Calendar Girl (1956)

Even the cover art on this one—even the title, really—make it clear someone decided to market Julie London on her third album as a sex kitten, sultry and wanton. Sure, that’s already there in her singing style to some extent, which has range. But lay off the sledgehammer for pity’s sake. Unfortunately, the marketing conceit follows all the way into the musical arrangements, which feature horns, strings, and backup singers. Gone is the plain varnish of London’s voice backed only by soft electric guitar and bass. Whose idea was this? Calendar Girl is formally a concept LP, with one song each devoted to every month of the year (“June in January,” “February Brings the Rain,” “Melancholy March,” etc.), plus an extra, “Thirteenth Month,” to make a baker’s dozen. I don’t really know many of these songs, whose writers include Hoagy Carmichael, Arthur Hamilton, and many others. From my notes: ”’Sleigh Ride in July’ is a very bad Christmas song. ‘Time for August’ may be the most embarrassing sex kitten play of all.” The album is tainted by an unmistakable ‘50s style of upscale lounge music applied like frosting and it’s almost unlistenable to me for that. Yes, London’s singing and phrasing can be made out through the frippery, but these settings are so intrusive and repellent that it takes more work than worthwhile to get to them. I grabbed this up in the usual throes of a downloading frenzy, which is how it ended up on my list of albums to get to. Later research revealed for listeners like me that London’s second album, Lonely Girl (1956), and a follow-up to her first, Julie Is Her Name, Volume II (1958), are more like the obvious next steps after her first, done up very nicely much the same way. They all have the same producer too, Bobby Troup—even Calendar Girl. I don’t know what goes on there. And after that you’re on your own, because those three are plenty for me. I’m not one to listen to this kind of thing that much, for whatever reasons living in horrors of most popular music from the 1950s. Approach with caution. Trying to help you here.

Julie Is Her Name (1955)

More because I encountered people online who were high on Julie London in the era of the D/L, and less because she had once been the wife of Jack Webb, but maybe a little of both, I came to be a fan of Julie London several years after her death in 2000. Oh, I knew the Arthur Hamilton chestnut from the 1950s, “Cry Me a River,” which opens the festivities here. But I associated it with Barbra Streisand, Joe Cocker, and such. You ought to hear Julie London’s version. Her debut LP is about as good as I’ve heard her. “Cry Me a River” was her only hit (#9 in 1955) but it sets the tone for this whole album and baker’s dozen package: a bass that softly grounds it (Ray Leatherwood), an electric guitar played low and gentle (Barney Kessel), and London’s vocal, approximately one notch above bruised murmur but exquisitely competent at these hushed levels. Credit to producer Bobby Troup for reining it all in so assiduously, and to London even more for delivering the goods. Julie Is Her Name smolders with contained power—it has it, it doesn’t have to wield it, you can feel it in every phrase. It’s the less-is-more idea in action. “Gone With the Wind,” the album closer, finishes it exactly right. Written by Allie Wrubel and Herb Magidson in 1937, the song has nothing to do with either the movie or the novel, except it was written the year after the blockbuster novel came out, so just saying. But London’s version makes it a bon voyage, sending us off with all the breezy essence of the album. It feels like she’s waving from the deck of a departing ocean liner. The album recedes into the horizon. In between “Cry Me a River” and “Gone With the Wind” there are four songs under 2:00 and covers of standards by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Jimmy Dorsey, and more. “It Never Entered My Mind,” a Rodgers & Hart tune the internet seems to think is a Miles Davis song, gets a particularly nice treatment here. In fact, it’s been playing a lot in my head lately, when I wake up or do the dishes or anytime. Earworms are only bad when you fight them. Inspirational line (from “Easy Street”): “Just lie around all day, just sit and play the horses.”

"To Build a Fire" (1908)

Read story by Jack London online.

One of the happy surprises I've had on this short story project is discovering how much I like the nature stories, "man vs. nature," as the English teachers explained it. This is one of the best yet. It's among London's best-known and most anthologized stories, but it's not the first one he wrote under the title. There's also a 1902 version, which I don't know. The premise is simple. The setting is the far north regions of North America. We never learn the name of our hero, who is trekking with a dog across wilderness to reach a camp by day's end. It's extremely cold—50 below zero F. or colder, our hero speculates, but at one point the third-person narrator who mostly stays inside the head of our guy steps out for a few beats to let us know it is actually 75 below. That's cold. The hiker keeps his lunch under his layers of clothes next to his chest and belly to keep it from freezing hard. He thinks occasionally about an old-timer who warned him never to travel alone in weather colder than 50 below. He knows he is taking a risk but feels confident. He has experience and knows the dangers. But this is not a story that ends well, and the power of it is all descriptive and rhythmic. London sets out all the basic elements and shows how the situation can naturally if unexpectedly grow worse. Then he shows what happens next. The last few pages are vivid and even hard to read. I had to take a couple of breaks to compose myself. Jim Thompson has written in similarly strong ways about claustrophobic experience. Here it is nearly unimaginable cold. I have experienced near 40-below temperatures, and certainly know well the kinds of things that happen at 20 below. Seeing the man attempting to deal with a drenched leg as the result of stepping in a hidden pool (a natural feature in the region) is extraordinarily intense, especially the more you see how skilled the man is even as he steadily loses to the elements. I know from The Call of the Wild how good London can be with animals, and the dog here and its relationship with the man are nearly equal to that again. The story is sustained entirely by description and long, blocky paragraphs (which you know I have to love), with no relief from dialogue. Yet it sets and maintains a powerful rhythm, as it moves from the start, with the man's thoughts of his lunch and getting back to camp that evening, to the awful events that descend on him, one at a time.

Library of America Story of the Week (Library of America)

The Call of the Wild (1903)

Have to say that I have really come to appreciate this Yukon by way of West Coast tale of the big dog Buck and his destiny—or make that "destiny," as some little use of scare quotes is appropriate under the circumstances. There's some wrong-ways understanding of evolution and a whole lotta anthropomorphizin'  goin' on. And though it is a story about a dog, and thus emotion bait for a certain strain of animal lover that includes me, it is also much more than a story about a dog. All human frailties are on display—greed, lust, cruelty, gluttony, etc., etc.—and the animals don't always come off looking so good either. Events unfold in this short novel with the feel of raw life, and are often vividly felt. But until the very end, after all the humans have left, and only after they have left, it's the humans' world and the dogs just live in it. That's a reasonable point of view. Yet even as the softening humanizing goes on, there is also a very effective kneecap-high point of view of the necessarily subservient dog, surviving. All the people who cross Buck's path, essentially random names and voices and behavior, come to define themselves within view of him. Buck is also an interesting case because he is a bit of a superhero and yet remains sympathetic. The noble beast and all that of course open to clichéd familiarity, but Jack London somehow makes it work. In many ways the huffing guff about ancient memories awaked and whatnot actually works for the sake of the dog—who, one senses, wants it made clear that he's not the one going on in such veins, it's rather the author of the tome. Thus we are put so far into the dog's head. Another thing London is good at is animalness, as when he describes Buck enjoying the sensation of warm blood on his gums from fresh kill. Yeah, must say—sounds like animal stuff to me!

In case it's not at the library.