Prostrate at the altar that is the clarinet break found in Artie Shaw’s version I waited for after Helen Forrest’s very lovely vocal.
When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls,
And the stars begin to flicker in the sky.
Through the mist of a memory, you wander back to me
Breathing my name with a sigh.
The tune, which sounds in this Paul Whiteman treatment like something George Gershwin might have been proud to have written, was introduced in quasi-classical fashion by Whiteman as an instrumental in 1934. Words came later.
I’m not keen on Earl Bostic’s version from the 50s although as knockabout get the party started fare why not, buster? But there are worse versions. And let’s draw a discreet veil over Donny and Marie Osmond‘s put out in the 1970s. Yuk.
I much prefer instead Bea Wain’s vocal, previous, previous, previous, on Larry Clinton’s hit 1939 version from further back. Wain made her debut on radio as a 6 year old and lived to be 100. She passed away in 2017.
And yet the song is as much a clarinet player’s dream record as a song you come to for the vocal. So go hear Buddy DeFranco’s stirring version and perhaps you will agree with me.
But that view is eventually superceded when eventually you find, if you do go down the rabbit hole enough in exploratory fashion, the pre-eminent word on the song sung by Sarah Vaughan on Vaughan With Voices. It’s a 1964 studio affair produced by Quincy Jones recorded in Copenhagen that found Sassy accompanied by the Svend-Saaby Danish Choir, Vaughan’s only album arranged by Robert Farnon. Pick your jaw up off the floor. You’ll need it to mouth those words of Mitchell Parish’s again: In the still of the night once again I hold you tight, Though you’re gone, your love lives on when moonlight beams. And as long as my heart will beat, lover we’ll always meet, here in my deep purple dreams.