Simple Dreams ~ A Musical Memoir - Plot & Excerpts
I felt that I needed to do some work on my phrasing—the area of my musicianship that I had always felt was my weakest—so that I could be a stronger singer when I eventually returned to pop music. My usual method for trying to improve musically was to study what came before whatever I was interested in improving. The pop singers that came before me were the interpreters of the American standard song. I started thinking about the records that my father had brought home to play on the big high-fidelity monaural record player he bought in 1957: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong duets, Peggy Lee, Chris Connor, June Christy, and Billie Holiday.While in New York, I had become friendly with Jerry Wexler and his wife, Renee, whom I had known slightly when she worked for David Geffen and Elliot Roberts. Wexler was one of the most respected A&R men in the record industry. He had started out in the 1940s as a writer for Billboard magazine, where he coined the term “rhythm and blues” to replace the unsavory “race records.”
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