I need that song and I need it now – Addendum

In those days prior to Shazam, or in fact the internet in general, there was no easy way to work out exactly which album a particular song that you heard on the radio was located on. When you listened to radio stations such as 3RRR, which often played quite obscure songs, unless you caught the back announcement, you could be left completely in the dark as to what the amazing song you just heard actually was. Feelings of “I need to hear that again now” would often go completely unfulfilled. One morning, circa mid to late-80s, while driving in to uni, I heard a fabulous version of I Can’t Give You Anything But Love sung by Ella Fitzgerald. I knew the song and I knew some of Ella’s material, but this version had me marvelling at the true genius of the great woman. After singing the first verse or two in her own luxurious voice, she proceeded to sing the next in the voice of Marilyn Monroe, expertly mimicking her tone and word enunciation. I was spellbound, but what came next just lifted me into the stratosphere. For the final part of the song, Ella sang in the voice and style of Louis Armstrong, so expertly that you could have sworn that it was a duet. I thought it was one of the most amazing things that I’d ever heard and so began my quest to find the album on which this song resided. I didn’t really know anybody who was into this sort of music to ask and so just started looking in record shops, mostly of the second-hand variety. It became a ritual. Newly found second-hand record shop, flick through the jazz albums under F to see if it was there. I saw loads of Fitzgerald albums, but couldn’t find one that had this particular song. After a couple of unsuccessful years, I was wondering if my quest would be forever fruitless.

In 1989, I had my first trip to California. An eleven week work related training jaunt on full expenses, complete with a car and comfortable serviced apartment at the Residence Inn. It was a pretty deluxe intro to the US. And a new abundance of second-hand record stores in which to search. On flicking through the records hopefully in one such store, there it was. Ella Fitzgerald Live. Track 12. Paydirt! I was so excited and rushed to the counter to purchase it, sharing the story of my long quest to the bemused record shop owner. He could understand my passion and we had a bit of a chat about all things Ella. I took the album excitedly back to my temporary abode knowing that I had a couple of months to go before I’d be back home and have the opportunity to slip it on to my turntable and fulfil my desire. But for now, I was just satisfied that at last it was in my possession.

1989 was also the year of a very large earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had been in a class in Santa Clara when it occurred and had the full adrenaline fuelled experience of feeling an entire building wobble around like a bowl of jelly. Quite exhilarating if you were naïve enough and didn’t have the images in your head of fallen down bridges, crushed cars and massive fires in the Marina district that all came to me later. On getting back to the Residence Inn, I found that the manager, Kelly, had purchased a whole lot of pizzas and beers for the guests to share, to help everybody absorb what had occurred that day. I spent a bit of time talking to her that evening and as a long term guest at the place, got to know her quite well over the coming weeks. As I was staying there over Halloween, she invited me to come to a Halloween party with her and her friends; an invitation which I gratefully accepted. When she came to pick me up on that evening from my apartment, I invited her in for a pre-party drink and we comfortably chatted about all sorts of things. I told her of my crazy quest for the Ella Fitzgerald song and the fact that amazingly I’d found it in a local record store in San Jose a week or so earlier. With that I brought over the album to show her and her face dropped. “This is my father’s record”, she said. “Errrghhhh… what?”, I think I probably replied, a bit stunned. “Look, that’s his name written in the top corner, in his handwriting”, she told me. And sure enough, the name "Mitchell" (I seem to recall), was handwritten at the top right, somewhat disfiguring the album cover in a manner of which I didn’t approve, but certainly identifying it undeniably in a unique way. He used to write his name at the top of all his albums she told me. His entire record collection had apparently been stolen as part of a break-in some months earlier and to make things worse, her father had died about a year ago. The records had been one of the only things the family had had as a reminder of his life and his passionate love of music, and that was now gone. This record that I had found in the second-hand store was the only one whose whereabouts were now known. “Can I please have it?” she asked. Well… FUCK! What to do? On the one hand, this emotional (and quite lovely) young woman was standing in front of me with pleading eyes. And on the other, I had searched high and low across the planet for this record and had only just found it. I hadn’t even had a chance to listen to it yet. So I said to her… in my own pleading way… “Kelly. You want this record as a reminder of your father. To put on a shelf so that you can look at it from time to time. And I understand that. But you don’t even want to listen to it. I, on the other hand, am desperate to listen to it. (I held back from saying, “as your father would have wanted”.) So, sorry, I can’t give it to you now. However, I know that I’ll be coming back to California at some stage, and I promise that I’ll bring it back with me then and you can have it then”. She seemed happy enough with this solution, but I guess, what else could she do? She was dealing with somebody who put their own insatiable need to hear a song above the sentimentality of a girl needing to be consoled about her recently dead father. Nevertheless, I knew that I would be good for my word, even if she was perhaps slightly unsure.

It took me two years to get back to California on another work sponsored trip, and I was indeed good for my word. I called up Kelly and presented her with the long lost album as a bit of a surprise, thinking that she would have expected me to have forgotten about my promise. She was rapt. And I felt very satisfied that it made her so happy. For me…well I knew that I would miss having this record in my collection. But at least in the previous two years, while the record was in my possession, I had managed to stumble across the song on CD. So, I too was rapt. And more than a bit relieved that my altruistic gesture wouldn’t deny me of a song that I truly truly needed.