`An Airy, Elusive Quality'

Thanks to Levi Stahl, the Mills Brothers’ version of “Paper Doll” has been lilting in my head for a week. For readers unfamiliar with the singers and song, I’ll turn it over to Gary Giddins:

“Their biggest hit, the weirdly fetishist `Paper Doll,’ was the third biggest hit of the ‘40s, after `White Christmas’ and `Rudolf, the Red Nosed Reindeer’…They had velvety voices, impeccable diction, dreamy harmonies, supple time, and – especially in their early, more jazz-oriented years – a remarkable gimmick: they imitated instruments (trumpet, trombone, sax, tuba) so well that they subtitled their act Four Boys and a Guitar to stress the cleverness of their mimicry. When they muted their vocal brass effects, their riffs suggested the Ellington band. But straight as they were honest, they allowed their later work to be subsumed in a blandness that bespoke too many chic nightclubs and hacked-out arrangements.”

There’s some justice in the harshness of Giddins’ final judgment. If you listen to the Mills Brothers’ hits chronologically, from the early thirties to the late sixties, you’ll notice the spareness of the arrangements, emphasizing the virtuosity of the brothers’ voices, giving way to over-production. Some of the late recordings with Count Basie’s orchestra are tight and swinging but their last big hit, “Cab Driver” from 1968, is arranged like lounge music. Their voices, still strong and smooth, are drowned in schmaltz.

Levi inspired me to find a copy of The Mills Brother Story, a video documentary from 1986 built around a 1981 concert in Copenhagen. The vintage films are the best, including a black-and-white short (a sort of early music video) of the brothers singing “Paper Doll.” One of them sits apart, staring at a picture of Dorothy Dandridge. He cuts it out with scissors and she comes alive dancing, surrounded by the kneeling brothers who look as though they’re shooting craps. It’s hokey but wonderful and, as Giddins says of the song, “weirdly fetishist.”

In an interview, the brothers mention that “Paper Doll” was originally a B-side of “I’ll Be Around,” Alec Wilder’s gorgeous standard – a surprise to me. “Paper Doll” is irresistible fluff, impossible to imagine without the Mills Brothers; “I’ll Be Around,” from 1942, is wispily powerful and haunting. Here’s what Whitney Balliett wrote of it and Wilder’s other standards, including “It’s So Peaceful in the Country” and “While We’re Young”:

“His songs have an airy, elusive quality quite unlike that of any other American songwriter. The melodic lines flicker and turn unexpectedly, moving through surprising intervals and using rhythm in a purposeful, agile, jazz-based manner. The songs have a sequestered, intense gentleness, a subtle longing for what was and what might have been that eludes most ears and that demands singers of the rank of Mabel Mercer and Frank Sinatra and Mildred Bailey and Blossom Dearie.”

I’m unable to locate Wilder’s assessment of the Mill Brothers’ version of “I’ll Be Around,” even in Desmond Stone’s Alec Wilder in Spite of Himself: A Life of the Composer. The brothers and Sinatra both recorded the song in 1943, and Sinatra rerecorded it in 1955 for inclusion on In the Wee Small Hours. Stone reports the title of the song came to Wilder first, while he was riding in a cab in Baltimore. Several days later he found the words on a crumpled envelope and composed the song in 20 minutes, though the lyrics took longer. Stone writes:

“Here again, in `I’ll Be Around’ the melodic line is smooth and strong [like the Mills Brothers' vocal technique], and the leaping intervals have no trace of awkwardness. The song also shows Wilder’s penchant for working always a little off center, always a step or two away from the trodden path.”

In American Popular Song (1972), co-written with James T. Maher, Wilder writes of Irving Berlin’s “It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow” and Harold Arlen’s “My Shining Hour”: “I should like to add here that I find the latter touches me more profoundly. I believe that both songs eminently achieve the objective of, let us say, sexless innocence and distilled simplicity.”

The same can be said of “I’ll Be Around.” What I love about the song is its bitter-sweetness (hardly unusual in popular music) and understatement (almost nonexistent). Balliett said Wilder’s songs “form a parallel oeuvre – brainier, more original – to the songs of Gershwin and Berlin and Rodgers and Arlen.” That’s an audacious claim but to my taste an accurate one, just as the recordings of the Mills Brothers create a “parallel oeuvre” often superior to that of Billie Holiday and other highly touted jazz singers.