SKYLARK

It's hot again. Do the Right Thing hot. Outside of boycotting Sal's Pizzeria, I can think of no better thing to do right now than crack open a beer and play the Herbie Mann album I picked up the other day — which I stumbled upon by chance. I just liked the elegant cover, I guess.

Anyway, believe me when I say I don't like accordion, but for some reason it really works in Mann's quartet here. Mat Matthew brings something effortlessly cool to the proceedings with his playing of the old squeeze box — especially on the beautiful version of Hoagy Carmichael's Skylark (a longtime favourite song of mine).

Skylark
Have you anything to say to me?
Won't you tell me where my love can be?
Is there a meadow in the mist
Where someone's waiting to be kissed?

Oh skylark
Have you seen a valley green with spring?
Where my heart can go a journeying
Over the shadows and the rain
To a blossom covered lane

And in your lonely flight
Haven't you heard the music in the night?
Wonderful music
Faint as a will o' the wisp
Crazy as a loon
Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon

Skylark’ is the Tin Pan Alley equivalient of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending — swooping and hovering melodically like the songbird itself. I’ve always thought it must be a tricky song to sing (credit to Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, and Kevin Mahogany, who all deliver great versions), and seems especially suited for an instrumentalist to play with, given its carefree melody.

Certainly, sitting in the shade right now, it's providing a most welcome soundtrack to the stultifying heat as I become a beer-sipping statue, blissfully immovable in this perfect (if slightly 'warm') moment.