Blue Melody

"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:

    There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
    As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
    They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.
    There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
    Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
    They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality....
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.
    Irving Berlin (1888–1989)