Late Life Jazz: The Life and Career of Rosemary Clooney (27 page)

Cottle’s final question was about how Rosemary had become so able to answer such probing questions with such detachment and honesty. Her answer was simple. “Because I’m proud of myself,” she said. Writer and close personal friend, Deborah Grace Winer thought that the openness Rosemary displayed was the inevitable consequence of what she had been through. Rosemary, she recalled, had told her that her entire life had been spent trying to please others, to make everything okay for those around her. It was a tiring, exhausting way of life and post-breakdown, something that Rosemary no longer had the energy or the patience to maintain. “She threw it out the window,” said Winer. All that remained was total honesty. That freedom—to be herself, to say what she thought and to pour love and affection all over those people she liked and cared about—was what made her comfortable with her own skin. This, said Winer, was the bracingly candid Rosemary who emerged on talk shows in the ’70s and ’80s.
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Not everyone found Rosemary’s outspokenness quite so reassuring. New York critic, Stephen Holden, witnessed most of Rosemary’s appearances in the city over her final two decades as well as her TV appearances. For him, Rosemary played the “mother confessor” just a little too enthusiastically for her own good. “For all her warmth, love and the maternal thing, the same demons that were inside her when she had her breakdown were still there,” he said.
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Rosemary’s autobiography had always been potential film material and in 1982, it formed the basis for
The Rosemary Clooney Story
, which aired on CBS-TV on December 8. Sondra Locke, who played the part of Rosemary, had won great acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for her role in
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
in 1968. Merv Griffin played a critical role in getting Locke to take the part and had been the one who introduced her to Rosemary. The chemistry between Rosemary and Locke was good, even to the point that the actress became acquainted with Dr. Monke, Rosemary’s therapist. “I trusted Sondra so I knew it would be all right,” Rosemary said in an appearance on Griffin’s show.
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During the filming, Rosemary made only one 40-minute visit to the set, recounting the strangeness of seeing someone else wearing the costume that she had worn in
Red Garters
almost 30 years before. Rosemary also provided all the vocals for the movie, to which Locke lip-synced, an experience that both found challenging. For scenes featuring the early days of the Clooney Sisters, Rosemary needed to record vocals for both her own and Betty’s voice, with a harmony between
the “two” voices. Michael Feinstein recalled being at the session when Rosemary needed to duet with herself on “Hawaiian War Chant.” It was something, he said, that took much lengthier preparation than a normal Clooney vocal performance. The ghost of Betty, the more natural harmony singer, was still there.

Allen Sviridoff had been enthusiastic about the exposure that the film would bring to his new charge, as was Rosemary. “At the time, she was thrilled to have an income and the attention from it,” he said. Artistically, though, the film did little more than prove the old adage that any publicity is good publicity. “Poor script, poor cast, mediocre director,” was Sviridoff’s summation of the production, although Rosemary’s singing, he said, was “perfection—as usual.”
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John O’Connor in the
New York Times
agreed. “An irritating example of the kind of television biography that seems to be revealing a lot but is really carefully vague,” he wrote. “The film portrays many of the basic facts about Miss Clooney’s life but it shies away from making crucial connections or exploring sensitive motivations. Too much of the time Miss Locke is left looking like a mildly confused zombie. Miss Clooney is far more interesting than that. She’s a seasoned and classy woman who has paid her dues, on all fronts.”
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Spurred on by the publicity around the film, however, Rosemary pursued a busy schedule through the winter of 1982, her
New 4 Girls 4
commitments mixed in with solo spots and another return to London for some TV and radio appearances. In terms of impact,
New 4 Girls 4
had picked up where its predecessor had left off. When the girls played several dates in Florida in the spring of 1982,
Variety
said the show was “striking for its musicality.”
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Clooney’s reviews were consistently good, her rendition of “Come in from the Rain” from the
With Love
album stopping the show, although it was the newcomer Martha Raye who was now winning the biggest ovation. While Starr, O’Connell, and Clooney were all at pains to retain a contemporary feel to their material, Raye felt no such need. “The old routines still work,” said
Variety
.
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The new act played its way through 1982 but by the end of the year, Martha Raye had left. Audiences had loved her outrageous brand of humor, but before long, she too found one member of the foursome hard to bear. “How the hell could you stand that Helen O’Connell?” Raye said to Rose Marie when their paths crossed some time later. Comedienne and singer, Kaye Ballard became her regular replacement.

Meanwhile, Sviridoff’s strategy for promoting Rosemary Clooney in her own right was beginning to pay dividends. May 6 had seen her in Cincinnati, celebrating “Rosemary Clooney Day” with a 50-minute concert for an audience of over 5,000 at the Serpentine Wall. A solo spot at Charley’s in Washington, DC, was followed by an East Coast tour with Tony Bennett. More and
more of Rosemary’s bookings now had an overt jazz context about them. In June 1983, she teamed up uncomfortably with Mel Tormé for
A Salute to the Swing Era
at the Kool Jazz Festival in New York. When she declined Tormé’s suggestion that the two of them should combine for a medley he had written (“Mel’s medleys are only about Mel,” she told Sviridoff), it put her manager in the firing line for a stream of abuse from Tormé, whose self-centered performance dominated John S. Wilson’s review in the
New York Times
. He reserved his positives, however, for Rosemary. “In the ease and flow of her performance,” he said “she showed how successfully she has made the transition from the pop world to a subtle jazz interpretation.”
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August found her playing the Hollywood Bowl with Lionel Hampton and Les Brown and his Band of Renown, followed three days later by an appearance at the Concord Jazz Festival with the Woody Herman Band. When Jack Hawn of the
Los Angeles Times
tracked her down ahead of the Bowl appearance, she outlined her autumn schedule. First was another album for Concord, then it was off to Japan for three concerts, then Toronto, San Francisco, and England in November, followed by Louisville and San José for the New Year. It was an ambitious schedule for a 55-year-old grandmother, Hawn noted, and one perhaps that contained a hint of danger? Her rebuttal of the risk was firm. “This might be the favorite period of my life,” she told him. “It seems as if all my life experiences have come together for the better. It is very fulfilling.”
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Rosemary’s second career was now in full flow and with it, she was building an artistic reputation that would far exceed anything that she had achieved before. Her part in
New 4 Girls 4
was, however, becoming a distraction. The group had served its purpose, replenishing her coffers and allowing time and space to rebuild her stage presence. Her last appearance came in Philadelphia at the end of July 1983. In a strange twist, Margaret Whiting returned to replace Rosemary. In time, there were more changes of personnel, the act even becoming
3 Girls 3
for a time, and it continued in various forms until the end of the decade. But for Rosemary, it was 1949 all over again. It was time to go solo.

A
fter varying her Concord theme for the
With Love
album, Rosemary resumed her songbook series by shifting the focus to two more songwriters. The subjects were Cole Porter and Harold Arlen, both of whom she had known personally. Her songbook series began to draw comparisons with Ella Fitzgerald’s Verve songbooks from the late 1950s, although the two sets were different, both in concept and execution. Ella’s work had been about cataloging the output of the great songsmiths. Recorded mainly as double albums, they had been extensive, offering 30 or more titles from each writer’s portfolio, relying on the then-new microgroove technology to squeeze them onto two vinyl discs. Although known best for her jazz improvisation and scat singing, Ella had sung the songs just as they had been written. The albums were, said critic Gary Giddins, more about establishing the reputations of the songwriters than showcasing Ella’s interpretation of them.
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In contrast, Rosemary’s songbook offerings were personal snapshots. Until CDs replaced vinyl discs in the 1990s, none of the albums exceeded 10 songs, all of them selected because of some meaning or personal significance that they held.
Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Cole Porter
was recorded in January 1982. Porter had been Rosemary’s father’s favorite songwriter. She and Porter had met during the ’50s when their paths had crossed on the movie party circuit. “Very bright, very elegant, a nice man,” was her summation of him in a 1991 interview,
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despite her recollection of having been admonished by him for switching seating plans to suit her preferences at one such party. She was less kind about his songs. “He must not have liked singers,” she told Charles Grodin in 1995 “because he gives you nowhere to breathe.”
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On another occasion, she echoed an
oft-quoted Ella Fitzgerald remark that Porter’s penchant for catalog songs was like “singing a laundry list.”
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Reviewing the album, John S. Wilson in the
New York Times
, was more enthusiastic about the musicians’ performances than Rosemary’s vocals but nevertheless ranked the album highly. “She may be a little shaky in the upper register but it’s the spirit and the phrasing and the sensitivity to her surroundings that make this record an appealing example of unselfconscious jazz singing,” he wrote.
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Not everyone regarded the reborn Rosemary as a jazz singer. It was a debate that would extend through and beyond the remaining 20 years of her life.
Downbeat
had been one of the first journals to raise the issue in its review of two of her early Concord albums in 1979. The idea of pop singers working with jazz bands was not new, said the magazine, but it was “risky.” Rosemary, it said, had been best known as “a vendor of trifling ditties,” and

the major part of her one time following was not likely to be keyed in on the activities of a small independent jazz label, and especially one with limited advertising. However, jazz purists, despite their common disdain for show biz successes, have usually encouraged the defection of re-born artists from the enemy camp, providing those artists are able to demonstrate sufficient sincerity, talent, and adaptability. There is no doubt that Rosie possesses all of these characteristics. What is more, by simply being herself she neatly avoids the pitfalls awaiting so many other aspiring jazz singers, particularly those hopefuls who seek acceptance through the emulation of their betters. Rosie sings the only way she knows how, and if that fresh, all-American charm that was once so winning has now taken on an additional maturity, it makes her jazz singing that much more of a treat.
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Others, however, were less prepared to admit Rosemary to the jazz singers’ emporium. Singer Anita O’Day was a self-appointed gatekeeper to the tent and her definition of the jazz strike zone was much smaller than
Downbeat
’s. “I’d say she was the best ballad singer ever,” she said. “She’s so precise and understandable and she sings a good melody. I do just the opposite—I fight the melody. That’s called jazz, that’s called improvising on the chord so it’s a different style. But she stays on the melody. I can’t stand singers who sing the melody, but I can stand Rosemary Clooney.”
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Carmen McRae was another for whom jazz singing began and ended with the ability to improvise. “You know they call Rosemary Clooney a jazz singer,” she told
Downbeat
in 1991. “This woman never improvised in her life. She sings a song exactly the way it’s written.”
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O’Day’s and McRae’s assessments were close to Rosemary’s own positioning of her style. “I don’t do anything that’s absolutely inventive,” she said in an interview with the
New York Times
.
“I don’t do the kinds of things that Ella Fitzgerald does, or Carmen McRae, or Sarah Vaughan, the kinds of people that take a melodic line and absolutely change it within the chord structure to a different thing. I don’t have those kinds of talents. I have good interpretive sense. I sing in tune and I have good time and I enjoy singing with good musicians. Probably that’s as close to jazz as I’ll ever get.”
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In a radio interview a few months later, she added an important rider. “I feel as though I’m the only one with the words, so I should be tending to that,” she said.
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Rosemary’s positioning never varied. Recording a duet with her for his
Pure Imagination
album in 1989, Michael Feinstein attempted to move her onto a different plane. The session, he said, was not going well, in part because Rosemary herself seemed out of sorts. To try and create a spark of effervescence, Feinstein suggested a scat routine over one of the instrumental breaks. Rosemary refused point blank. “Momma don’t scat,” she barked. When the producer finally settled on a take, it was Feinstein who did the scatting. Rosemary sang a lyrical counterpoint that deviated not an inch from the composer’s melody.
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Jazz critic Leonard Feather dismissed the debate about Rosemary’s jazz credentials as an irrelevance. “Whether or not Rosemary is a jazz singer seems to me entirely unimportant,” he wrote in his sleeve note to her
Cole Porter
album. “What does matter is that given a jazz setting, she seems completely at ease and her performance is substantially enhanced.”
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Guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli shared Feather’s view. “She was a master at singing the melody,” he said, but was also capable of mixing things up to “play the room” where she was working. “The label doesn’t mean anything.”
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Cornetist Warren Vaché was similarly dismissive. “The kind of thing old men debate,” he said when asked if he considered Rosemary a jazz singer. “Just because she had the brains and the ability to do ‘Mambo Italiano’ doesn’t make her any less of a jazz singer. Everybody has to eat.”
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