Susannah McCorkle: I Don't Think I'll End It All Today
Track
I Don't Think I'll End It All Today
Artist
Susannah McCorkle (vocals)
CD
From Broadway to Bebop (Concord Jazz CCD 4615-2)
Musicians:
Susannah McCorkle (vocals),
Dick Oatts (alto sax), Allen Farnham (piano), Frank Vignola (guitar), Kiyoshi Kitagawa (bass), Richard de Rosa (drums)
.Composed by Harold Arlen & E.Y. “Yip” Harburg
.Recorded: New York, April 20-22, 1994
Rating: 94/100 (learn more)
After Billie Holliday pondered joining a dead lover in "Gloomy Sunday" (1941), an urban legend spread about melancholic listeners offing themselves. Since then, whenever other jazz singers have musically contemplated suicide, they've been more optimistic, as in this upbeat calypso first sung by Lena Horne in Broadway's Jamaica (1957), which cites "the world and its wonders" as reasons enough to stay alive. Susannah McCorkle's performance is thoroughly convincing. When she sings, "So many sweet dreams still to unfold," you hear hope in her voice. Seven years later, that hope was gone. A depressed McCorkle killed herself at 55. So many sweet dreams still to unfold.
Reviewer: Alan Kurtz
Tags: arlen covers
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