I remember being in Chicago back in the day, listening to an FM rock station. After a bevy of alternative rock, the DJ suddenly put on the Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. At the art store where I worked, one of the young hipsters immediately yelled, "Tchaikovsky!" and began conducting with her hands. I'll never forget that moment. We had gone from, say, Throwing Muses to Tchaikovsky, and I remember thinking: How cool was that? Here was music making its own case. It didn't plead. It didn't demand. In its own way, it rocked. And then, after that glorious interlude, it was back to alternative rock. The funny thing was that the classical piece had not seemed out of place. It held its own. It brought to the table its own heft, its own weight. It wasn't preachy. It wasn't better than. It was simply another fiber in the fabric of the day. And maybe that's the way great music should be heard. Not fenced off by genre. Not placed behind glass. Not approa...
After the happy energy of Souls of Mischief’s signature tune, another song kept banging around in my head. And on a radio station where the only rule is what’s flowing out of my head, I submitted.
Jill Barber’s “Petite Fleur” is that piece of music demanding that I put it on From Andromeda And Back Radio.
In its own way, it has some of the happy feeling of “93 ’Til Infinity,” but it is more seductive. Sly, even. Barber’s creamy vocals caress every contour of the piece, and its joyful swing needs no translation from French to English, so glorious is her styling.
This song has a history.
The great saxophonist Sidney Bechet wrote “Petite Fleur” in 1952 in France. He had entered the great late period of his career—he died in 1959—finding not only artistic success in a country that valued jazz highly, but considerable commercial success as well. His “Petite Fleur” became an international hit and has been a standard ever since.
Now, there are volumes one could write about Sidney Bechet. After all, he played with Ellington and Armstrong, among others, and was extolled by classical and jazz masters alike for his soloing genius. But I’ll leave the deeper excavations to the musical experts.
Suffice it to say that this is a song that immediately confronts the ear as a friend. Its melody, once heard, takes up happy residence in the head.
Jill Barber, a Canadian artist, is a magnificent stylist, and her album Chansons, from which “Petite Fleur” is taken, is filled with delights. This collection of French-language songs goes down like fine French wine.
Barber possesses that great gift of transportation.
In her hands, and with her excellent ensemble, you can feel France—well, Paris—emotionally, as a landscape of romance and possibility. Hearing this dreamy work, I want to go café-hopping, see the reflections of lost loves in windowpanes, and think about what was and, more importantly, what is still possible.
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