I was listening to Bob Dylan’s latest album the other day, the darkly beautiful Shadow Kingdom, when it struck me that the great man has become a crooner in his later life. If you’re not aware of the album, it’s a stripped-back reworking of 13 songs from earlier in his career, with no drums, minimal harmonica, and a surprising amount of the very unDylan-like accordion.
Anyone hoping for early-Dylan-redux will be disappointed. The man’s voice has lost its power and venom, and the gravellyness that began creeping in a few decades ago now fills the room. Part of Shadow Kingdom’s beauty, however, is that Dylan embraces what he’s got and doesn’t try to compensate for what he hasn’t. Where Queen Jane Approximately was originally a sardonic, almost gleeful letter to an ex-lover whose world is falling apart, here it becomes a quiet lament from someone who knows that none of us, singer included, is immune to bad decisions, loss and regret.
Croon came into English via Scottish in the early 1400s. It may be related to the Middle Dutch kronen, “to lament” or the Old High German kronen, “to babble”. On the other hand, says etymonline, the similarity may be because all are imitative.
In its early days, croon could mean to speak or sing softly or to utter a low, murmuring sound. The latter meaning was extended so far as to encompass the idea of bellowing like a bull.
Of course, these days croon means only to sing in a soft, low voice, something Dylan does throughout most of Shadow Kingdom.
Being called a crooner isn’t necessarily a compliment. Frank Sinatra rejected the term, as did Russ Columbo. One reason, I think, is that the word suggests a degree of sentimentality, of playing to the section of the gallery that likes its music safe and reassuring. It’s no accident, surely, that the Wikipedia page called “List of Crooners” offers “Easy Listening” and “Traditional Pop” as alternative pages.
But great crooners are more than that. The older I get, the more I appreciate Bing Crosby. Mel Tormé, who I’ve never been able to love the way some people do, is regarded by many as one of the all-time greats. Jazz and gospel singer Ethel Waters once described him as “the only white man who sings with the soul of a black man.”
Dylan is neither a Crosby nor a Tormé. Their voices had an elegance and range that Dylan’s lacks. But his has veracity on its side, which is everything in the kinds of songs he writes.
One crooner on Wikipedia’s list who I have a decidedly troubled relationship with is Neil Diamond. In my early teen years he was my hero. This made me the butt of jokes among my peers on the school bus, who were heavily into Jethro Tull and Deep Purple and Cream - groups that I regarded as discordant noise machines not worth the $4.99 that each of their albums cost. To all of them let me acknowledge, you were the more discerning by a long shot.
By the time I left home to go to university, my tastes were expanding. At some point, I eventually did a St Paul and put away childish things, including Mr Diamond. He had become too cloying and too bellicose. There was something about his music that rang false. Today, I cannot listen to him.
I say this not to heap scorn on Neil Diamond but because I suspect I’m not alone in being unable to tolerate something I loved in my youth. Maybe it says something about becoming adult - about the need to not just quietly leave childhood things behind, but to repudiate them. This is also a good time to say that knowing Neil Diamond is now dealing with Parkinson’s disease is shitty news of the first order.
One school mate who didn’t see my musical taste as a source of humour but had every justification to was a year ahead of me. Stuart Pearce was a gifted pianist who later went on to play with great Kiwi bands like Hello Sailor. He did his best to introduce the cloth-eared me to the bluesy things he was listening to at the time, going so far as to lend me items from his treasured record collection. Sadly, he was a few years too early, and his records were returned having had little impact on their recipient.
But Stuart was that perfect mentor - non-judgemental, gracious and generous with his time. It came as a great thrill to later discover Citizen Band and learn that Stuart was on piano on at least one of their debut album’s many gorgeous tracks. In fact, he’s one of the unsung heroes of New Zealand music, widely respected by his generation of artists but singularly modest about his accomplishments. If you’re reading this, Stuart, thanks for opening my ears just a little.
As for crooners, they’re more plentiful than you might think. The Wikipedia page I mentioned lists 87 in the pre-1970s era and a further 27 since. You can thank changing technology for that numerical imbalance: crooning became big in the 1920s because it was well suited to radio and better recording equipment, which was able to pick up quieter sounds and amplify them, creating a sense of intimacy. Before that, singers had to belt out their songs, Al Jolson style. Later, as we all know, technology was forced to bow to the irresistible power of rock and roll.
Most crooners were (and still are) male and the object of thousands of young women’s affections. Like rock and rollers, they weren’t always embraced by the conservative establishment. One US cardinal denounced their singing style as base, degenerate, defiling and un-American. As if the boot had not already been sufficiently put in, the New York Singing Teachers Association added that it was also corrupt.
So far has crooning since fallen in the popular mind that today shopping malls play the likes of Bing Crosby at high volume to discourage young people from loitering after hours. Somewhere in the sky I imagine there’s a US cardinal floating around with an eternally smug grin across his face. Unless, that is, he can hear what rap musicians are getting up to. (I hope so.)
Bob Dylan isn’t on either of the Wikipedia lists (an oversight, surely), but Jim Morrison of the Doors is, as is Nick Cave. If they belong there, then the definition of crooner must be broad indeed. U2 front man Bono describes REM lead singer Michael Stipe as a crooner, which Stipe apparently doesn’t much like and I get his point.
I’ve been trying to decide if another artist I admire, Tom Waits, could also be called a crooner. While he can be gentle, and in the early days probably was a bit croony, my position on the matter is that his voice is just too feral these days to qualify.
And that, at least for this week, is my final word on the subject.
Bits and specious
Do you also have heroes from your childhood who you now have a troubled relationship with? (Parents don’t count.) I’d love to hear about it in the comments if you’re willing.
In keeping with my standard practice, it turns out I’m late to the party in recognising the change to Dylan’s singing style. An NPR review of his 2015 album Shadows in the Night calls him a crooner. Others to have awarded him the title some years ahead of me include Far Out magazine, the A.V. Club, Pitchfork and the LA Times. And that’s just a selection from page one of my Google search.
Russ Columbo gets a mention in the Neil Diamond song Done Too Soon, which lists a host of historical figures who died too early. Columbo was only 26 when he was fatally shot by his friend Lansing Brown.
Others on Diamond’s list include Henry Luce, who died at 68, Ho Chi Minh (79), Genghis Khan (64), HG Wells (79), Karl Marx (64), Henri Rousseau (66) and Buster Keaton (70). Quite frankly, if those gentlemen hadn’t achieved their major life goals before popping off, it certainly wasn’t for lack of time.
Can a single sentence catapult the attentive reader into ecstasy? Damn straight.
Jamaica will become a republic in 2024. That’s led to increased calls for Patois, the local language, to be made the island’s official language. More here.
Quote of the week
My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.
Bob Dylan
The list seems to be slanted toward rock and pop. Most male country singers before 1970 were crooners, and some (like Roy Rogers and Willie Nelson) mesmerized female fans in the same way as Frank and Bing.