Sunday evenings are made for special things like transferring your favorite Dory Previn LPs to MP3s and discovering this wonderful site dedicated to her. A woman who wrote the lyrics to the tunes in Valley of the Dolls and one of Liza Minnelli's first films and lost her husband to Mia Farrow when she'd tired of Frank Sinatra can do no harm in my book. Back in the day, I thought she was a tad too neurotic. Today she sounds like the rare voice of reason in the sea of madness.
Better than having an Easter basket filled with chocolate bunnies and Peeps is discovering a rare performance by Dory Previn. The video can't be embedded, but you can click here to see Dory on Dutch TV singing her classic "Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign". It's probably one of the best tunes ever written about a starlet taking her life.
The little poetic intro is both forced and delightful in a mad way worthy of Dory.
And if you don't know the story about the tune's inspiration, Peg Entwistle, you can check her out here. And Dory? In case you are ill-informed she wrote all the lyrics for the songs in Valley of the Dolls.
Even more obscure than poor Dory Previn, a beloved singer-songwriter from the 1970s has been calling out to me recently. Dead for nearly three decades now, Judee Sill is an ultimate test for pop snobs and freaks. On one level she's the most annoyingly sweet voiced, long-haired hippie chick that makes Joni Mitchell look like someone as crass and shallow as that Madonna creature or Cher. But she was also bisexual, a heroin addict, Jesus freak and wrote a tune covered by Cass Elliott, "Jesus Was a Cross Maker". Hers was a tale of struggle, addiction, prostitution, near death, redemption, creative flourish, a long path of sobriety, fame lurking on the horizon, and sudden tragic fall by overdose.
Hers is not the usual three act tale of VH1 Behind the Music that ends with peace and redemption, and thus not very well known. The underlying sadness in her tunes foretold her fate. Yet there is also something healing in her music at certain moments and her"The Donor" of "The Kiss" (below) call out to me with their eerie Baroque pop grandeur and simplicity in the wee hours of the night. They are the "Angel Eyes" of the granola era. I recall them calling out to me during my very early teens from a tinny table top radio in my grandmother's kitchen tuned in to an obscure campus station, the likes of which were long gone by the time of the Ford Administration. I hope I am not alone in remembering her. Rest in peace Judee as you bring me peace tonight.
Location: San Francisco, California, United States
JunkThief is your typical Gallic Jew boy born on the Great Plains, went to Gotham and Ouagadougou and Kathmandu before settling in San Francisco's Mission District. Now he searches the dark alleys of that city to find good conversation, Weimar culture and (but of course) the perfect door knob.
Sunday evenings are made for special things like transferring your favorite Dory Previn LPs to MP3s and discovering this wonderful site dedicated to her. A woman who wrote the lyrics to the tunes in Valley of the Dolls and one of Liza Minnelli's first films and lost her husband to Mia Farrow when she'd tired of Frank Sinatra can do no harm in my book. Back in the day, I thought she was a tad too neurotic. Today she sounds like the rare voice of reason in the sea of madness.
