The Highball Era: Coffee, Trains & Cigarettes
The Highball, from Merriam-Webster: 1) an iced drink served in a tall glass with strong alcohol and a mixer; 2) a trackside signal for the locomotive engineer to open the throttle and proceed at full speed. The track ahead is clear.
I grew up listening to the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin, but the music of the Highball Era—my parents’ music—was still alive and well in the culture. I would hear these songs on radio and television: the crystal-clear voices of Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole; the heavy voice of Sarah Vaughn and the sultry singing of Julie London. And Louis Armstrong, of course. He was still going strong with that amazing voice and horn. All the singers and soloists, and the bands with their rock-solid rhythm sections, they created a mood and a feeling that has stayed with me. People drank coffee and highballs. They rode trains, smoked cigarettes, and they listened to this purely American music.
The songs in this collection were composed in the years from 1928 to 1956, but the most iconic performances were made in the forties and fifties, during the peak years of train travel. This was the era when composer and lyricist were two separate jobs. It was a collaboration. A person schooled in harmony didn't need to be a wordsmith as well. The idea for a song might be inspired by a scrap of melody or a passing phrase. Times change and tastes change, and by the sixties you didn't need a Johnny Mercer to write the words for Louie Louie.
“The Highball Drink” On Wikipedia
“The Highball Railroad Signal” On Wikipedia
Acknowledgements
I studied arranging for solo guitar with Stan Ayeroff in Los Angeles. I took lessons with him for three years, on and off. Tenderly is one of the tunes that we worked on. Stan is an excellent musician and teacher in a variety styles. Check out his website here. Stan recently published a two-book series on solo guitar playing titled: Beyond Chord Melody, Volumes One and Two, The Art of Arranging and Performing for Solo Guitar. Here is a link to Stan’s books on the Mel Bay site.
I want to thank my early listeners on this project: Phannita Bunlai, Stephen Scheffler and Annie Murphy. I appreciate their feedback and encouragement.
Notes
I’ve been playing guitar for 60 years, more or less. Given that, it seems I should be a better player, but it takes some of us a lifetime to sound like ourselves. Recently, I’ve been having some undiagnosed trouble with the small finger on my left hand, my fretting hand. So the purpose of this project, in part, is to say, “This is as far as I’ve gotten. It’s not perfect, or amazing in any way, but I am happy enough, or Simply Happy, with it.”
Planning, production, recording and editing were performed in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The tracks were recorded on a ZOOM recorder. Minimal processing and editing were completed in Audacity. No reverb was added. The studio room had great acoustics and the tracks sound exactly as I heard them. The perceived loudness for all tracks was normalized to -17 LUFS.
“Now a man is born to go a lovin.' A woman's born to weep and fret. To stay at home and tend her oven, and drown her past regrets, in coffee and cigarettes”Lyrics from “Black Coffee” by Paul Francis Webster.