I know that I don't need to offer justifications for the inclusion or exclusion of songs, but it's a matter of interest for me. For a long time, I've been intrigued by the 'crossover' or similarities which can occur in country, blues and ultimately jazz songs. I guess Patsy Cline was the one who started it for me when she sang almost torchy numbers like Crazy, I fall to pieces or '3 Cigarettes in an Ashtray' with throbbing emotion in her voice. The level of 'pain' or feeling was on par with an Ella number, or a tortured Sarah Vaughan song. The emotional level was all there, and the songs are all about that rotten man having done that woman wrong. The two go hand in hand, like peas in a pod, like birds of a feather and all that jazz.
There are distinct similarities between say the old torch number Black Coffee and Trisha Yearwood's song Woman walk the line. In Black Coffee the woman bemoans how
"a man is born to go a lovin',
a woman's born to weep and fret;
To stay at home and tend her lovin'
And drown her past regrets
in coffee and cigarettes."
In Woman Walk the Line, the wronged woman is singing at the man who's giving her the eye as she sits alone in a bar singing about the fact that even though she's lonely and her man is out doing her wrong, it doesn't mean that she wants the company of this particular lush.
If you listen to Shania Twain singing If you're not in it for love (I'm outta here) - I'm talking about the album version not the boppy, dancey radio version - maybe you'll understand what I mean. First of all, there's that Voice. It's pure seduction and promise. Then there's that hypnotically measured, steady beat and timing - then come the words. It's the same with No one needs to know. There's that steady pulse again, and that effortless diction and sensual quality to the voice. It's that that defines the essence of music like jazz and country.
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This page was last updated 1 July 1997, sometime in the evening.