Success Abroad
After recording sporadically through the late 1950s and 1960s, Merrill spent much of her time touring Europe, where she enjoyed more commercial success than she had in the United States. She settled for a time in Italy, recording an album there and doing live concerts with jazz notables Chet Baker, Romano Mussolini, and Stan Getz.
Parole e Musica: Words and Music was recorded in Italy in the early 1960s while Merrill was living there. The LP features the unusual additions preceding each song, of spoken translations of eloquent Italian word lyrics, complementing the ballads and torch songs. The album has an atmospheric edge in the style of a street busker, provided by a solo musician backing up Merrill's performance, which is brooding, smoky, increasingly foreboding, regretful, mournful, desolate, and finally, melancholy yet hopeful. Included on the album is the iconic song on track 4 Why Don't You Do Right?, made famous to modern audiences in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, memorably performed by the animated character Jessica Rabbitt. The many standard songs are elevated to classic status by Merrill’s perfect phrasing, sublime high notes, and emotionally flawless renditions.
Merrill returned to the U.S. in the 1960s, but moved to Japan in 1967 after touring there. Merrill developed a following in Japan that remains strong to this day. In addition to recording while in Japan, Merrill became involved in other aspects of the music industry, producing albums for Trio Records and hosting a show on a Tokyo radio station.
Read more about this topic: Helen Merrill
Famous quotes containing the word success:
“Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentiment in mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the selfishness that is bred of great success is our shame. We have subdued the wilderness and made it ours. We have conquered the earth and the richness thereof. We have indelibly stamped upon its face the seal of our dominating will. Now, unlike Alexander sighing for more worlds to conquer, we should address ourselves to adding beauty to that glory and grandeur.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)