Unique "Schoolhouse Rock" Voice Blossom Dearie Died in February

We have a plethora of female singers in all fields of music today who take advantage of the new fad to sit at the piano while they sing. And we even get to hear them play more extensively beyond just playing simple triads as they accompany themselves. But long before all those assembly line chanteuses came into being, there were plenty of others in the field of jazz who brought not only charm to their singing, they also brought a deceptive simplicity to their piano playing. One of the earliest and best in the 1950's was song stylist Blossom Dearie who had both a subtle style of piano playing and a unique singing voice. The best way to describe that voice is a six-year-old girl's sweet, childlike timbre transplanted into a world-weary, sophisticated and sometimes slightly saucy soul.

That very voice stayed the same right on through to Dearie's retirement from performing in 2006. Then on February 7, 2009, the sweet voice was silenced while living in her apartment in Greenwich Village, NYC. Even many fans of this wonderful and delicate jazz stylist missed the announcement of her passing--merely because Blossom Dearie has always been considered a cult type of singer. Because of this, much of the media overlooked a mention of her passing, with your humbly astute writer not knowing about it until just shortly before the writing of this article.

Mind you, I didn't know much about Blossom Dearie until the 90's when researching the voice work in the Saturday morning classic "Schoolhouse Rock" that everybody from my generation (Gen X) grew up with in the 1970's and 80's. Sure, I remember having my reading skills already in working order by the time I was two and seeing the name Blossom Dearie in the end credits of all those brilliant "Schoolhouse Rock" shorts. Not yet registering for me then, few from my generation knew that the familiar childlike voice used in that series had already made a series of classic and under-appreciated jazz albums going back twenty years prior.

Whatever Dearie thought about having a renaissance in her career through an animated series on Saturday morning TV, it didn't stop her from continuing to make new recordings through her own record label in the 70's. However, even with those, a truly large audience for her jazz side was still waiting until that type of music genre would have its own renaissance a couple of decades later. During the 70's and 80's, most people had her pinned down as being the singer with the little girl voice who sang the haunting "Figure Eight" in "Multiplication Rock" and the funky cool "Unpack Your Adjectives" in "Grammar Rock" as just two famous "Schoolhouse Rock" segments.

It was when much of Blossom Dearie's recorded output from the 1950's and 60's started to be reissued on CD in the 90's and 2000's when I started to connect the dots to who the singer truly was and her artistic breadth. Hearing that familiar childlike voice singing a standard on a satellite jazz station for a few minutes one night, I was drawn in to her ability to softly sink you deep into the lyrics of a song that ultimately made her interpretation stand alone from just about any other singer, male or female. Yet she didn't always sing well-worn jazz standards sung by every crooner of the era. Dearie chose to sing a number of offbeat jazz tunes that were sometimes written by her or songwriting friends. A lot of these were a tad saucy, albeit wittier than just about anything else being written at the time.
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If you're familiar with the sly reference tune "Peel Me a Grape", then you know the style of the jazz songs Blossom Dearie sang frequently on her albums and when performing in NYC or London clubs. These types of novelty jazz (and perhaps quasi cabaret) tunes were written by Bob Dorough and Dave Frishberg. You may have seen Frishberg's name around as the composer of "Peel Me a Grape" and other clever novelty tunes that still get played by jazz club singers every day. You may also recognize Dorough's name in a similar vein to Frishberg, along with being one of the male voice talents on "Schoolhouse Rock."

Yes, that's right, all of us from Generation X were educated in song by jazz singers/musicians rather than the hippest pop/rock talent of the day. Dearie and Dorough also wrote a lot of the songs on "Schoolhouse Rock", which explains the song's jazzy vibes.

Since a lot of people have a crazy obsession with "Peel Me a Grape", it's sometimes easy to overlook Dearie's other jazz tunes she either co-wrote or helped make popular. "I'm Hip" is similar to "Grape" and became her signature song. She also recorded dozens of other clever jazz novelties that never became widespread hits, yet became standards in the NYC jazz/cabaret club circuit. Despite being relegated to strictly performing in Danny's Skylight Room in NYC during the 90's and 2000's, you'd be surprised at how many fans Blossom Dearie had. The adamancy of wanting to uphold her high-caliber sensibility to song styling, songwriting and musicianship is something to behold when you see the rare clips of her performing on Youtube.

In my book, that made Dearie a lot more than just a cult singer. Obviously, it's the reissue of those earlier-mentioned albums at Verve that keeps that going. Despite starting out singing in American big bands during the 40's while just in her 20's, she went to live in Paris for part of the 50's to briefly start a singing group that became popular there. Norman Granz at Verve was the one who perhaps saved America from making Dearie only a European chanteuse in the late 50's. After that series of popular albums at Verve and then a few more at Capitol in the mid 60's ("May I Come In? as one classic), Dearie was always heading back to Europe periodically where better musical ideals usually thrive.

It's only been in the last 20 years when the renaissance in the Great American Songbook and a more profound understanding of how empty and artificial mainstream music has become did a certain slice of the American populace start holding tight to Blossom Dearie's musical philosophy. To those paying attention, the art of singing and songwriting has been whittled down to a precious few that keep it from becoming extinct. Dearie herself kept her girlish voice, underrated piano skills and magnetic singing style intact up until that apparent 2006 retirement for unknown reasons due to her intense privacy. She also stayed profoundly relevant by writing a tune about 9/11 called "It's All Right to Be Afraid" that she sang regularly in her club engagements during the early 2000's.

Now it'll be up to her successors (British songstress Stacey Kent and American song stylist Daryl Sherman, who both sound like Dearie) to keep the flame alive. And it's very much alive. To see proof of how many fans Blossom Dearie had, go to these rare links to read the comments on Youtube showing her performing in different time periods:

On Jack Paar's "Tonight Show" in the early 60's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoZd4GKzOdQ

A jazz club performance from 1985:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WQBxL53HE0