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Spotlight On.....
Guy Consterdine
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For the many years I have had the pleasure of being the caretaker of the “Original Connie Francis Mailing List,” one of the most pleasant rewards in getting to know people from around the globe. To awaken in the morning and have my cup of coffee as I read about the adventures of these wonderful people is a great way to start my day. One of the highlights is when Guy Consterdine gets in his car and rewards us with a tapestry of his scenic drive and of how Connie's songs playing in his car seamlessly blends in and his beautifully woven descriptions of the timber in her voice, the timing of her breathing, the pronunciation of a word, etc. it makes you want him to keep writing and never stop. It is an honor for me to have this “Spotlight On…Guy Consterdine.” Thank you Guy, for the beauty you add to our lives with your well worded thoughts and picturesque descriptions of the English Countryside. I have also added on “The List” Page some of his writings he has shared with the group. Please enjoy Guy’s story, I am sure you will be pleased. Carol "Cat" Adams
I was captivated
from the first moment I heard that voice coming out of the ether over
the fluctuating airwaves of Radio Luxembourg in 1958, singing
Who’s Sorry Now. Something about that
fresh
young voice struck me to the core. A schoolboy in England, I instantly
and subconsciously created in my mind an image of what this singer was
like. I imagined a personality for her. She came to define my ideal, at
that impressionable youthful period, of what the perfect young woman
should be The mental image of her which I built up was reinforced and enhanced by her recordings which quickly followed – I’m Sorry I Made You Cry, Lock Up My Heart, Carolina Moon, Stupid Cupid and so on – and by her occasional appearances on British television.
Who's Sorry Now remains the most precious Francis track to me because of the intoxicating magic which the recording and that voice created for me half a century ago. Later recordings throughout Connie’s career added further layers of enchantment, but WSN is special because it created the sorcery in the first place.
That
magic was translated into flesh and blood when I saw Connie in concert
in London in 1959. It was on 27 February in the Palace Theatre,
Shaftesbury Avenue.
She was petite,
feminine and only 20 years old. When this delectable creature began to
sing she just opened her mouth and that crystal-clear golden voice
poured forth – exactly the voice that I loved and knew so well from
countless playings of her records. Of course at an intellectual level I
knew that she would sound like Connie Francis! But at an
emotional level it seemed improbable that any human being could
reproduce those perfect sounds, so it was almost astonishing when
precisely that voice flowed through those red lips. I was bewitched. I
have seen her in concert subsequently but that first time was the most
magical. The concert programme carried another iconic photo that seemed to me to sum up this fresh charming young woman.
I have developed
a taste for many kinds of music since the late 1950s – especially
classical music (Beethoven and Mozart particularly), light opera
(Katherine Jenkins is a favourite singer) and jazz - but I have never
lost my love for the music of Connie Francis.
Let me describe why, and what the music means to me.
Signature characteristics Part of the fascination of her singing is the characteristic touches which are pure Connie and which have become part of her signature. Most obviously, her vocal teardrops – those famously expressive breaks and catches in her voice which reveal hurt, anguish, loss. There are countless examples. I also revel in the skilful way Connie sometimes stretches some of the words as though they were pieces of elastic – even adding extra syllables as she draws out the words. A fine example comes at the end of the sixth line of How’s The World Treating You, where 'mattered' is rendered as 'ma-hat-tered'. Other instances in the same song are 'Su-hun-day' and 'par-harted'. Here Connie inserts and pronounces an extra letter into these words - an 'h' in front of a vowel - which is part of the secret of the creation of her vocal teardrops. An illustration of placing an 'h' in front of an 'i', to create a broken 'hi' sound, comes in the beautiful Wishing It Was You at the beginning of the second line: "Hi'll try to hide my heartache with a smile". There are other instances later in the song too, as in: "But when I say those precious words 'Hi do' / In my heart I'll be wishing it was you". A related technique I enjoy is Connie’s skill in moving her notes up or down within a single syllable or word. For instance ‘ma-hat-tered’, mentioned in the paragraph above, is given a self-contained melody within the one word. All this is a very high standard of craft. How's The World Treating You is an excellent example of another distinctive Connie flavour: harmonizing with herself, but with the occasional lines sung in solo voice to offer a contrast. I’ve enjoyed the harmonizing immensely ever since I first heard it in Carolina Moon back in the summer of 1958, and soon afterwards on My Happiness, which is notable for the sumptuous beauty of both the main melody and the harmony, and the way they complement each other perfectly. The fun songs Another Connie characteristic which I savour is the joyous gaiety with which she sings the fun songs. Two creations which stand out in my mind in this respect are Stupid Cupid and Robot Man. With Stupid Cupid I applaud the expression she puts into her voice, the way she slides and up down the notes on single words, the upward hooks at the end of some words, and that final note that rises dramatically into a high squeak which always delights me. She conveys a sense of sheer fun, and has laughter sparkling in her voice. The backing vocals, especially the idiosyncratic quivering gurgling noise which appears at intervals, add so much to the overall effect. There was a real 'Wow!' factor about this song when it exploded onto the scene on 1958, and it still wows me. Robot Man is a brilliant nonsense song that's a bit of fun, not to be taken too seriously, but to be enjoyed as high spirits. It always makes me smile and lifts me. There's great laughter in Connie's voice. Her chuckle in the first "alibi" is particularly delicious, and the first "robot key" is equally good. A further delight that is special to this song is the way she often pronounces "man" - more like "mayan" - in an accentuated manner which displays a great sense of humour. It makes me smile. Certainly the words are ditzy - preferring a robot to a real boy, dancing with a robot, winding him up with a key, etc. But beneath the literal meaning of the words she is saying something quite believable and maybe not uncommon: expressing how much anguish she's suffered because of boys, and desperately looking for a way of having fun without being hurt by another emotional creature. I get wrapped up in the sheer fun and boisterous panache of Robot Man, and the cute liveliness of Connie's personality as expressed in that song. I adore this perky Connie. She conveys the certainty that she'd be such fun to meet in person, filled with laughter and sparkling eyes. Even with a truly dumb song Connie can inject some great merriment. In this context I think of Freddy. The first few times I heard Freddy, on the 1996 Souvenirs 4-CD set, four decades after it was recorded, I didn't care for it because the song is so poor and Connie's voice is still immature. However after listening to it more carefully I came to realize that there's considerable craft in the way Connie performed it, and I now appreciate it with pleasure because I'm listening to a skilled technique that was remarkable for a 16 year old. In her autobiography Connie called Freddy a "silly little ditty" and I agree as far as the actual melody and words are concerned. But throughout the song there are many good things to enjoy. For example the cute high squeak at the end of "Freddy" almost every time. The uplifted or broken endings of many other words. The way she rhymes "men" and "again" by singing "men-ner" and "again-ner". The laugh in her voice in many phrases. The pronounced modulation in her young voice within certain words - yet it is not overdone. Her clarity of diction. The way she trills the "I" in the final "I can read you thru and thru". The broken articulation of the word "pipe" in "and light up your pipe" (the first time round) which could be perceived as an early form of the characteristic catch in her voice. Connie also showed she already knew how to work subtle variations into her performance; for instance the second time round "pipe" is sung straight and plain. I always chuckle, as the song is closing, at the amusing final "Freddeeee". The recording is a light-hearted bit of fun, but it's also more than that: it told the world as early as 1955 that this singer is an attractive personality, a sparkling vivacious teenager one would love to meet.
A feature which I find can add piquancy to Connie’s music is the way that some songs are associated with specific memories, and I relive those memories when I listen to the song. For instance, Connie’s Twist album. The Twist was such fun to dance, at the time in the 1960s when it was the latest dance craze. Many of the student parties in which I participated in London were enlivened by Twist music and dancing. Sometimes we whirled and twisted for song after song till we almost fell over with tiredness, laughing. One party in particular is especially unforgettable because that's where I first met my future wife, and my first ever words to her were "Would you like to Twist?" Thus when I hear Connie singing a Twist song - any Twist song - I am reminded of late-night student parties, I smile about collapsing off the dance floor in near-exhaustion, and I think of first meeting my wife. An earlier example of the truism that we experience music in a personal way, reflecting our own experiences and associations, is Heartaches. The vocal harmonic chords which introduce Heartaches always remind me of a certain friend who bought the EP on which I first heard this song in late 1958. Heartaches was not released as a single in the UK; it was only on this four-song EP. EPs were usually too expensive for me to buy at that stage of my schooldays. I was not only a schoolboy, but a schoolboy with hardly any money. I struggled to find the cash to buy a 45 rpm single; EPs and LPs were out of my reach at first. Thus it was this fellow Connie fan who introduced me to the song. I came under its spell the moment I first heard it. Ever since then those distinctive opening bars have reminded me of that friend, where I was when I first heard that track, and the fact that at that time I had no record player and no prospect of being able to afford one. I was buying Connie’s singles (the first records I’d ever bought), and a few outstanding discs of other artists, but had to play them on friends’ equipment whenever I could. Fortunately at the end of 1958 I received one of the best Christmas presents that had ever excited me: a record player of my own! At last I could spin Connie on a turntable at home. A Garden In The Rain is another of the many songs which hold associations for me. First, Connie’s pure, crystal-clear young voice is the very voice that I heard at that concert at the Palace Theatre - only a few days later she cut the My Thanks To You album at the Abbey Road studios in London. In a sense the My Thanks To You album, and A Garden In The Rain in particular, is a souvenir of the concert, because at a time when her voice was still evolving and becoming more mature, A Garden In The Rain captured exactly the voice I heard on stage that afternoon in February 1959. A second association the song holds for me is that the musical bridge takes the form of the backing group reprising some of the song’s lyrics in a style of cooing which seems very old-fashioned indeed, reminding me of mid-1950s radio shows before rock 'n' roll really took over. This gives the musical bridge a strong period charm. Another association stems from the theme of the song’s lyrics: the garden becomes a magical place and "Surely here was charm beyond compare to view", not just because of the rainy garden's own wet merits but also because "it was just that I was there with you." These words make my mind skip to places which were transformed for me because of someone I was with. One place I think of is La Roca, a long-disappeared underground coffee bar and lounge with a dance floor, in London's Soho Square, where as a student I took a girlfriend very soon after we first met. The experience of being with her, and dancing with her, imbued the cavernous place with a lasting enchantment that still lingers in my mind. And so, in addition to the musical delights intentionally put into A Garden In The Rain by Connie and her colleagues, the specific tone of her youthful voice makes me think of the Palace Theatre, the quaint choral bridge takes me back to boyhood radio shows, and the lyrics remind me of a dance floor in Soho Square.
Who's Sorry Now captures many things that I relish about Connie's early ‘oldies’, including the effortless ease with which she sings, the purity of her voice, and the clarity of her diction. The orchestration behind Connie, the vocal backing 'choir', and especially the clinking piano chords, are all just about perfect. The song's melody is beautiful, and the revenge in the lyrics is heightened by the emotion Connie injects. There is the classic Francis structure of building the final reprise into a towering crescendo, and there are other characteristic touches that soon became part of her trademark. In most of these respects WSN is matched by at least 30 or 40 other Connie releases, from the equally good I'm Sorry I Made You Cry onwards, but it’s the great sentimental overlay of being the song which originally bewitched me that lifts WSN above these other tracks. Apart from WSN, I cannot say I have specific favourite Francis songs. So many of her records make me feel, at the moment of listening to them, “This is one of her best! This is a favourite!” Here are three of the songs which make me feel that way every time I hear them: Eighteen, Am I Blue, and Lonely Again. Eighteen: in my opinion this is Connie’s earliest masterpiece, pre-dating Who’s Sorry Now by about five months. For the first time it fully reveals her true stature as an exceptionally talented artist performing idiosyncratic material in an amazingly creative way. When I first heard this song it took my breath away. It’s performed in an imaginative haunting style, making it a quirky mystical piece of brilliance which I find enthralling. Her interpretation (though not the vocal backing) could be considered jazz. I’m lost in admiration at Connie’s skill in delivering the lyrics throughout the song. Some examples that particularly captivate me: the way “where” in the second line begins with gentle force then immediately fades back, and contrasts with the delivery of “where” in the eighth line, and a different-again “where” in the tenth line. The touch of vibrato at the end of “eighteen” in line 3. The way “mmmooove” in the fourth line is elongated and the note slides up and down a little as it is held. And so on. There’s also a touch of Peggy Lee in there: whenever I listen to Eighteen I also think of Peggy’s Fever. Another thing that appeals to me about Eighteen is a degree of ambiguity in what the mystical lyrics actually mean:
Clearly these words are revealing teen angst and confusion, but they are doing so in an intriguing expressionist way and they suggest there’s something more. It’s spiritual, transcendental. Hearing this song for the first time was a bit like watching a Harold Pinter play for the first time: after being totally engrossed in the play throughout, at the end you ask yourself ‘What was that really all about?’ And you realize the playwright intends you to apply your own interpretation of what you’ve seen. And I suspect that’s what writers Bradford Boobis and Neil Nephew intended with Eighteen – we can read our own rich meaning into those lyrics and their presentation. A much later masterpiece is Am I Blue. It’s not only Connie’s outstanding singing but also the subtle arrangement by Don Costa and the work of conductor Joe Mazzu. The structure of the song is a little more complex than usual, with six distinct sections. After the instrumental introduction which hints at the emotions to come, there's a very delicate couple of three-line verses, followed by a louder vibrato-laden passage of two more lines, a soft section again of three or four lines, and a return to the full-power voice, which finally softens again to a quiet ending on the final line. I read and hear this structure as a means of conveying fluctuating emotion, or rather fluctuating ability to control emotion. The structure assists and multiplies the effect of Connie's own singing. The quiet despair of the delicate first lines flares up into passionate cries in the next lines. Soon she manages to regain control of her emotion for a few moments during the return to the muted central section. She can't make this calm last for long but bursts out with cries again, until in the last line she finally subsides into weary recognition of the new truth. I think it's effective that a chorus of backing voices enters the song for the first time during this final line, taking over the role previously played by the violins. It's as though a heavenly choir of guardian angels suddenly appears in order to comfort the stricken lover. I relish the tone and timbre of Connie's voice in Am I Blue. The brilliant Connie & Clyde album on which the song was released represents another slight shift in the career-long evolution of her voice. This is her Hawaii Connie voice too. On these two 1968 LPs she sounds subtly different from any albums she'd produced before. The flute-like quality of this voice is well in evidence in Am I Blue when, for instance, she sings that long "too" in the line "Ho you'd be too" in the second verse. And how melting is the lilt in her voice throughout the song, particularly when she inserts extra syllables into one-syllable words, like the three notes she often puts into "blue" or the four notes in the last "gay" (ga-ay-ay-ay"). I also like the instrumentation in this song, especially in the slow sections, and best of all are the four-note phrases on the piano, constantly repeating themselves and providing a sense of movement – at a languid pace which fits the mood of the lyrics. Then there's the double bass underneath; the tapping on cymbals and drums; and the lightly buzzing violins which foretell the next line of the haunting melody that Connie is about to sing. This is one form of musical perfection. Lonely Again blows me away. Early on I love the tremulous quavering in Connie's voice as she sings "cry" in the second line - "were foolish to cause me to cry". One of the features I particularly enjoy is the alternation of quiet and loud passages. The contrast with the quiet makes the loud sections seem even more dramatic. Four times we have a self-controlled muted lament, with her soft but rich tones bewailing the false promises, followed by bursting out with vivid passion as the deep hurt of her lover's treachery can't be restrained any longer. I like the way this cycle is repeated: first, Connie's soft tender voice, with occasional flute-like notes, and accompanied by very light instruments - an electric guitar chord, a piano far away in the background, gentle cymbals. And then an escalation of sound: her inflamed voice, soaring choir, instruments at full blast, all reaching a crescendo of noise which suddenly stops as though everyone's jumped off a cliff - before the next gentle quiet passage comes in. I particularly listen out for the transition to the second and fourth loud passages, for each time it is a note-by-note ascension of the musical scale, a stairway of rising notes, which puts me in mind of another great hit on the MGM label, Conway Twitty's 'It's Only Make Believe' (not to mention Connie's cover version). I listen intently to the words because Jean Chapel wrote fine lyrics - expressive, perceptive, attractive verse. I'm always deeply affected by the passion of Connie's ending of this song, including the final "lonely again!": the desperate emotion wrenched out of her, of such intensity and volume that the images it arouses in my mind are of Edvard Munch's painting 'The Scream' and Picasso's stricken figure with raised arms in his painting 'Guernica'. The magnificence of these final bars usually makes me play the track again, straight away.
Connie has the power to influence my mood. For example, one morning I jumped into my car feeling cheerful (looking forward to seeing some close family) and the first Connie song that chanced to come up on my in-car entertainment system matched my upbeat mood perfectly: that driving foot-tapper 'Telephone Lover'. Connie sings it with bounce and verve, and her buoyant performance is infused with a great sense of fun about the hopeless unrequited romance she's pursuing. I purred with pleasure at the craft she puts into every line, including the charaded telephone conversation at the beginning, the uplifted notes at the end of certain words, the chuckles in her voice, the jokey enunciations ('romay-oh'), and the elongated words in which a single flexible syllable is drawn up or down the scale. The drums and piano chords beat out the insistent rhythm with a flourish. The vocal backing is a fine counterpoint to Connie, with just the right weight, not too loud. The tuneful orchestration has a well-judged light touch. What a joy it was to listen to this breezy number and tap my fingers on the steering wheel to the song's beat. I played it again. How quickly my short drive passed by. Connie speeds a journey - I get lost in the music, and suddenly the journey is over. I arrived at my destination even more chirpy than when I set off.
When I’m driving I often play Francis CDs. I find that the pleasure of the music and the delights of the English countryside or the street scenes of cities blend together to create a heightened experience. Here are two examples. One early winter evening as I was driving through open country, the daylight was beginning to fade and by sheer coincidence Connie began singing “the purple dust of twilight time steals across the meadows” as I listened to her delicate refined interpretation of Stardust. I reached the foot of wooded ridges in the Surrey hills, and this sublime view in silhouette was matched by the sublime treatment of the next song, Like Someone In Love, with Connie sketching how she’s feeling by listing the simple but indicative little things she is doing, such as gazing at stars, hearing guitars, walking as though she had wings, bumping into things. Soon it was fully dark, and my elevated mood was reinforced by the laughing positive spirit of Young At Heart. I entered a long section of road where the branches of the trees on either side of the narrow lane meet at the top to form a skeletal leafless tunnel. The headlights caught two reflective points of light. The eyes of a fox. Foxes are often seen round here at night. I had almost reached home when I became lost in Love Me Tender – the appealing vulnerability in Connie’s voice, the touch of huskiness, the softness and beauty of the uncomplicated melody, and the affection in the lyrics. As I turned into my own unsurfaced lane and the headlights picked out the mature oaks which line the verge, the next and final song kept me in contemplative mood - the gentle beautiful Vaya Con Dios, with its elegantly simple accompaniment including acoustic guitar, and Connie’s delectable voice so thoughtful and tranquil. This is how Connie’s music can make me feel: by turns soothing, nostalgic, cheerful, sublime, elevated, positive, gently contemplative, and lost in the beauty of a song - my mood reflecting the mood of the music.
Another time
I had to drive through three English counties on a bright August
morning, and took the Souvenirs 4-CD set with me. I drove
through some of my favourite territory, especially the South Downs range
of hills in Sussex. The combination of Connie's music and the beauty of
the sunny countryside made for a perfect drive. I never got beyond the
first CD of the Souvenirs set, because I was enjoying it so much that I
simply replayed it a few times – especially the pre-Who’s Sorry
Now tracks. I'm very fond of these 1955-1957 recordings, for I
enjoy observing Connie's development from record to record, the subtle
variations in tone and timbre, the real artistry that she was developing
before her first great hit, and her gradually maturing voice until it
flowered fully with WSN. I like looking out for early instances of
touches that would later help characterize Connie’s performances. For
instance, the catches in her voice (as in Forgetting),
double-tracked harmony (as in My Treasure), the sheer
clarity of her voice in every song, and the exuberant squeaks in
Freddy. As I drove among hills, fields and woods, I felt a
definite charm in Connie's not-quite-mature voice - for example, in
Sailor Boy (which as a song is quite poor), I Never Had
A Sweetheart (a fine song) and the gentle No Other One.
It was a delight on a sunny August day to be sliding through the country
lanes in my delicious coupe while playing early Connie Francis. I drove
past fields of hops, oast houses (with their distinctive cowling) for
drying the hops, and apple orchards dense with low trees laden with
fruit. I stood on a medieval stone bridge over a quiet river, and looked
at several breathtaking black and white timber-framed houses, four or
five hundred years old, with top storeys jutting out further than the
lower storeys. I photographed some attractive lichen-covered gravestones
around a twelfth-century church on a hilltop. And what made this journey
so memorable was not just the beauty of the English landscape but also
the impact of Connie’s singing, and my enjoyment of her company and
personality. Yes, that is a key to why I listen to Connie: the enjoyment of her company and personality.
In recent years the arrival of the internet, and the consequent introduction of websites and discussion groups devoted to Connie (notably the Original Connie Francis Mailing List), have added a new dimension to my enjoyment. They have introduced me to recordings I had never heard before. They enable me to keep in touch with what Connie is currently doing, how she looks, reports on her latest concerts, and the impact she still has on today’s audiences. Most importantly, the discussion group has put me in touch with others with whom to share our appreciation of this captivating and enduring music.
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