"Blue Melody" is a short story by J. D. Salinger, first published in the September 1948 issue of Cosmopolitan. The tragic tale of an African-American jazz singer, the story was inspired by the life of Bessie Smith and was originally titled "Scratchy Needle on a Phonograph Record." Cosmopolitan changed the title to "Blue Melody" without Salinger's consent, a "slick" magazine tactic that was one of the reasons the author decided, in the late forties, that "he wanted to publish only in The New Yorker."
Famous quotes containing the words blue and/or melody:
“Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.”
—Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)
“A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)