day

# Someone waits for me... #

Bing Crosby is so foundational and so important in the music,

you don't even realise how he's influenced you

because he is the very thing that you're trying to do.

So this personal style of musical expression

is all that I'm trying to do.

I mean, where does that come from?

The first person to do it and put it on recording was Bing Crosby.

# Someone waits for me. #

Dad was the only one of four that has sold over a billion units.

There's Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Dad.

So he really was the king of media back then.

-Wow.

-Yeah.

-Thank you so much, Mary.

It was really a pleasure to meet you and talk with you.

-Such a treat.

-Thank you.

Louis Armstrong once said about the voice of Bing Crosby,

it sounded like gold being poured from a cup.

And I agree with him.

Bing Crosby's incredible baritone voice set the standard.

There would be no tenor in American pop music until Elvis.

Everybody wanted to sing like Bing.

-# Where the blue

-Where the blue

-# Of the night

-Of the night

-# Meets the gold

-Meets the gold

-# Of the day

-Of the day

-# Someone

-Someone

-# Waits for me

-Waits for me. #

HE HUMS

-Yeah!

-That's cool, man.

Beautiful. Bing Crosby.

Led by megastars Rudy Vallee, Russ Colombo and Bing Crosby,

the age of the crooner had arrived and they provoked moral outrage.

They've made a million Indian women push that neighbour free.

Crosby, Colombo and Vallee.

There was a famous Dick Robinson song called like,

Vallee, Colombo and Crosby.

And that was literally the song title.

There were lyrics in it, like,

Made millions of married maids wish they were free.

And stealing our blondes.

And when you kiss your wife, who is she thinking of?

# Those crooning vagabonds are stealing all our blondes

# Now I know what has become of Sally

# And every time you kiss your girl who is she thinking of?

# Crosby, Colombo and Vallee. #

It just cracks me up because people would say in written publications,

"This is a terrible art form, this kind of thing", you know.

It was also the era of the American depression.

Life was hard. Men were supposed to be men.

And these pretty boys aroused suspicion.

# I built a railroad

# Now it's done, brother

# Can you spare a dime? #

There was a lot of decrying of this from the church.

It was thought to provoke homosexuality, pansies,

as they were known in those days.

There's a certain element of drag in these performers,

in the sense that they're taking on the persona of women at a time when

this was not only frowned upon, but actually against the law.

Bing put the art of crooning on the world map and my personal initiation

to this kind of sweet singing came when I made my first recording

at the tender age of five.

# Smile though your heart is aching

# Smile even though it's breaking

# When there are clouds in the sky

# You get by

# If you smile... #

I recorded a song on a little plastic tape recorder,

and played it for my mother when she came from work.

And she said, "Boy, you sound like Nat King Cole."

And I thought the name was strange, so,

I need to figure out who this Nat King Cole is.

I went into her records I was forbidden to touch.

I put the record on.

And out came this song.

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off.

Pretend you're happy when you're blue.

It was this amazing voice in a way speaking to me,

like fatherly advice, something I was missing at the time.

And so it's a very powerful emotional connection

that I have with the music, sitting next to the stereo

at five or six-years-old.

# You just smile. #

Born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1919, Nat King Cole

first came to prominence as a jazz instrumentalist.

Nat King Cole is an interesting case,

because he was also a fine pianist.

So he was a complete lounge protean, if you will.

I think he pushed the diction a little beyond the natural,

just because it sounded so good coming out!

I think he was the kind of singer who is just a little bit

intoxicated with his own beauty, and why not?

What a voice.

# Let there be you

# Let there be me

# Let there be oysters under the sea

# Let there be wind... #

Singing songs that seem to go outside of the box for that time

period, for African-Americans.

# Sparkling champagne

# Let there be... #

Although we had a lot of great singers back then,

Nat Cole's voice had a little more romanticism in it.

And it wasn't loaded down with sorrow.

There was a bright side to his stuff.

# Let there be cuckoos

# A lark and a dove

# But most of all Please let there be love... #

Now, white Americans could understand an African-American,

which was very difficult at the time.

Because, you know, we have a different way of approaching our language.

Transcended from Africa, we still had the African vernacular.

Mainly because of the size of our embouchure, our mouth.

But Nat had to go beyond that and he did.

His mouth was very different.

It was very wide and let the edge of the words come out.

# Let there be love. #

Josh, my man, how are you doing?

-How you doing? Good to see you.

-Pleasure.

-Yeah.

Tell me about Nat King Cole?

There's no question there's the God-given talent

that is so singular,

and that velvety bottom end that just has this beautiful edge to it.

And also, normally I'm not a fan of enunciation.

But his enunciation is so gentle.

-Yeah.

-And that's very giving, somehow.

-And intimate.

-Yeah.

-You know it's real.

-Yeah.

I think he, in particular, is so peerless.

There's nobody sounds anything like that.

In 1948, having made his name with global smashes

like The Christmas Song, Cole moved to the upscale all-white

Hancock Park in Los Angeles.

# Chestnuts roasting on an open fire... #

The Ku Klux Klan responded by placing a burning cross on his lawn.

Obviously, he was an extraordinary performer in a time that was

difficult in the United States.

Sometimes he was unable to stay in some of the hotels

that he would perform in.

But the diction came from somewhere, because of the environment.

"This is what do you think I am, let me show you.

"Let me show you this undeniable class and elegance."

But that's it.

"You may put me in this hotel, you may do that,

"but here's one thing..."

-"..You can't touch."

-It is for everybody.

It don't matter who you are.

-You can't knock this one away.

-Yeah.

# So I'm offering this simple phrase... #

Nat's success not only transcended race barriers, it bankrolled

Capitol Records and funded one of Hollywood's most iconic structures.

This is the house that Nat built.

# Many times, many ways

# Merry Christmas to you. #

Cole was a pioneer amongst African-American entertainers.

Among the first to host his own television show in 1957,

and a BBC special in 1963.

# Mona Lisa

# Mona Lisa men have named you

# You're so like the lady with the mystic smile

# Is it only... #

There had been no black male singer

who was part of the romantic life of America.

So for a black man to be able to do that in the '50s

was really radical.

# Strangeness in your smile...

Like Mona Lisa, when you hear that song...

# Do you smile to tempt a lover Mona Lisa... #

You see this woman. You see the desire for her, the loss,

the ability to have her, and all that yearning.

There's a great deal of yearning within his beautiful smooth crooning.

# Many dreams

# Have been brought to your doorstep

# They just lie there... #

It's a testament to the quality of his voice that he overcame racism

just because it was such a unique instrument.

# Are you warm, are you real

# Mona Lisa? #

Gregory couldn't have picked a better father,

because the man was nothing but love.

That's what Nat King Cole was about.

The best way to describe Nat King Cole's voice is velvet, smooth.

Jazz and classical.

Unreachable perfection.

# And now the end is near

# And so I face... #

This is East-West Studios, part of the United Western Recorders'

complex on Sunset Boulevard.

It was set up with the financial backing of Bing Crosby

and Frank Sinatra in the late '50s.

Frank loved it so much here,

he started his own record label on the first floor.

The legendary Reprise Records.

East-West would become famous as a place for a new generation of

artists like The Beach Boys, who created Pet Sounds here.

But it was also special to me because on December 30th, 1968,

Frank Sinatra recorded his signature croon, My Way, right here.

# Regrets, I've had a few

# But then again... #

In fact, My Way wasn't so much a croon as a valedictory

looking back on a career that saw Frank emerge as a heart-throb

during the Second World War.

# And saw it through without exemption... #

Tell me how Frank Sinatra, his voice, his style,

maybe added to the story of crooning after Bing Crosby?

In terms of evolution, he took what he learned from Bing,

a sense of how to utilise the voice.

You know, to make its point and to style a song.

I think of Frank as really a stylist.

# I hear music when I look at you

# A beautiful theme of every dream I ever knew

# Down deep in my heart I'd hear it play

# I feel it start

# Then melt away... #

Frank Sinatra was labelled a lot of things.

And at one point was labelled as a crooner.

But he always spoke more than he sung.

Even as he hit the note, he always spoke to you.

# Down deep in my heart

# I hear it say, is this the day? #

He's a little masculine for the croon.

He's a little too presumptuous.

# Like baba au rhum!

# Bababababum

# Don't dig that kind of crooning, chum... #

You must be one of the newer fellas.

He's not so much concerned with, er, persuading and seducing as he is,

like, yeah, you know, come on to me.

If I could use the word, he's a little cocky.

# You make me feel so young

# You make me feel as though spring has spring

# And every time I see you grin

# I'm such a happy individual... #

If Bing was the king of ease, Frank was the edgy pretender.

He was such a tough guy that when he did, er,

do a song that, er, portrayed some, some sorrow

because of a broken heart or a period of

loneliness, it had more weight.

Frank made singing existential.

He was a dramatist.

In his hands, crooning was no longer about seduction.

It was about his place in the world.

# When I was 17

# It was a very good year

# It was a very good year for small town girls

# And soft summer nights

# We'd hide from the lights

# On the village green

# When I was 17... #

My parents purchased the Frank Sinatra September of My Years.

It was the first time that his career matured to the point

where he had writers trying to write for him as a character fully.

He'd hate this, but he had become Elvis, in a way.

More than Elvis, because there was this...

Elvis was a mystery.

With Sinatra, they painted a picture of all the things you kind of knew

Frank was doing.

Like, er, rolling dice and splurging on diamonds.

And chasing actresses and, er, hanging with the bad guys.

And that whole ring-a-ding ding!

You knew this about him.

# And it came undone

# When I was 21... #

As a vocalist, he was nonpareil in expressing pathos.

He was just such a cool guy.

I think that's kind of why a lot of people are attracted to him.

Like, forget the music, forget the voice. He was just the cool guy.

He did what he wanted, when he wanted,

and it sort of makes him as wonderful as it does gross!

He wouldn't get away with that now.

I thought I knew what a crooner was

until we started to talk to everybody.

Um... A crooner, for me, is a singer with, you know,

personal expression, generally about love.

# Hey, Laura, it's me... #

Because people say, "Ooh, you were up there crooning! Ooh, crooning!"

Just any time you're singing for the ladies, you know.

You may be hanging off the stage.

"Hey, what's up, baby? Yeah! "Ha-ha! I'm here for you!"

You know? That's crooning. You know, that's what people say crooning is,

you know. But...

HE LAUGHS

Who knows?!

By the mid '50s,

crooning was getting as old as the singers themselves.

# Magic moments... #

It had become a byword for a grown-up sensibility in pop.

# Magic moments

# Memories we've been sharing... #

It was no longer the preserve of the amorous young man.

# I was dancing with my darling

# To the Tennessee waltz

# When an old friend I happened to see... #

I don't think women were initially associated with the crooning style

because of the content of the songs that the male crooners were singing.

Again, it goes back to that whole thing about seducing women.

But yet, there are, very clearly, female crooners through history.

It's that space in-between Broadway/cabaret singing and jazz singing.

Where it's interpretation of a lyric and a melody,

without it being technical or improvised in a way, you know.

These were singers like Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day

and Patti Page.

She just sang with this tone that was totally captivating

and interesting and smoky and dark.

Yet she didn't really go all jazz on it.

She just sang the song, delivered it beautifully.

# The beautiful Tennessee waltz. #

And maybe that's what female crooning is.

The suggestive intimacy of the original crooners

had caused moral outrage, but now it had become tame.

Something was about to burst that bubble.

# Ready, set, go man go

# I got a gal that I love so

# I'm ready, ready, ready teddy I'm ready, ready, ready teddy

# I'm ready, ready, ready teddy

# I'm ready, ready, ready to rock and roll... #

By the 1960s,

it was thought that the mid-century crooners were out of style,

but I'm here to show you that the communication skills

and the sexiness of the crooner never went away.

Take the King of Rock and Roll himself.

# Love me tender

# Love me sweet

# Never let me go... #

I always think that there's as much of Bing Crosby

in Elvis Presley's delivery, especially when he first started out

and thought of himself as a ballad singer.

Elvis could croon like a son of a gun.

Whoa!

# All my dreams fulfilled... #

I understand the vitality and the urgency,

the appeal of rock and roll.

When I see Elvis in these settings, singing a tender ballad,

it's really beautiful. His tone is gorgeous.

You know. Almost like he's singing a gospel song,

even though he's singing about love.

# For it's there that I belong

# And we'll never part... #

When the R&B and rock shouters came in, crooning took a back-seat.

It was not annihilated.

It was maybe not...

Eclipsed is a funny word, but it took a back-seat and bubbled under.

# Yeah, runnin' scared

# What would I do... #

In the rock-and-roll era, crooning would become an echo,

leaving behind ideas of ease and romance,

in favour of exploring a world of teenage loneliness

and dark, existential angst.

# Just runnin' scared

# Feelin' low... #

The Big O epitomised the dark croon.

# Runnin' scared... #

Yeah, rock and roll started about,

you know, tearing it up and being a rebellious thing,

which, there's always the sadness of the morning after,

no matter who you are!

And, um... For me, Roy Orbison,

who was another voice that really cannot be duplicated.

-Yeah.

-There's a song, Running Scared.

-I call it the inverted triangle.

-Mm-hmm.

-And it's...

# Just runnin' scared... #

Just acoustic.

And every bar, something else comes in.

The crescendo at the end...

And at the end, you know, she walks away with me.

And you go, "Oh, my God, he got her!"

# My heart was breaking

# Which one would it be?

# You turned around

# And walked away with me. #

Singers like Roy Orbison said you could play rock and roll,

but still have this angelic beauty too.

-Mm-hmm.

-They all were...

It's not peanut butter, jelly and horseradish.

-It's all... It all works too.

-Yeah.

But the romantic ballad didn't live on solely in the shadows.

# I wonder should I go or should I stay? #

Stylised singers like Tom Jones, Tony Bennett

and Engelbert Humperdinck proved that the romantic ballad

could still compete in the '60s.

-Engelbert Humperdinck.

-Hi.

-How are you?

-Pleasure to meet you.

-Gregory Porter.

I'm glad to be here with you.

How would you typify yourself as a singer?

I have to tell you that Nat King Cole...

-Mm-hmm.

-..started my life.

-Mmm.

When I was very young, I tried to find somebody

that I could steal from, you know?

-Yeah.

-Because when you're a youngster, you're just beginning,

you have no real style of your own.

-Mm-hmm.

-And so if I was going to steal from somebody,

you have to steal from the best.

# When I fall in love

# It will be forever... #

-What a great lyric, eh?

-Yes. Amazing.

# Or I'll never fall in love

# In a restless world like this is

# Love is ended before it's begun

# And too many moonlight kisses

# Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun... #

-This is very exciting.

-Yeah, great, great.

And the way you sing it, my friend!

You... You had enormous success in the time that rock and roll

-was taking over the radio...

-Yeah.

-..airwaves.

-Yeah, people used to say, you know, like, for instance...

"What is this guy doing with all these rock-and-roll people," you know?

But my songs were...

You know, I'm a balladeer, basically, a balladeer, you know.

-Yeah.

-And my songs, I think,

had that longevity because they have a great story,

they've got a great melody.

But you've got to be able to sell it in the proper manner.

And, er...

That's what I do, I'm an actor on stage.

# Please release me

# Let me go

# For I don't love you any more

# To waste our lives would be a sin

# Release me

# And let me love again... #

Can you tell me about Release Me, in 1967?

It was quite a unique, er, beginning to that particular song.

And when we recorded it, it sat on the shelf for about three months

-until I did Sunday Night at the London Palladium.

-Mm-hmm.

And then the very next day, bang, it started to go.

This is the power of television, you know.

It sold an amazing amount of records and, of course,

stopped the Beatles from going to Number One with Penny Lane,

on their 13th Number One.

# Please release me

# Can't you see

# You'd be a fool

# To cling to me... #

It's just an amazing journey that I've had, you know,

and I've learned from all these people.

-Mm-hmm.

-I've learned a lot from them, you know.

I can remember Bing standing out while I was rehearsing in a show

and watching me do my own song, and he had his pipe, and he said...

He said, "Boy, that's some set of pipes you've got there!"

Coming from Bing, that was really wonderful.

That's awesome! Yeah! Yeah.

-A real pleasure. Thank you so much.

-Thank you so much, Gregory.

-Thank you very much.

-Yeah. Yeah, you blessed me. Thank you.

# Bells won't be ringing... #

Whilst ballad singers were keeping the romantic tradition alive,

in the real world, the idea of what crooning could actually be was changing.

# Who is willing to try

# Oh, little darlin'

# To save a world... #

Those '70s soul singers opened up...

..er, the...the conversation for the crooner.

They're, like... They're, like, crooning to society.

# When I look at the world

# It fills me with sorrow... #

Take Marvin Gaye and his great songs

in which he is almost pleading for love.

But not just romantic love.

He turned the thing all the way round.

He was like pleading in a way for society...

..for love.

# Save the babies. #

# If you wanna love you've got to love

# Save the children... #

I see Curtis Mayfield in the same way.

Laying out his story.

Almost whispering his lyrics, talking his lyrics.

# I'm your mama, I'm your daddy

# I'm that nigger in the alley

# I'm your doctor when in need

# Want some coke, have some weed

# You know me, I'm your friend... #

# I'm your pusherman... #

These are protest songs. He's not just celebrating, you know,

life on the street.

He's talking about the conditions on the streets.

And in a way...

..in a way again asking society for love.

It's great to see the croon move through the years

-and retain its croon-iness.

-Yeah.

And sometimes it winds up in very strange places.

I remember seeing Iggy Pop on the floor of Enganos up on 70th Street

singing The Shadow of Your Smile.

And he was about as much of a crooner as could be.

# The shadow of your smile

# When you walked by... #

I was a young wild man vocalist.

Doing loud music that wasn't really rock in the '60s.

And every once in a while I'd noticed that a part of the song

called for a low sustain.

It just was demanded by the music.

Often when the song had a darker emotion.

A case in point would be the song, Dirt, on The Stooges' Fun House.

Iggy's baritone created beauty in the darkest places.

# Ooh, I been dirt

# And I don't care... #

It started out as a way to reach darkness

or also butchiness!

To sound butch.

And later it became something else.

It became a way to express vulnerability

and compassion, and also what I would call a human patina.

# Get into the car

# We'll be the passengers

# We'll ride through the city tonight

# We'll see the city's ripped backsides

# We'll see the bright and hollow sky

# And all the cloud and black guitars... #

It's a funny thing about the baritone.

Maybe there's something about a deep voice

that implies that it's coming from deep in the soul.

It was the late David Bowie that pushed me in that direction

when I was 29.

He said to me simply, "Jim, you should sing in the baritone.

"You're more impressive."

Those were the words.

# It's a God-awful small affair

# To the girl with the mousy hair

# But her mummy is yelling no

# And her daddy... #

Of all rock frontmen influenced by theatricality,

there was one pretty thing who assimilated more than any other.

In 1968, teenage David Bowie submitted English lyrics for My Way.

They were rejected.

This is David Bowie's Life On Mars, a response, a parody, if you will,

of Paul Anka's My Way.

Similar song structure.

It starts in a similar way and then goes into a larger thing.

# Sailors fighting in the dance hall... #

He almost has a sad clown

pagliacci kind of approach to this song.

And so...

melancholy, actually.

It makes me feel a bit sad.

# Oh, man, wonder if he'll ever know

# He's in the best selling show

# Is there life on Mars? #

He liked the sonority of the croon.

And I think you can hear it in Life On Mars.

And especially the beautiful melody that is Life On Mars.

It could be a standard.

I believe David had many guises,

but what he was probably more than anything,

was a performer in the English music hall tradition.

David certainly was influenced by musical theatre

and his early influences,

besides Little Richard and other R&B artists,

was Anthony Newley

and people who were singing on the stage in full voice.

He was totally prepared to do that.

# What kind of fool... #

Anthony Newley was a singer who came to worldwide recognition with one

song that was called What Kind Of Fool Am I?

# It seems that I'm the only one

# That I have been thinking of

# What kind of man is this?

# An empty shell

# A lonely cell in which an empty heart must dwell

# What kind of clown am I?

# What do I know of life?

# Why can't I cast away this mask of play and live my life? #

David decided to look for a publishing deal.

He went to a company called Essex Music who published

What Kind Of Fool Am I?

Funnily enough, the CEO, a guy called David Platts,

was more of a musical theatre publisher anyway, and he said to me,

"I really don't understand this world of rock and roll and pop music.

"I'm in musical theatre, that's what I know."

And that's why he signed David Bowie,

thinking he had the next Anthony Newley.

-Beck.

-Hey, man.

-Thank you for sitting here with us.

-Good to see you.

-Let's talk about David Bowie and his great ability to

gap two eras of singing, from the crooners to the rock front man.

Yeah, I think there's something striking about his approach to,

you know, the rock vocalist.

There is a blues element,

but I think there's a bit of the crooner as well.

There was kind of a grandness and a stature that the crooners had,

that Bowie had. You don't really necessarily connect those eras,

but he really connected those eras.

Like Sinatra, he was always talking to you through the singing.

# Love me, love me Love me, love me

# Say you do... #

You could listen to his vocal on Wild Is The Wind

on the Station To Station album.

# Let me fly away with you... #

Talking through the singing.

Very, very effective.

# For my love is like the wind

# And wild is the wind

# Wild is the wind

# You touch me... #

That whole period, you know, that whole '70s period,

The Thin White Duke and with the suits and the cigarette

and the spotlight on the stage,

you could see the Bing Crosby and Sinatra and those great...

Those singers from that earlier era.

He has that bit of world weariness of the crooner...

-Yeah.

-..mixed in there.

And it's an interesting hybrid.

Recording in Berlin in 1977,

Bowie would lay down his crowning vocal glory, Heroes.

At the controls was producer, Tony Visconti.

This is a very important vocal in David's history

because so many things happened whilst we were making this.

First of all, he's singing it in Hansa Studios

which is a master hall, Meisterhalle,

and this is where you could put

at least 130 musicians in this huge hall.

# We can be heroes... #

Now, right at this point he said,

"Stop the tape," because he had not yet written the rest of the song.

So he scribbled a few lines out, started writing...

And I left him at the piano and he's, like,

reading them and crossing them out and he says, coming up to this part,

"OK, I'm ready to record this next bit."

# I, I wish you could swim

# Like the dolphins... #

I thought this was a beautiful couplet.

"I wish I could swim like dolphins could swim."

# Though nothing

# Nothing will keep us together

# We can beat them for ever and ever... #

You know? A lot of rock music can be linear,

you know, at just one level.

In the case of Heroes, it is theatrical, you know?

Something more akin to the big band era or something.

The voice leads up to this big finale.

# I, I will be king

# And you, you will be queen

# Though nothing will drive them away

# We can be heroes

# Just for one day

# We can be us just for one day. #

This was contemporary. This was about contemporary Berlin.

He observed a drunken couple having an argument in the street

and the guy's shouting and pretending we could be heroes,

or acting like even though we're drunks, you know,

we could climb out of this and we could be heroes.

This is the bit, the Gods shout over our heads,

is where he observed the backing singer Antonia Maass and I

having a little snog by the Berlin Wall.

That even made it into the song, which, you know, is history now, too.

# As though nothing can fall... #

I have to tell you, he's one of the best people I've ever met,

one of the finest people I ever met.

And, as a singer, I've not worked with any singers better than him.

# Oh, we can beat them

# For ever and ever. #

Professional fade out. There you go.

DOORBELL RINGS

Hello. Are you the new butler?

Well, it's been a long time since I've been the new anything.

What's happened to Hudson?

In 1977, this odd couple's duet may have seemed surreal,

but now we see it as Bowie's inner crooner revealed.

News sure travels fast, doesn't it?

-I'm Bing.

-Oh, I'm pleased to meet you.

It's interesting because you see the generations meeting,

and in a certain way, David seems as old as Bing.

You know, they are both troupers.

-# Peace on Earth, can it be?

-Come they told me pa-rum-pum-pum-pum

-# Years from now, perhaps we'll see?

-A newborn king to see pa-rum-pum-pum-pum

-# See the day of glory

-Our finest gift we bring pa-rum-pum-pum-pum

-# See the day, when men of good will

-To lay before the king pa-rum-pum-pum-pum

-# Live in peace, live in peace again

-Rum-pum-pum-pum... #

In some ways he respected someone like Bing Crosby

because Bing could be so many of these aspects, the movies,

you know, the television host, the shape shifter.

Conventional wisdom holds that the crooner was a moment in history,

but I've discovered that while crooning was a 20th century invention,

it never actually left the art of popular singing.

In the 21st century, the crooner lives on everywhere.

You can even find him in the dulcet tones of

Queens of the Stone Age's Joshua Homme.

Homme has just a beautifully smooth tenor.

# You wanna know if I know why?

# I can't say that I do... #

I just did a tour with them, the girls love him.

# I don't understand the evil eye

# Or how one becomes two... #

Crooners, would you put yourself in that category?

Erm, I like to wander in that direction.

And I feel comfortable doing that as well.

# If I told you that I knew about the sun and the moon

# I'd be untrue... #

I kind of hold Nat and Roy and even Johnny Cash, that baritone,

like those are unattainable things.

They really are ideals, something I look up to but never expect.

-Yeah.

-And so I always feel comfortable in a way that

it's never going to be that, so what have I got to lose?

I just...

..be myself as much of the time as possible

-and it should be fine, you know?

-Yeah.

-I love your voice, too.

Like, when I saw you on Graham Norton. I was like...

Because I just thought, "Holy shit, this is the real thing."

That's really... It's nice.

Yeah. You're the right dude for this.

-Oh, thank you, man.

-Because you have to able to sing or you couldn't talk about it. That's not right.

# There was a boy

# Very strange enchanted boy

# They say he wandered very far

# Very far

# Over land and sea... #

The question - am I a crooner?

I am.

But not just a crooner.

We have all of these eras

and all of these influences in which to consider.

# Then one day

# Magic day he past my way... #

From Bing Crosby to Nat King Cole...

..Frank Sinatra to David Bowie.

Nowadays, there's a crooner in every popular singer.

# The greatest thing

# You'll ever learn

# Is just to love... #

I am a crooner, but then not!

# ..and be loved in return. #

# The falling leaves

# Drift by the window

# The autumn leaves

of red and gold.... #