American Songbook Association Fundraiser/ Interview: Marilyn Maye
American Songbook Association’s fourth online fundraiser featured the organization’s first Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, the incomparable Marilyn Maye. Director of ASA Education and Outreach Carolyn Montgomery interviewed and offered video clips of Maye with whom she shared the screen.
Multiple segments from The Johnny Carson Show (1968-1979) on which the vocalist would appear a record 76 times show a svelte young woman in elegant, body skimming sequins with hair a bit more bouffant but, now in her nineties, face hardly changed. An up-tempo “I Hear Music” is fluid, exuberant. “I just fan-girled when I recorded that introduction,” Montgomery tells us. Carson’s superlatives were earned.
Carson’s favorite song, “Here’s That Rainy Day” (Jimmy Van Heusen/Johnny Burke) precedes “Stormy Weather” (Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler). The number slides from deep lament to frustrated declaration. “That’s the way to sing songs like that,” Carson comments appreciatively.
Maye is one of a handful of artists who can offer something an audience has heard hundreds of times yet make interpretation her own. When she repeats a signature song on a second or third occasion, she’s so in the moment inflection changes. Selected material identified with her makes it difficult to hear someone else’s version without an echo of Maye. Later in this show we hear one of these, “Here’s to Life!” (Artie Butler/Phyllis Molinary).
John Rostill’s “Let Me Be There” arrives foot-tapping, head-bobbing, evangelistic, UP. We catch a glimpse of Maye on Johnny’s interview couch after performance. When asked by Montgomery why she didn’t spend more time conversing, the vocalist responds she was given a choice to do two songs, or a single song and a talk with the host. “I always chose the songs because that’s what I’m about.”
Maye had spent years working at The Colony in Kansas City when Steve Allen discovered her. A guest appearance on his show caught the eye of the wife of an RCA Artists and Repertoire man who made sure her husband watched. He was instrumental in her first recording.
Years later, Maye tells us, she did three weeks of one-nighters on the road (in a car) with Allen and a small troupe. “When he’d introduce me, he’d quote Johnny Carson. They were friends,” she recalls. Telling.
Herman Hupfeld’s iconic “As Time Goes By” eases into a rhythmic swing version of “I Cried for You” (Gus Arnheim/Abe Lyman/Arthur Freed). Step-hip jut, step-hip jut, knees bend… Maye’s voice slip-slides with absolute control. Montgomery asks whether her guest’s ability to perform so many genres well was ever a problem. “I started recording in the late 1960s when the Beatles happened,” comes the answer. “So, yes, RCA saw to it I sang more current material.”
The example our host chooses “Till You Come Back” (Paul Mauriat/ Bernardy Mamoudy/ Bernie Ross.“Till you come back/ My room will have no doors/the sea will have no shores…”That’s just too tragic,” Maye comments at the end of the clip. “I don’t sing songs like that anymore.” Has her stunning “Guess Who I Saw Today?” then vanished from the artist’s repertoire?
Also contemporary at the time, the vocalist performed Melissa Manchester/ Carole Bayer Sager’s “Come In from the Rain.”“Well, hello there/Good old friend of mine/You’ve been reaching for yourself/For such a long time…” Maye always thought it spoke to a little dog. One day she had the opportunity to ask Manchester learning from its author, it decidedly did not.
Maye appeared on The Harry Connick Jr. Show in 2018. They had shared a bill together. He was an ardent fan. Invited to Connick’s live show in Kansas City, the artist listened to his praise of an outstanding vocalist assuming he referred to Ella Fitzgerald. Instead, it was a description of Maye and an invitation to join him on stage.
“Ella was a huge fan of yours,” the host comments. “We’d visit each other’s shows and talk backstage,” Maye recollects. “I remember once, Ella was due at a party. Her assistant kept ducking in to remind her. Finally, she testily told him, “I’m talking to my friend. We’ll come in a minute.” She grins.
“What were you thinking when you recorded this one?” Montgomery inquires referring to “I Will Survive” (Freddie Perren/Dino Fekaris). “I had three husbands and a meaningful love affair in my life. When I was going to perform this on The Johnny Carson Show, I called the meaningful love affair dedicating it to him,” Maye replies. With a snippet of “Those Were the Days” as intro, she launched proud and defiant.
We close with a Carson segment Maye calls “a message to everyone out there, especially the performers.” Wearing extravagantly draped, choir-robe-like white satin, she exults in “Sing Your Own Kind of Music.” “You’ve gotta make your own kind of music/Sing your own special song/Make your own kind of music/Even if nobody else sings along…” It’s infectiously warm and upbeat. The lady continues to show us how its done.
Marilyn Maye’s last March show was in St. Louis. By the end of the run, MD/pianist Tedd Firth warned her off traditional meet-n’-greets. I can only imagine her resistance. The artist likes to connect. Irrepressibly, in August, she kept an annual gig at The Crown & Anchor in Provincetown on a newly built outdoor stage. Last night, Maye tells us, she sang at a Kansas City drive-in with musicians with whom she often works and mid October, she’ll perform in a tent in Minneapolis.
Opening Screen Grab Left: Carolyn Montgomery, Right: Marilyn Maye
The ASA Education Department is moving online with its own YouTube channel (address TBA) for music enthusiasts and learners of all ages. Included are videos of brilliant performers, presenting a variety of American music from Jazz to Musical Theater to Classic Standards. Each day’s offering will have historical fun facts and a little bit of information about the composer, lyricist and performer. Later in April, our subscribers can participate in on line quizzes, have access to more content, a chance to win a recording of their favorite performers or tickets to shows! It’s free for anyone to subscribe. Stay tuned for more information.
The American Songbook Association
My earlier article about the ASA’s Education Outreach Program. :
