11th
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To Keep My Love Alive: Blossom Dearie (1960)
Have you a mean streak? A dark sense of humor? A love of word play? A tendency towards sweet things that bite? Well then! I’ve got an album for you: Blossom Dearie’s Soubrette Sings Broadway Hit Songs. My vinyl copy – pressed under the alternate title Blossom on Broadway – has been enjoyed so much that the only thing left to do is to eat it.
A soubrette, in case you wanted to know, is a stock character in opera and theatre. She is a comedic character known for her sauciness. She will love you and maybe kill you and then light-heartedly complain about where to dispose of your body. The audience will love her.
Blossom’s small, high-pitched girly voice, an acquired taste for some, is absolutely perfect for these songs. The primary color arrangements (by Russell Garcia) display a predilection for piccolo, xylophone, and clarinet. This combination of instruments brilliantly lend the album a nuttiness paralleled only by Raymond Scott. It’s like listening to a psychotic children’s record.
Favorite lyric (courtesy of Lorenz Hart): “Sir Athelstane indulged in fratricide, / he killed his dad and that was patricide. / One night I stabbed him by my mattress side…” Or wait, is that “matricide”? Hmm.
