“These are some of my favourite songs, and I’ve finally got around to recording them…Nothing gives me more pleasure than to look forward to performing this music, and with my favourite musicians!” says the 85 year-old Elaine Delmar, whose new album Speak Low (Ubuntu Music) has just been released, and who will be on tour in the next few weeks/ dates below.
Elaine Delmar says she recently unearthed a poster advertising the UK tour that she played support to in 1962 with American saxophonist Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley. Delmar isn’t overly sentimental about the past, but at 85, this consummately skilful, versatile and much-admired British vocalist and former actor is understandably reflecting a little more on the landmarks of a remarkable career – and touring in the early ’60s with a sax superstar from the iconic Kind of Blue Miles Davis recording was a very big deal. She sounds today as open and infectiously light-hearted as ever she has been, as she tells the story of her first new album in many years – Speak Low, a selection of classic song titles arranged by her favourite piano partners across five decades, and played by her current live band, which will launch and tour the music from this month to New Year.
‘It’s getting on for 20 years since I put out a couple of albums devoted to Cole Porter and George Gershwin, and of course I’ve often performed those wonderful songs on gigs and still do,’ Delmar says. ‘But in January 2023 I had booked a studio to record some things I’d been thinking about – including a lovely arrangement of “Speak Low” that the late great pianist John Taylor did for me, a version of “Tea For Two” that I’d never done before, and Fred Hersch’s “Stars” with words by Norma Winstone, which I was thrilled by when I heard it on her and Fred’s Songs and Lullabies album. But once it was all recorded and I had to think about putting it out, I thought to myself “I don’t know how to do this anymore”. Everything’s changed nowadays about how you get music out to the public. But then I was recommended to talk to Martin Hummel of Ubuntu, and he immediately said he wanted to do it. He was lovely, very positive, and I thought “well, I don’t know if I’ll ever do another one, so here goes”.
Humphrey Lyttelton once told his Radio 2 listeners that Delmar’s interpretations of standard songs ‘truly defines the word class’ – Speak Low’s dozen tracks gleam with confirmations of that. The opening “Stars” unfolds in Delmar’s hushed whisper, and gently builds with her surefooted ascents of the melody’s wide range and wistful long tones as the original does, with pianist Barry Green and bassist Simon Thorpe coaxing her at the song’s every turn, while respecting its invitations to silence and space on the way.
“It Might As Well Be Spring” (a tribute to now-retired former Delmar pianist Brian Dee) draws a suitably springy bounce from Green and guitar legend Jim Mullen, while “Don’t Sleep In The Subway” is one of several tracks on the set on which a hauntingly harmonised arrangement by Delmar’s 1970s piano soulmate Pat Smythe catches the moods of a woman navigating a couple’s restive waters between love, blinding pride, and fond hope. Smythe’s subtle imagination is also apparent on an exquisite setting for “Send In The Clowns”, the entranced, Latin-rippling “I Won’t Last A Day Without You”, and the closing “Yours Sincerely”, which spotlights Delmar’s skill and experience at making every sound and its lyrical meaning count. The late Bob Cornford’s slow-paced reimagining of “Tea for Two” and Delmar’s pacing gives that classic a sensual and wistful feel that’s rarely imparted to it, Andy Panayi makes a guest appearance on flute to do full justice to John Taylor’s version of “Speak Low”, and a hypnotically fragile “Close Your Eyes” captures the mutual empathy of the singer and long-time bassist Simon Thorpe (who also produced Speak Low) in a delicate duet.
Elaine Delmar makes light of the sensitivity, timing, and expressive range from a resonant rasp to dreamily floating upper tones that she brings to these much-travelled songs. She had grown used to holding the attention of audiences before she was out of her teens – on the road as a lead singer and cabaret partner with her famous bandleader and trumpeter dad Leslie ‘Jiver’ Hutchinson. Her natural musicality, receptiveness and onstage ease marked her out as a very rare gem in 1950s Britain – a young black rising star of both jazz vocals and cabaret – by the time her father tragically died in a road crash in 1959.
‘I was lucky with the opportunities I had,’ Delmar reflects. ‘As a kid, I did eleven years of classical piano training, all the grades, and I was quite talented I think, but lazy. There was a bus stop outside our house and I used to like opening my window and regaling the queue with Chopin nocturnes, I felt proud of myself doing that. There’s many things that people assume I know about music which I don’t know’ (‘and it’s getting a bit late now to learn them!’ she adds with her trademark hoot of laughter) ‘but the piano was good preparation, especially for harmony. From the age of 16, I was also doing a jokey father-and-daughter cabaret act with my dad in the northern working men’s clubs, and around then I started piano lessons with his pianist Colin Beaton, who taught me the Great American Songbook really.’
When her father died, his booking agent Vic Lewis encouraged Elaine to develop a solo singing career. It was a tough apprenticeship, but the newcomer was up for the challenge.
‘I regularly travelled alone to those working men’s club gigs, just me on trains with my luggage, and all the music parts, Delmar says. ‘You’d get up to Scunthorpe or Redcar or West Hartlepool or somewhere, go to your digs, go the venue and rehearse the local band, and often you’d stay up there for a week. It was often very lonely. You might spend hours in the cinema in the day, anywhere to while away the time. Then you’d get the milk train back to London in the small hours at the weekend, by which time I couldn’t wait to get home. As a woman travelling alone at night, I was always prepared for trouble! But it was a good work ethic, it sorted you out, and it stood us all in good stead for a musician’s life’.
Delmar was already broadening her repertoire as an accomplished theatre actor, having taken the role of ‘The Necessity Girl’ in a Sam Wanamaker production of Finian’s Rainbow in Liverpool, and in the ’60s she moved on to performing in Richard Rodgers’ No Strings and in the next decade to the hit shows Cowardy Custard and the Harlem Renaissance musical Bubbling Brown Sugar. She recalls her toughest theatrical choice was performing in a National Theatre production of David Hare’s intense and polemical 1980s play A Map of the World, with Diana Quick and Bill Nighy in the cast.
‘I chickened out of that the first time I was asked,’ Delmar chuckles, ‘but then I saw somebody else doing the part and I thought “maybe I can do that”. I had three weeks rehearsal with David Hare directing… and it was wonderful. Very hard work, but it really sharpened my sense of how other people on stage with you are absolutely depending on your timing, and awareness of everybody’s cues. We did it for 18 months, and it was a fantastic learning experience.’
I mention to Elaine that it’s been said she seems comfortable in any environment – whether it’s a jazz club, or a theatre, or a concert hall, or a church, she always seems to find a rapport with her audience.
‘I think more than anything that comes from my cabaret days,’ she says. ‘You find yourself on a stage, maybe when you’re young there’s a lot of noise from the audience, but you learn little tricks as you develop, and you start to get control of it. Initially it was difficult, now I go on stage and the noise stops, you know how to be in charge. And you learn that sometimes less is more. I love working with big bands, but on Speak Low it’s mostly just Barry’s piano, Simon’s bass and Jim guitar – and sometimes just one of them, with me in a duo. That reduced line-up was an accident and my fault, I forgot to confirm the date with our great drummer Bobby Worth – but different settings bring different things to the music, and fortunately it worked out well in this case. It’ll be another story on the tour!’.
Before we part, I take a clumsily roundabout route toward asking Elaine Delmar discreetly whether she ever considers performing more fashionable or contemporary choices than these admittedly indestructible classics of the standards repertoire. She greets the query with her signature hoot of disarming laughter.
‘You’re being very careful with that one! But with any song, it’s the story that I want to hear. The way Lena Horne or Sarah Vaughan told those stories, I suppose, that’s what influenced me when I was young. I often do hear something unfamiliar nowadays and wonder if I could do something with it, and there’s a lot of wonderful stuff out there now. But Taylor Swift? I don’t think she’d be quite right for me! I’ve heard Adele songs where I’ve thought “hmmm that’s quite tricky and interesting” but I know it wouldn’t suit me to try and sing them. I can’t really get around rhythmically complicated new melodies so well, and it’s harder to remember new lyrics. But these are some of my favourite songs, and I’ve finally got around to recording them. Of course my voice has changed and will change with time. But nothing gives me more pleasure than to look forward to performing this music, and with my favourite musicians!’
Elaine Delmar’s Speak Low is released on Ubuntu Music. She plays Scarborough Jazz Festival (September 27), Berkhamsted Civic Centre (October 12), Ship Theatre Sevenoaks (October 27), and Pizza Express Jazz Club, London, (October 29)
