Thursday, April 29, 2004
EGA reports that she saw Laura Cantrell the other night, and that she covered "Hong Kong Blues," a song that served as a lullaby in our household for many years. You don't hear "Hong Kong Blues" too often-- it isn't even all that easy to find a recording of it (although through the magic of the World Wide Interweb I now know that George Harrison covered it). Together with "For You", and Reelin' in the Years" and a few others it is an anthem for me, and I really want to hear Ms. Cantrell's version. An even better Hoagy Carmichael song for her, in my opinion, would be the even more rare "How Little We Know." Legend has it that Lauren Bacall's vocal in "To Have and Have Not" was dubbed by the pre-adolescent Andy Williams, which I have always thought sounded improbable. (The preadolescent nobody ever sounded like Lauren Bacall.) Whatever the truth may be, that version is next to impossible to find-- if I wanted to find it, I'd have to look on the Hoagy side I found in Japan, and that is in Northampton for some reason. The only other version I am aware of is the late, great Susannah McCorkle's. Perhaps Ms. Cantrell could even find a way to include the "lost" lyric: "I run for the telephone, whenever it rings..."
// posted by Bill @ 5:38 PM 
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