Fife and Dame

And now for something completely different...

Once upon a time, in the days of ample record-label budgets and highly whimsical crossover concepts, this happened: PBS darling James Galway, the dean of light classics, with jazz ultradiva Cleo Laine, at the Boston Pops.

The album they made back in '80, Sometimes When We Touch, is a guilty favorite, and here we catch two of my favorite cuts. This was probably the first version of Sondheim's "Whistle" of which I was aware, and something in the lilting drive of Laine singing "Lo! Here the Gentle Lark" truly captured my fancy. I didn't realize, for a very long time, that the text was from Shakespeare, and believed that the lyric ran something like "Lo, hear the gentle lark / from his moist canopy / Mozart on high..." which I think is realy quite lovely, although in both my and the Bard's version I could do without the "moist." I also didn't know what it would have sounded like unjazzed, as it were; you may, if you like, discover it in the capable hands of Miss Roberta Peters, here, or get a sense of what poor James Galway had to deal with sometimes by hearing him team up with a partner rather more stately (and even rather lugubrious, truth be told, at least here) than Dame Cleo, Dame Kiri....

"Lark" popped up in a random playlist this evening while we were having some friends over, rather bemusing our guests, but greatly entertaining me.  I think this unlikely pair makes a beguiling couple, and I hope you do, too...