The Written Word
for October 20, 1999

I have a theory about aging. I believe it can be postponed until death if you follow one basic principle … always be very concerned about what’s going to happen long after you’re gone. If you don’t, the closer you get to your own final day, the grumpier you get about what you see happening around you … the movies, the TV, the books and so on. For me it works very well and I don’t feel anything near as old as my driver’s licence says I am.

The thing that tests the faith, however, is the obituary column. Each death of a contemporary jolts me but there was one reported yesterday which shook hell out of me and I’m not sure why.

My music days take me back to swing … Glen Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and so on. But those were in my very early teen years during World War II. My actual falling-in-love-every-other-day teen years were right after the war and it was during sort of an interregnum between the big bands and the smaller groups like the Kingston Trio of the sisties and Rock and Roll which really started to take off at the end of the 50s. (To sustain me throughout this in between period and right to today, of course, was Nat "King" Cole but he’s a story in himself.)

During this era of my late teens there was a perky little singer out of Texas who made a string of hits in a short period. But the one that really set her flying was a boogie woogie called "The House of Blue Lights" with a former Tommy Dorsey pianist named Freddy Slack. He also played piano for the Will Bradley Trio that did that other great boogie woogie "Down The Road Apiece" which Ella Mae later put out as "A Little Further Down The Road Apiece"

Ella Mae had other pretty big hits – Cow Cow Boogie (shared with the other and much greater Ella, Ella Fitzgerald) Mr Five By Five, Pig Foot Pete and Black Coffee. But her biggest hit was in 1952 with Blacksmith Blues.

This was an interesting era because Black Music (indelicately recorded as "Race" in Billboard and Downbeat Magazines of that date) was just coming into its own. A fellow name Wynonie Harris had a hit called "Good Rockin’ Tonight in the late forties and Louis Jordam and his Tympany Five were doing pre rock stuff. His music made a comeback in the late 80s and early 90s on the London and New York Stages in a musical called Five Guys Named Moe – and wonderful entertainment it was.

Ella Mae Morse bridged this ever narrowing gap between swing and rock and roll to the point that most didn’t know whether she was black or white (she was the latter).

In any event, Rock and Roll came and stayed. Elvis was the big hit starting in 1956 ironically enough, by singing on the Dorsey Brothers TV show. A lot of performers and their music were shunted aside. The quartets like the aforesaid Kingston Trio, The Lamplighers, the Crew Cuts, the Four Lads and so many like them vanished into obscurity. The big bands disappeared off the screen though Woody Herman kept putting together "Herds" and Duke Ellington kept going as if he hadn’t noticed and I don’t think he did. The real Ella and Sarah Vaughn sang on but they were just occasional breaths of fresh air to those of us who would have cheerfully endured a never ending blackout if it meant the end of the electric guitar.

Ella Mae Morse popped up occasionally … a DJ would for some reason play something new by her but her era had gone.

Now she’s gone too – dead at 75.

And for just an instant, I forgot my rule for staying young and I shed a silent tear.