Audiogrammes

Just one of those days.
Woke up with Mood Indigo in my head. Ella’s version. Couldn’t get up. Couldn’t move… Well maybe it was the 2h basketball session I had last night. Put me to sleep and destroyed me more than anything else I’ve had in the last few weeks.





If you want to hear another version of this Duke Ellington song you can always check out the Boswell sisters‘ (Blues all around my head…)





You ain’t been blue; no, no, no.
You ain’t been blue,
Till you’ve had that mood indigo.
That feelin’ goes stealin’ down to my shoes
While I sit and sigh, “Go ‘long blues”.

‘Cause there’s nobody who cares about me,
I’m just a soul who’s
bluer than blue can be.
When I get that mood indigo,
I could lay me down and die.


Gitanes Jazz is a series of compilation from the early nineties. Thematically organized, they introduced me to all sorts of tracks including Ella’s Mood indigo and Chet Baker’s Born To Be Blue. His voice just killed me. And then the looks… It was before I realized he played the trumpet and I saw him sitting behind the piano. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.





I guess I’m luckier than some folks
I’ve known the thrill of loving you
but that alone is more
than i was created for
’cause i was born to be blue


If you want a woman’s take on the same song, there’s always this Helen Merrill cover. But I’m slightly biased towards the first one.
Chet Baker had the kind of life you’d expect of him and wound up a total wreck of a junkie at the end of the eighties. If you have the time and the inclination, watch Let’s Get Lost on Youtube. If not, let’s continue with the blue theme. Chet also covered Elvis Costello’s Almost blue around that time of his life. I discovered this track very recently. His take is so much smoother than Costello’s. The original can’t help being spiteful. Sorry Elvis, that angry young man reputation isn’t wearing off and you’re 57!








Almost blue
Almost doing things we used to do
There’s a girl here and she’s almost you
Almost all the things that your eyes once promised
I see in hers too
Now your eyes are red from crying

Almost me
Almost you
Almost blue


Had enough of all this blue?
Sorry, there’s one last one for the road. We’re revealing the immaterial… Not….
Seriously now, we’ll go out with a bang: Tangled Up In Blue from one of the ultimate break-up albums, Blood On The Tracks.





We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in blue


Here’s the original New York Sessions version. Note the different lyrics. I feel he initially couldn’t sing it from his own point of view.
Last night, I was listening to Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright in a bar and told the person with me that listening to Bob made me cry. But I didn’t expect to have such an emotional morning…





People tell me it’s a sin
To know and feel too much within
I still believe she was my twin, but I lost the ring
She was born in spring, but I was born too late
Blame it on a simple twist of fate