Greta's Records by Allison Anders

“I wrote the album while traveling cross-country by myself and there is this restless feeling throughout it… The sweet loneliness of solitary travel.”

That Greta Garbo owned a copy of Joni’s Mitchell’s confessional solo road trip “Hejira” is so perfect that it seems like I made this up.

I have to admit this was one Joni Mitchell record of which I was fairly unfamiliar.  ‘Blue’, ‘Court and Spark’, ‘Ladies Of The Canyon’, these albums live inside my cells.  But somehow I missed this of her many masterpieces.

Recorded in 1976, “Hejira” is a collection of songs, indeed a fully realized concept album, of a road trip, a hijira, Mitchell took alone by car from Maine to Los Angeles.

I digress a moment to relate a story Joni told me which I am sure must have happened on this particular road trip.  (And forgive me, I am surely getting details wrong, because I was no doubt only half listening to her cause the other half of me was going “Holy Shit – Joni Fucking Mitchell is telling me a personal anecdote!”) 

As best I recall, Joan said she was on a journey and somehow happened to stop at a home, or a bed and breakfast, something, and two older sisters ran the place.  Joni is in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in Rhode Island or New Hampshire comes to mind, as far from Hollywood and the industry as she can get.  But there on the piano is a photograph of someone she knows.  She can’t quite believe it.  She exclaims the pretty woman’s name out loud (I am thinking it must have been —) “Barbara!”   To which these two kindly old women are stunned: “You know Our Barbara??”  and the other follows with, “She just married Peter Tork, you know, of The Monkees.”  Yes, friends of Joni’s.  And Barbara their niece.  God it is hard to get away!  To truly get away from Hollywood!

And that was in 1976. It would be far more difficult to truly get away on a solo hijira today with how plugged in we all are.  A hijera without a GPS.  A hijera not supported by Instagram to immediately update your Twitter followers, your FB friends, your Tumblr mates of what moment you seized and saw and thought.  A hijera of broken pay phones, postcards, wrinkled Triple A maps, and telegrams if you’re desperate.  

The entire Lp is not just songs of a woman on a solo journey, but within the woman is this pull between freedom and attachment, of doing what is expected vs. what one desires.  There is a song for Amelia Earhart, literally about ‘flying solo’: “I was thinking of Amelia Earhart and addressing it from one solo pilot to another… sort of reflecting on the cost of being a woman and having something you must do.” This was I believe her third or fourth record for Asylum.  It was unlike the jazz albums she’d been dipping into on ‘The Hissing Of Summer Lawns’, primarily because since she wrote the songs for “Hejira’ on the road, they were written on acoustic guitar.  No piano this time, unlike how her previous records in the 70s had been composed.

Consequently some of her most complex guitar tunings turned up here. And like ‘Blue’ she was again spilling her guts in a way only she could. “I suppose a lot of people could have written a lot of my other songs, but I feel the songs on Hejira could only have come from me.”

Late great bassist Jaco Pastorious is the heartbeat supporting Mitchell’s deeply personal vision throughout.  Legendary Wrecking Crew and jazz drummer John Guerin supports, and fellow Canadian Neil Young contributes too.

(Joan with Jaco and Herbie Hancock in the 70s)

The connection for Garbo must have been stark and immediate when she first heard “Hejira”.  This is her only Joni Mitchell record in the collection, and when you listen to it, you’d think the entire record could be dedicated to Miss G.

Interestingly, the LP cover holds the faint signature of “Reisfield”, something my daughter Tiffany clocked when we did our Dublab guest DJ podcast.  Garbo fans will know this name well, it was no doubt her beloved niece, Gray Reisfield (hmm are you seeing the niece connection here?).

I like to think that on a visit to her aunt’s apartment, Gray brought her new Joni Mitchell album with her.  And upon hearing it, and upon absorbing it, Miss G couldn’t bear to part with it.  She’s never taken anything from anyone. But this, she must have. 

“You can take my Picasso’s and Renoirs, they will be yours when I die anyway. But Gray, leave me that Joni Mitchell record.  I need it.  Although why she wrote a song about Amelia Earhart and not me I will never understand.”

I like to think of Miss G opening a bottle of wine, or something rich and warm, to drink on her own, in search of her own private “Blue Motel Room”.  Listening to side one.  Listening to side 2.  Black Crow at her window, pulling her out to the street, “black as the highway leading me”.

Putting on her coat and flat shoes.  Maybe she will walk.  Maybe she will hitch hike.  She could!   How brazen, “Garbo Hitch-hikes”.  What a lark! The idea tickles her and she smiles to herself as she steps outside.  She could put her thumb out. The driver would never guess.  What a sweet in-joke with herself.  Wait, it’s too late to be out here, ALONE, even for Manhattan, it’s 4am, streets are empty in this precious enclave.  She walks east toward the light. 

And on this trash littered pre-dawn sidewalk, there he is.  And they face off, the scrawniest of coyotes, not quite brown, not quite gray.  They could be twins.  ‘Right in the face on the road to Baljennie…”  What is a coyote doing in Manhattan?  What is Greta Garbo doing anywhere, Coyote asks.  Their eyes lock, without blinking.  A calm comes between them.  She could stay like this forever.

Coyote is the first to break their gaze.  He turns and heads on down the block alone, going far faster than it appears in his lanky trot.  She can follow, or not. Coyote doesn’t care.  Coyote just shows what you could…

Miss G knows there’s more on Coyote’s mind than water and garbage, and he heads toward it, until he’s out of sight.  They are both defectors of the petty wars.

No regrets, Coyote.

To listen to audio clips of ‘Hejira’ and to get lyrics, credits, and guitar tunings and tablature:

http://jonimitchell.com/music/album.cfm?id=10

“Vi” Sweden’s oldest magazine became a centenarian this past month, and Greta’s Records made the cut!  Their 100th anniversary issue may well make them one of the oldest magazines in the world.  Health practitioners study habits of those who live to be 100.  Perhaps publishers should be studying whatever it is that Vi is doing right as magazines become extinct.   One healthy habit might be this — the magazine is not online!  You need to read it in print.

I was so honored that editor Tomas Fläckman asked me to contribute a piece on Greta’s record collection.  He even found an early issue of Vi with Greta on the cover.  Here he is proudly sharing with me the gorgeous layout.

The fella on the magazine cover is Håkan Hellström,  the Keith Richards of Sweden.  His quote translates akin to, “I love it when it’s too much”.

So if you know Swedish, pick up a print copy and enjoy the pictures and the text.  If not, do enjoy the visuals herein!  And expect a new Greta’s Records post in the next 24 hours…Greta Takes A Journey… as I uncover a record in her collection that I somehow missed and now find to be one of the most brilliant records ever made.  

Thank you Miss G. Xo

Garbo on the cover of Vi, 1937, no headline, no caption, just her beautiful face!

…you can listen to the archived set as well as Tiffany Anders “Daughters Of The Sun” set right here:

http://dublab.com/allison-tiffany-anders-gretas-records-daughters-of-the-sun-dj-sets-03-04-13/

I played records from Greta’s collection and we even found an interesting personal clue on one LP cover!

Have a listen!  And big thank you to Mark “Frosty” McNeill @ Dublab for inviting us!

Set Lists:

Allison Anders “Greta’s Records” Set

Chubby Checker - The Twist – Parkway (1960)

The Beatles – There’s A Place – Vee Jay (1963)

The Supremes – My World Is Empty Without You – Motown (1965)

Professor Longhair – Something On Your Mind – Alligator (1980)

Hildegard Knef – C’est Si Bon/Bel Ami/All Of Me/Wenn Wir Zwel Uns Wiedersehn – Decca (1960)

Gene Clark – No Other – Asylum (1974)

Elmo  Hope - It’s A Lovely Day – Prestige (1967)

Joni Mitchell – Blue Motel Room – Asylum (1976)

Linda Ronstadt – I Never Will Marry – Asylum (1977)

Julius Wechter And The Baja Marimba Band – Flying High – A&A Records (1969)

The Beatles – Fixing A Hole – Capitol (1967)

Ringo Starr – Oh My My – Apple (1973)

Tiffany Anders “Daughters of the Sun” Set

Sharon Tandy – Daughter Of The Sun

Selda Yaz Gazeteci – Yaz – Finders Keepers

Brigette Fontaine – La Harpe Jaune Saravah

Connie Converse – Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains)

Vashti Bunyan – Pink Sugar Elephants

Dana Gillespie – Foolish Seasons – Revola

Bonnie Dobson – Winter’s Going – Revola

Dory Previn – Lady With A Braid

Michaelangelo – It’s Crying Outside

The Cake – Firefly

Evie Sands – Take Me For A Little While – A&M Records

Check out Tiffany’s tumblr on this very music: 

http://jumblequeen.tumblr.com/

Hey everyone!   Just wanted to let you all know that my daughter Tiffany Anders and I are both guest DJing tomorrow on Dublab Radio.  Our back-to-back sets will play music from our own blogs — “Greta’s Records” at 11 am (pacific time) and “Jumblequeen” (a GREAT blog on brilliant women musicians here on tumblr) at noon.

So please tune in if you can, and you can hear some of the records from this collection!

Here is the dublab site:

http://dublab.com/events/12687/live-broadcast-allison-tiffany-anders/

And check out Tiffany’s blog Jumblequeen and read about Bowie’s amazing protegee!

http://jumblequeen.tumblr.com/

Were you all as thrilled as I was to see a Professor Longhair record in Greta Garbo’s collection?   As much as we could think the gap between the Professor and the Film Star is wide, there are deep similarities.  Both were discovered and given new names.  And while Greta choose to live in anonymity but continued to travel the world for all those shrouded-in-secrecy years, Professor Longhair stayed put in New Orleans where he played loud and lived flamboyantly in public.

And both were nearing the end of their lives when this record “Crawfish Fiesta” was released in 1980.   Fess died that year, and Greta would die a decade later.  The record was produced by Andrew Kaslow (who also plays tenor sax on the record and contributed horn arrangements) and Bruce Iglauer for his label Alligator Records and by the man who said of him, “Professor Longhair put ‘funk’ into music, he’s the father of the stuff” — none other than Mac Rebennack aka “Dr. John”, who also plays guitar on all the tracks. And if all this weren’t pedigree enough, it was recorded at Allen Toussaint’s recording studio “SeaSaint”.

The LP opens with “Big Chief”, a classic Fess track, sampled rather oddly by Lily Allen on “Knock ‘Em Out” a few years ago.  Written by Earl King in the 1960s, this song is not only sewn into the fabric of New Orleans, it is part of the thread itself.  The title has to do with the Mardi Gras Indian gang groups.  And while the lyrics about squaws and “fire water” today are politically incorrect, the whole notion of the Indian Nation gangs during Mardi Gras is a tribute by New Orleans blacks to the Indians who hid runaway slaves or helped them escape capture before and during the Civil War.  It’s a lively tradition of the Mardi Gras celebration and this song honors that.

Fess’s version of Los Angeles’ own Big Jay McNeely’s “Something On Your Mind” kills it.  I’m real proud to have directed several episodes of the TV show “Southland”.  There’s generally not much music in “Southland” episodes but writer Cheo Hodari Coker (who won an NAACP Image Award for “Southland” this year) really knows and loves music — this is the guy who wrote both the book and screenplay on “Notorious B.I.G.”  Southland director Chris Clulack also has a great love for Los Angeles roots music, so Cheo wrote McNeely’s original version of the song into a powerful episode “Fixing A Hole” directed by Chulack.  It has a very LA lowrider feel, and of course is a cholo classic within that subculture and while not as much of an Art Laboe dedication tradition, it was on one of the early East Side Story lowrider compilation LPS.  The song has been covered many times by Etta James, Gene Vincent, Freddy Fender, James Cotton and more — it’s a standard now.  

Professor Longhair’s version of the song is less lowrider, more groove. And his vocal is outasite!  Love you Little Sonny, but good god this “Bald Head” sings it! Whatever might be on her mind, he’s about to change it with this sweet talk.  Little Sonny sings as a younger man who has hit a wall with a woman for the first time.  Fess has been here waaay too many times before, and it shows in his delivery.

There are 2 funny songs on Side A about men and women driving each other nuts:  ”Her Mind Is Gone” and “You’re Driving Me Crazy”. Oh and then do you want to really have some fun — “Red Beans” baby!  And then just chill, and listen to the pure piano playing of the Professor on “WIllie Fugal’s Blues”.

The B Side is every bit as good as the first, with a wonderful version of  ”Whole Lotta Lovin” made famous by another great New Orleans piano player Fats Domino.  ” Cry To Me” is a song I could imagine Greta trying to Calypso to.  The LP closes with the title track “Crawfish Fiesta” which incorporates so many melodies we have heard over the past century…you are transported far beyond the 1980s to ragtime in a few riffs here and there.

One thing I have come to see in Greta’s record collection is that her taste for world music was way ahead of her time.  And while Fess was a native son, he worked with Caribbean players and was mad for Cuban mambo music.  LIkewise, Greta was wild for island music.  In her collection yet to be reviewed there are so very many examples of this — the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, Harry Belafonte’s first record which is hugely inspired by his parents island roots, and Calypso Carnival by The Mighty Sparrow. I can see that for her Professor Longhair brought together in one vision jazz, blues and music of the islands. 

This may have been one of the last records Greta bought.  Did she wake up on Fat Tuesday and put on this record while she made a stack of pancakes for herself?  Did she stand in the kitchen, wondering why she wasn’t there in New Orleans?  ”I should have gone…if not now, when?  I could wear a costume and a mask and be anonymous. I could flash my breasts for beads, and no one would even know it was me.”  This makes her laugh, “When I was younger maybe.  But when I was younger I didn’t do those things.  Well, I ran naked in the yard with Cecil but that was different. That was like doing yoga, not for fun like those girls in New Orleans do.  But could any of them do the dance for Shiva that got us all fined?”  She laughs out loud at the absurdity of those times she lived.  She listens to Fess’s record and chews.  ”Maybe I go.  I’m too late to meet Bald Head but maybe I meet Dr.  John.  Maybe I make shrimp and grits for him and the band and surprise them all with my cooking.  Oh silly Miss G…why on earth would you go to New Orleans to cook, you go to New Orleans to eat.”

And maybe she went.  Maybe she got there just in time.

On the 44^th anniversary of the last Beatles performance on a London rooftop, I thought it was fitting to delve into Garbo’s Beatles records and ask:  which was the very first Beatles LP ever released in the USA?  “Meet The Beatles” on Capitol Records?  Or was it this one on the little but then-thriving black-owned label out of Chicago, Vee Jay, “Introducing…The Beatles”?

The Vee Jay LP was released on Janurary 10, 1964, 10 days before Capitol’s release which changed the lives of all of us who were lucky enough to be conscious in 1964.    I can’t even begin to imagine how Greta Garbo came to own a copy of “Introducing…The Beatles”  oh but please let us try. 

Before we begin to let our minds run wild on this I think we need to understand  exactly what THIS copy of THIS record is:  it’s…a ‘fake’.  Well, it’s nothing for The Great Garbo to have been ashamed of, I too own a fake.  And if you own this record, yours is probably a fake too.  And if  it’s not a fake – while you don’t own Greta’s copy,  you have a goldmine! 

Because Vee Jay’s “Introducing…The Beatles”,  stereo, is one of the most counterfeited records in the history of vinyl.  For that reason, many record detectives were abuzz upon seeing the photo of the lot I won of Greta’s records where this LP was pictured, wondering if this could be the holy grail.

My friend Bill Bartell was the first to alert me to the possible treasure I might have come to own.   Like most people, I had no idea.  I have a copy of this record which I got as a teenager, almost a decade after it’s release.  It’s thrashed, the record sleeve is taped, cause I played it to death and took it everywhere my life took me since, according to my own handwritten note on the record sleeve,  my stepfather bought it for me in 1972.

Bill gave me a few guidelines on detecting a fake or original: if the back had been blank, or if it had ads for other Vee Jay Records on it, I could have been looking at a $10,000 record.  But as you can see, that was not the case.  Also, to be an original the front cover needed to show a shadow casting from George Harrison.  And this cover does not have that.

There are sooo many details to check to see if your copy of this record is valuable and I include a link below to a really good site which Bill sent to me.  Also there is also a You Tube video which gives a tutorial  posted below on how to detect if your record is a gem or a fake.  And also if you can lay your hands on a copy of Bruce Spizer’s book “The Beatles Records On Vee Jay”  buy it!  

(This image below is the original very valuable pressing of the record.  Note George’s shadow on the far right edge of the album cover.)

So even though “Introducing…The Beatles” was released in 1964, I’m going to take a wild guess that Greta came by this a few years later.  Why?  Well because as far as I can tell from my research, and many people know more than me on this, the counterfeiting of this record really began to take place massively in the late 60s.  

And another reason I would guess she bought it in the late 60s is because Garbo doesn’t own any other Beatles titles between this one and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band”.  Nowadays of course, this wouldn’t mean a thing’;  maybe your first Beatles record was “Rubber Soul”, or “Abbey Road”,  cause the catalogue is all in the past so there is no continuity to your purchase.   But if you bought “Introducing…The Beatles” first  in 1964  and “Sgt. Pepper’s” in 1967, you most likely would have  bought some of The Beatles’ records in between.   Most likely.  

(Here is the vintage homemade record box which hold Greta’s records, and the battered but cherished Beatles LP record box which holds all my Beatles albums).

With this logic, I’m thinking Greta bought “Sgt. Pepper’s” as her first Beatles record, then at some time later worked her way back to this one to educate herself on the band.  Realizing the vast difference in the Fab Four’s music in just 3 years, maybe she preferred the pyschedelic direction.  “I’d love to turn you onnnnnnnnn…”  she might have sung dreamily. 

Also, her “Sgt. Pepper’s” record is well played (is that smudge her fingerprint??  We shall examine in a later post!), and so is “Magical Mystery Tour”.  But unlike my copy, Garbo’s “Introducing…The Beatles” while not in the shrink wrap didn’t take too many turns on turns on her Collaro.  The cover and the record itself are therefore in really great condition.  And I know purists might disagree, but to my unpure ears, the record sounds terrific!   (And I know some people are concerned with me playing these records on the Crosley, but I am only giving these LPS of Garbo’s one complete spin on this Spinnerette.)

(Another dead giveaway of a fake - the label should read “stereo” somewhere, and the two lines on the label “Introducing the Beatles” and “The Beatles” should not be separated by the spindle hole)

“Introducing…The Beatles” really takes me back blissfully in a way few records can.  I remember at age 9, being at Meyer’s Pharmacy on South 29^th Street in Ashland, Kentucky and seeing both of  The Beatles first LPs side by side on the record rack.  Damn I wish I had an Iphone then to Instagram that!  But you can picture it, yeah?  AND how I wish I had bought the Vee Jay LP that day.  But “Meet The Beatles” was just looked waaaaay cooler.  It had that amazing photo by Robert Freeman and the striking mod black and blue artwork, and — they all looked really CUTE!  The Vee Jay record is pretty homely in every way, dingy, lacking energy.  And knowing how good they all looked over the years, truly, it’s hard to even imagine what went wrong in this photograph by the otherwise brilliant Angus McBean.  But clearly, everything did.

(“Meet The Beatles”: better artwork, cuter Beatles!)

And yet, the songs on “Introducing…The Beatles” are some of my very favorite Beatles songs.  It’s opens with a weirdly clipped intro of Paul counting down on “I Saw Her Standing There”…apparently the guy mastering the tracks for Vee Jee thought this was just studio chatter and cut out Paul saying, “1-2-3—“ and the track awkwardly comes in with a clipped, “Fa—-“ and then the song begins.   Since we are all so used to hearing this correctly mastered by EMI and Capitol over the years, this Vee Jay LP is off to a bad start with this big gaffaw.  But once you’re into the song, and how can you not be – it’s wonderful in every way.

Most of the songs on the Vee Jay record were released by Capitol in 1965 on “The Early Beatles”. LP  “Ask Me Why” is a song I fell in love with when I finally got my hands on “The Early Beatles” when it first came out. But my two favorites,  “Misery” and “There’s A Place” are missing from that album.

“There’s a Place” is  one of my very favorite Beatles songs ever, in my top 5 for certain.  I also own it on a 45 on the Tollie label — a gift from my friend Hunter Lea.  I have to imagine this song which pleases and comforts me so much would perfectly fit Garbo’s state of mind too.  Like her, I too was/am a daydreamer.  I can never understand boredom.  When you can always imagine something, how can you be bored?  I have been very intolerant of boredom in others, I just don’t understand needing something outside of your own brain to occupy you.   

Garbo it seems was the same.  As a child she daydreamed in school, and then would put her dreams into action by directing the other children in play.  (I can relate!)  And in these 50 years she was gone from Hollywood, it appears she did not suffer from boredom one bit.  

(Greta in 1966, if these people would have left her alone, maybe she would have made it to the record store to buy “Revolver” as her first Beatles LP!  I could see her often being in the mood for “Tomorrow Never Knows”!)

In the song “There’s A Place”, of course penned by Paul McCartney and John Lennon,  the lyrics tell the story of a guy with a broken heart, but he knows where to find solace:

“There’re’re’re’re..

is a place

Where I can go

When I feel low

When I feel blue

And it’s my mind

And there’s no time

When I’m alone”

I don’t think more can be said.   This is Greta.  Fake copy or not, I can’t imagine this song not speaking directly to her as it does me.

To learn more about counterfeit “Introducing…The Beatles” LPS check out these two links:

http://bit.ly/VwKb4P

http://bit.ly/14xAqoc

A really wonderful bio on Vee Jay, the most successful black-owned record label before Motown:  

http://bit.ly/Vp1LSL

And for a tutorial on whether your copy of this record is gold or phoney:

And for your listening and viewing pleasure to entice you to seriously go buy this record. The fake was good enough for me and for Miss G.  You can also buy CDs or digital copies of The Beatles “Please Please Me” which includes all of the Vee Jay tracks at your favorite record store or online site.

“So oder so ist das Leben”…such is life.  I can imagine Greta saying this with a sigh, can’t you?

As it turns out, even though I didn’t win the international records lot in the auction, a few managed to find their way into the rock and pop records lot I did win.  Lucky me! Well I had never heard a single song by actress/writer/painter/chanteuse Hildegard Knef until I pulled this LP “So Oder So Ist Das Leben” from Greta’s Garbo’s private collection.  And now…I have fallen in love.

First, let us just meditate on the artwork on the album cover…it’s absolutely gorgeous.

Hildegard Knef, there is simply too much to tell about her — incredible life, which she wrote about in her autobiography “The Gift Horse”.  She epitomizes “Survivor” in every way:  she survived a Russian P.O.W. camp (by dressing in male drag) in Germany as a young girl, she survived creepy passes made at her by the likes of Josef Goebbels and David O. Selznick, she survived crazy career ups and downs in the movie business, in the theater business, in the music business.  Like Garbo, Knef was a breast cancer survivor.  Unlike Garbo, Knef talked about it, openly.  One of the first famous people to ever do so.   Unlike Garbo, who went away, Knef just kept coming back.  As late as 1993, at the age of 68 she recorded an industrial dance version of her 1960s hit “Von Nun An Ging’s Bergab” with post punk Kraut rockers Engel Wider Willen (which is AMAZING by the way — I include a link below). 

In 1947, 21 year old German beauty, Knef was lured to the US by Selznick following the buzz around her performance as a concentration camp survivor returning home after the war in “The Murders Are Among Us” made in East Berlin.  But Selznick was interested in what other talents the young beauty might have, and she was not interested in showing those to him.  He also wanted her to change her name and claim to be Austrian rather than German.  Knef said ‘nein’ and went back to Berlin. 

In 1950 she starred in a German film “The Sinner” in which she showed some bare breast, and the Catholic Church went into a furor protesting the audacity.  Knef, just 24 years old. boldly defended the scene in the film saying, “I can’t understand the tumult — five years after Auschwitz!”  

Ironically it was while in Germany, not tinsel town, that Knef won her roles in Hollywood films “The Snows Of Kilimanjaro” with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, and Anatole Litvak’s “Decision Before Dawn” with Oskar Werner and she worked like mad for several years in the early 1950s.

Then she was lured back to US shores by another American, who did NOT likely make a pass at her — Cole Porter.  After hearing her sing on camera in “The Snows Of Kilimanjaro” Porter felt Knef was just perfect for the lead role in a musical he was writing based on a classic film with one of the world’s greatest stars in the role she was known for most:  ”Ninotchka” with Herself.

“Silk Stockings” opened on Broadway Feb 25, 1955 at The Imperial Theater, Manhattan, a massive hit, and Knef was instantly referred to as “The New Garbo”.   Did Greta go see the play during it’s run, incognito?

Well, Garbo historians would know, but I don’t.  I do know that former Garbo rival (imagined or real) Marlene Dietrich was there opening night to pose for photos backstage with young Knef, who was now second only to Dietrich as the most popular German star.  The connection to Garbo of this moment is pretty loaded.

Even though “Silk Stockings” and Knef in it were hugely successful, when it came time to make a movie of the Cole Porter musical, Knef was out and Cyd Charisse was in.  Knef was Germany bound again.  And for this — we are ever so lucky and grateful cause in 1963, Hildegard Knef found her voice, literally, and gave it to the rest of the world.

“So Oder So Ist Das Leben” is Hildegard Knef’s first LP which she recorded in 1963 released by Decca.  The title track is her signature song, and her dusky voice and smokey vocal delivery, as well as her nonchalant but empowered performance of the song, and all of her songs hereafter make her one of the world’s most interesting singers.  Ella Fitzgerald said of Knef that she was  ”the greatest singer in the world without a voice”.  I know exactly what she means now.

The tracking on this LP  takes getting used to because each track has 3-4 songs within it.  And some times Knef sings in as many as 3 languages per track.  They are also assigned meters as it were:  Foxtrott- Potpourri or Slowfox Potpourri.

This record from Greta’s collection was played and both the record and the cover are in perfect condition,  protected in the plastic sleeve it came in stamped in gold “Royal Sound Stereo” .  It’s definitely not a US pressing because of this plastic sleeve, the color of the label, and the feel of the record sleeve itself.   (Well and I guess the gold letters on the plastic reading “Auch Mono Abspeilbar” kinda nails it as a German pressing!)So either Greta bought this in Europe, or it was gifted to her.  

My favorite track on Side 1 is track 2.  It opens with “Ich Bin Von Kopf Bis Fuß Auf Liebe Eingestellt” which is a dreamy ballad, followed by a gorgeous moody melody “Illusionen”.  For the launch of Knef’s first LP someone had the very good sense to shoot little films (scopitones perhaps?) of all of Knef’s tracks in stunning black and white, in bizarrely cool settings.  Please do yourself a favor and check some of these out posted here.

Side 2 opens with cheery French standard “C’est Si Bon”  followed by “Bel Ami” and “All of Me” and ending with “We Damsals in Paris”.

Knef’s signature song “So Oder So Ist Das Leben” comes in on track 2 side 2.  Knef was not the first to record this song.  In 1934 actress and chanteuse Brigette Horney (the daughter of psychoanalyst pioneer Karen Horney) had a hit with it, and no doubt this was a song Garbo was very familiar with.  This is a bluesy vocal with a directness to it — and a worldly acceptance of ‘the way it crumbles, cookie-wise”.  I could imagine Greta absolutely loving this song.

I like to picture Garbo, singing along with Knef in her own husky voice…standing in her bathroom over the basin, slathering on her Erno Laszlo skin care products which she used on her face from her Hollywood days till the day she died…in fact, some bottles still holding a rosy lotion were auctioned off for more than these 50 records!  I like to picture her smoothing night cream into her famous face, and singing Knef’s song into the mirror.  And I know what she is thinking, “This Hildegard girl is astonishing.  She told Hollywood to take a hike and went home to become a chanteuse.  That takes real guts.”

And later that week, I can picture, can’t you? Herself singing “So Oder So Ist Das Leben” for her small group of close friends, as she was said to do from time to time.  (She apparently loved chansons and bluesy ballads.)  Herself singing and wondering to herself, “Could I too go home and become a chanteuse?”  And the act of asking the question was enough, as it always is when we consider, “What else could I be?”  It’s not required that you act on it, just that you consider it.

I like to think that Garbo slipped in undetected into that audience of “Silk Stockings” opening night, and was on Hildegard Knef’s side from the very start. Buzzing to friends about what a talent Knef was.  I like to think that she looked something like this while she waited in her seat for the brave young German actress to take the stage. 

Well and why wouldn’t she?  Everyone was doing it — from the First Lady to a little 6 year old girl in Ashland, Kentucky (yes yours truly).   The Twist was more than just another dance craze — the 50s had been full of those.  It wasn’t pure novelty like The Macarena or Gangnam Style.  The Twist was the communal exuberance of a new dawn, a rare burst of optimism, fun, and freedom.  The Twist was the unofficial dance of America’s Camelot, at least when Jackie was dropping the needle on the turntable at the White House.  And it was the  first popular dance which didn’t require partners to touch but to move separately and synchronous.  And perhaps most important of all — no one led, the dance partners were equal.  You didn’t even need a partner, you could twist without one, if you vanted to be left alone.

Did you happen to catch the Mad Men episode, season 1, when the whole Sterling Cooper office heads over to their fave watering hole and Peggy puts a dime in the jukebox and plays “The Twist” by Chubby Checker?  The whole room explodes in excitement and they hit the dance floor and put on their twist moves.  A flawless scene.  Because that excitement was the early 1960s as I remember it as a kid, watching my mother and her sister - 2 young beautiful divorcees who worked in an office not unlike Peggy, practicing their twist moves before a double date and teaching us kids how to do it too.  Everyone loved the twist, and if you didn’t, you were probably no damned good, and certainly no fun.  And in this Mad Men scene, that was Pete of course, who rejects Peggy’s open invitation to twist with her.  It kills me every time I think of it.  But hey — didn’t stop Peggy from twisting, even with tears in her eyes and a bruise on her heart.

We could just dismiss the reports of Greta Garbo turning up in the early 60s at The Peppermint Lounge to watch the twisters on the tiny dance floor as urban legend…if we didn’t have this photograph to confirm it.

And if we didn’t have these two records from her personal record collection to back it up.

“Your Twist Party With Chubby Checker” and “Let’s Twist Again” by Chubby Checker, both on Parkway Records were played A LOT by their owner, especially “Let’s Twist Again” which was clearly her preference.  I decided to write about these 2 records together and not about each track, cause the point of these records were the same — get everyone in the world twisting!  Some of the same tracks are on each record. And there are covers on each LP, where words are changed to relate back to The Twist. “Rock Around The Clock” becomes TWIST Around The Clock, and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” becomes a Whole Lotta TWISTING Going On.  I think titling a track the “Mexican Hat Twist” is a little over the top, don’t you?  

Both records came out in 1961, and “Your Twist Party” was a compilation of the first 3 Chubby Checker Parkway records. So it’s safe to assume Greta discovered The Twist in 1961, 2 years before her beloved President Kennedy would, when he bored everyone at his 46th birthday party insisting the band aboard Yacht Sequoia play Chubby Checker tunes and urging everyone to twist.  Oh Jack that is sooo two summers ago…

A little background on the song “The Twist” — first written and recorded in 1959 by Hank Ballard and The Midnighters as a B side which charts for the R&B singer, his first record to do so in 4 years. Enter Dick Clark who felt the song had something, but that Ballard was too raunchy and too R&B to make the song grab a crossover (young white) audience.  He presses Parkway to cut the record with a new South Philly kid Ernest Evans.  Ernie’s friends call him “Chubby” and he was real nuts for Fats Domino, so he didn’t mind one bit when the label changed his name to Chubby Checker.  Hey if it worked for Fats…He debuted “The Twist” on The Dick Clark Show the summer of 1960 followed up with The Ed Sullivan Show and the record hit #1 on the charts and repeated that success again in 1962.  

I remember seeing a movie as a kid at this time where either Jill St. John or Stella Stevens was explaining to someone how to do the twist:  just move like your drying your butt with a towel. The dance was that simple.  Anyone could do it, and look good doing it.  And something about it is just really fun.  Do it right now — isn’t that so fun?  And you can make it completely your own too.

The early 60s must have been an incredible time for Garbo.  She was definitely retired from movies and the public eye.  The last time she seriously entertained taking a movie role was in 1949, and when the financing fell through, it must have been like the sign she had been waiting for — it was over.  What a relief.

She also had a lover.  Who lived in the same apartment building.  Who was married.  Married to her friend and the woman who designed some of Garbo’s most beautiful clothes of her post-Hollywood years. George and Valentina Schlee were close friends of Greta’s, and at some point in the 1950s George and Greta Garbo are said to have begun an affair which last until his death in 1964.  It was he who suggested she move into the same building, The Campanile, beside the East River at 52nd Street.  She occupied a 7 room apartment on the fifth floor (where these records were kept) for the last 37 years of her life.   George and Valentina lived four floors below.

A lot is written about the strong tension, and later ever hatred, coming from Valentina to Greta, understandably, but other people say no.  They say Valentina had her own lover, an ex of Greta’s, and that the 4 friends and lovers would run around together and have a grand old time.  (Maybe the 3 of them were headed to the Peppermint Lounge when this picture was taken!)

I think the truth of how all the parties handled the complicated love triangle (or quadrangle) is somewhere in the middle.  That is, until George’s sudden death of a heart attack in 1964 while on a trip to Paris with Greta.  Unable to cope with the possible press attention, Greta fled, leaving her husband’s wife, her good friend to come to Paris to deal with it.  After that, they are said to have never spoken again, while living another 25 years in the same building.  Valentina died in 1989, Garbo a year later.

But were the early 60s as exuberant for Greta as they were for everyone else?  They had to have been.   I can just picture Greta standing barefoot in the middle of her living room, playing “Let’s Twist Again” on her portable Collaro record player,  teaching herself how to bust those moves, to shake her ass, to let loose.  

And once she had the hang of it,  I can picture Miss G pulling George upstairs to her apartment, declaring, “I vill teach you to twist.”  Oh how he would protest, but with her famous laugh, she could get him to do anything.

I like to picture Miss G loosening George up with “The Hucklebuck” (my personal favorite track on “Your Twist Party”).  And before he realizes it — he’s throwing off his jacket and tie, Herself letting her silky lank hair fly.  Neighbors banging on the ceiling and floors to get them to knock it off.  Valentina fuming on the first floor and calling her lover to come over immediately.  But Herself is oblivious — she’s lost in the beat and the Fat Man’s happy energy reaching out from the vinyl grooves.  A young couple walking on the street below look up at the silhouettes on the shade of Miss G and her lover twisting the night away.   Tomorrow the Great Garbo might write Chubby Checker a fan letter.  But tonight daddy is sleepin’ and mama ain’t around, so Miss G’s gonna twisty twisty twisty till she turns the house down.

And in case you were wondering how much Greta loved her twist records…note the stamps on the back cover.  Most of us wrote our names on our records in the 50s and 60s…could these be Greta’s stamps claiming possession?  I like to think so.

Here’s the great scene from Mad Men:http://bit.ly/147XVnz

And Chubby Checker on The DIck Clark Show:  http://bit.ly/W06z3K

And a fab trailer for “Hey Let’s Twist” which opens with live footage at the Peppermint Lounge:  http://bit.ly/14c6lJT

And a big thanks to my saucy friend Sunset Gun’s Kim Morgan for inspiring the title of this post!

I decided to start this journey through Greta’s records with a record I know well.  It was also the biggest surprise to me in the collection, cause I didn’t know it was in the lot when I placed my bid, and it was the first record my daughter Tiffany Anders pulled from the cardboard box at the auction house to our mutual gasps.  

For some of you who may not know Gene Clark’s work a quickie here:  he came to fame as the lead singer, lead songwriter of folk rock 60s band The Byrds. He quit the band many times and rejoined many times.  His work in The Byrds is wonderful, but when he was not in The Byrds, he was making brilliant solo work.  This was his most controversial record, because of the era in which it came out, the price tag it took to make it, and the disastrous lack of sales.  But Gene considered it his masterpiece and many people agree.  Maybe Greta did too.

Let us try to wrap our heads around the fact that Greta Garbo had twist records, and Beatles records (did she play them backwards during the Paul Is Dead hoax?), Francoise Hardy records.  But it’s going to take a little more to wrap our heads around how and why Gene Clark’s ill-fated personal masterpiece wound up in the screen legend’s home, and was kept all these years since its release in 1974 amongst her personal things.

Well one clue as to why Greta owned this record might be just above in the bottom left hand corner: Greta’s face on the head of the Sphinx.  Could this be what compelled her to buy it?

Probably not.  Greta’s grand nephew Scott Reisfield who oversaw the publication of the Rizzoli collection “Garbo’s Garbos”, a book of 90 photographs of Herself from her personal collection, said of his iconic aunt that she didn’t have a single photograph of herself on display, ever, in her home.  But during her career Garbo had insisted upon having a copy of every single photograph ever taken of Herself, and when it came time to showcase them in 2005 at the Santa Barbara Museum Of Art to launch the book, this collection of photos by Hurrell, Steichen, Genthe and more photog greats, were in perfect condition…cause they had never been touched…they had been kept in file cabinets and never looked at again.

So seeing herself on an album cover and buying it because of that…doubtful.  Although if her wit and irony is to be believed — and I do choose to believe she could be very wry, maybe she could have bought it as a little personal in-joke with herself and the world. The record store cashier would have no idea this eccentric lovely older woman in the cone hat, sunglasses and those big feet in the Bertlyn flats was the head of the Sphinx on the cover.  A Queen of modern pop culture incognito.

Maybe a friend, and she certainly did have close friends who guarded Garbo’s privacy, amused by seeing her on the album cover brought it to her as a gift.  

Maybe she simply liked Gene Clark…that would make me even happier.

A friend of mine Hunter Lea was the first to alert me to Greta’s image in the album cover artwork, something I knew but had forgotten.  The cover is something notorious about the record…there is a retro love affair with early Hollywood sirens, which doesn’t really relate to the on-the-verge-of-disco era of “No Other”s release, nor to the content of Gene’s collection of beautiful songs.  Some could think and surely did at the time that this artwork was reason enough that no one bought the record.  

While on the phone Hunter had me searching the album cover — maybe Gene sent it to her himself and autographed it!  BUT —— sadly —- No.  Maybe the record label, Asylum, sent it to her.  Maybe. But unlikely.

Why?  Well because “No Other” was extremely expensive to make - a whooping $100,000 which for a Gene Clark solo record was massive. And if Greta bought this record in 1974, she would have been one of very few, as umm…there were…No Others. (Cue bad joke drum gag.)  Or certainly not enough to ever make it up to David Geffen for his embarrassing loss.  I would guess that sending out a courtesy copy of the record to the screen siren might have slipped everyone’s mind, as Asylum Records choked on the big bite this project took from their budget.  And as every time there is such a monetary disaster, distance is self preservation and best to run fast and leave no dust in your tracks.  (Although regardless of the financial hit, I would have thought  David Geffen would have loved the chance to hand-deliver the record or even a cup of skillet-hot, red-eyed gravy if he thought he might get to meet Garbo!   A definite missed opportunity on his part.)

There are far better pieces than I could ever pen on this record, even the Wiki on “No Other” is superb.  And of course John Einarson’s wonderful book on Gene “Mr. Tambourine Man” is a must read.   So I won’t even try.  But please do research this record yourself (there are some links below).  The production boasts some of the best players of the day.

I started as you must, with Side 1.  The first song “Life’s Greatest Fool” shows the vinyl had that awful 70s light weight rubbery warble.  I remember even noticing it at the time, how easily these records warped, and how the needle slid across them unable to find the groove, as opposed to my heavy duty Capitol Beatles records from the 60s.  So there’s definitely a warble.  But Gene’s perfectly beautiful voice and Jesse Ed Davis’s smooth as water guitar and the incredible uplifting choir of backing vocals of Clydie King and Claudia Lennear quickly make you forget the unwelcome vinyl bend.

The collaboration between Gene Clark and Jesse Ed Davis was magical.  Jesse produced Gene’s 1971 LP “White Light” and played on most of the tracks.  This beautiful Kiowa/Commache guitarist is one of my heroes.  But as magic as the collaboration was between them, Jesse and Gene got into a whole world of wrong together too.  Straight into the gutter while still being ‘stars’.  There is an incredible recounting by my friend Jonelle Romero in John Einarson’s book about her happening upon Gene and Jesse panhandling on Sunset Blvd. to get money to cop drugs — it was seeing her two brilliant friends, her heroes, this desperate that she got sober herself.  We can be only too grateful for these moments when Jesse and Gene were magical, and not destructive…like on this track.

Listening to the second track “Silver Raven” is instantly personal.  There was a Gene Clark tribute show about 7 years ago at Safari Sam’s on Sunset in Hollywood, and my daughter Tiffany performed this song beautifully.  I was so touched to see longtime Gene Clark collaborator Carla Olson (with her husband/Gene’s manager Saul Davis) in the audience wowed by Tiffany’s version of the song.  She also told Tiffany so, saying how — singer-to-singer — that is not an easy song to sing!  It remains one of my very favorite Gene Clark songs.  And of course I have to wonder…was it one of Greta’s favorites too?

The third track on Side 1 still throws me for a loop.  It’s the title track “No Other”. The intro sounds like you’re going to get a song by WAR.  It’s not a folk song, not one bit. And it’s not rock either, despite the rocking guitar solo by Jerry McGee.  It’s R&B, it’s roots, it’s dance.  And maybe this is because of Joe Lala’s percussion driving the song. And the echo on Gene’s vocal is so odd for the rest of the record. But — cool. I dig it.  Maybe Greta did too.  

The last song on Side 1 is to me the masterpiece of “No Other”.  The lyrics, the vocals, the emotional weight of the “Strength Of Strings” is breathtaking, truly.  I like to think of this filling Greta up with a big blast of heavy rich air, while she did yoga in her flat, and let that same air release from Herself, carried by the strength of these strings indeed.

Side 2 opens with a song that sounds like an apology. “From A Silver Phial”…I think I’ve just come to realize this is a really sad song.  And then Jesse Ed Davis carries you out to the far edge of the tune with the most gorgeous guitar playing.  I can live with this…I can really live with this.  

The next track “Some Misunderstanding”, not my favorite Gene Clark song, but yet it feels so personal and I love it for that, that you see the conflict of following your convictions and your demons in pursuit of purity, even when it may hurt someone you love.  I never met Gene Clark, but my cousin musician Mark Fosson did, went to Gene’s house on an outreach call with some other musicians in the 80s. Gene’s head was all bandaged up from a terrible bender, yet he was friendly and warm and welcoming, but he just didn’t want their help, graciously declined.  I can’t even imagine how my cousin Mark, a brilliant guitar player from Kentucky, must have felt standing there looking so helplessly at Gene, at that Byrd whose records he bought as a boy, whose haircut he copied.  

Yikes — the third track is skipping rope, “The True One” has a big gash on the track. Bet that really irked Greta — thinking to herself in her smokey inner voice - “I vish I had taken better care to not scratch it…oh vell, I buy another…tomorrow…”   And then, she would have gone back to the record store, and they would have told the beautiful eccentric woman in the pink ballet flats and black Valentina straw hat, “I’m sorry, we don’t have that record anymore.”  All shipped back to Asylum.  Sigh….she would leave empty-handed and vow to place every record back in their sleeves from now on.

Last song on the LP has come.  ”Lady Of The North” is another apology, a love song written with Doug Dillard for Gene’s wife Carlie, presumably after she left him in LA, fed up and took their boys back to Mendocino after Gene fell back into old deadly behaviors.  This song could definitely create a reconciliation.  Greta knew about reconciliations.  She would understand, but she would also warn Carlie to be cautious…a man and his demons are in a battle alone.

I imagine Greta, having listened to both sides Of “No Other”, brewing a cup of tea and heading for bed.  This is more than enough to process for one day.  Even for a Goddess.

~~~ Allison Anders

Please check these links for more on “No Other” and other people and stuff mentioned herein.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Other

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Ed_Davis

http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tambourine-Man-Legacy-Byrds/dp/0879307935

http://www.gretagarbo.com/Offical_Website_of_Greta_Garbo/GARBOS_GARBOS.html

http://www.nodepression.com/profiles/blogs/interview-mark-fosson-on-digging-in-the-dust

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9RyvUGJ5Wc

Just before Christmas, I treated myself to a new and special experience — I bid in a live celebrity auction.  Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, Ca. presented a 2 day live auction of the remaining estate of classic film actress Greta Garbo.   

What made Greta’s auction more fascinating than that of any other celebrity or icon, is that Greta famously ‘went away’.  And she did it in a very determined, committed style.

Although she lived in one of the most populated cities in the world, Manhattan, and although crafty paparazzi managed to steal images of her over the years, to most of us Garbo was gone gone gone before we were even here. She left the movies, she left the press, she left the limelight and the stage, she ‘vanted’ to be left alone and so she was.

But Greta Garbo was gone so much longer than she was ever a movie superstar.  After the release of her last movie “Two-Faced Woman” in 1941, Greta lived nearly 50 more years. What was she doing all that time?

The auction revealed something delightfully disconcerting — Garbo was up to plenty!  Lots of travel, collecting, painting, wearing wonderful fashion, and wearing ordinary clothes too.  Up for auction were Pucci blouses, a Valentina suit she wore to a White House dinner for JFK.  There were also decades of tubes of paint and art supplies, Louis Vuitton luggage, ashtrays and cigarette holders, cleaning supplies you’d find in any kitchen — rubber gloves and bottle brushes, espadrilles and fur coats, handkerchiefs and scarves, paperback books…Greta continued to live and thrive,  long after she shut Hollywood out.

The question one needs to ask when you bid in an auction like this — what do I truly WANT, just something which belonged to her?  Everyone would love a dress she wore — but what would I really DO with it?   Keep it in plastic fearful of moths chewing it up? I certainly could never wear it — and we don’t build women like Garbo in my family!  A lamp?  A plate?  A pair of gloves her fingers wriggled into? 

Then — I saw it.  WOW — Greta Garbo had records!  Of course!  Why wouldn’t she?  Everyone had vinyl records, stacks of them in the 50s, 60s onward.  What would possibly be in Greta Garbo’s private record collection?   All of it was thrilling and surprising.  There were several lots of records up for auction — including one of classical records and opera, one of spoken word, one of jazz, then one of international records, and one of rock and pop records.  I bid on the last two lots.  I failed to win the bid on the international records lot (a sad loss — there were some Francoise Hardy LPs in the bunch).  But I was the winning bidder on the rock/pop records!   50 of them!  

I now own Greta Garbo’s Beatles records, her twist records (she was a big fan of the dance craze and even ventured out to the Peppermint Lounge to see it for herself on the dancefloor), her Linda Ronstadt records, and mind blowingly — her own copy of Gene Clark’s “No Other”.

So I found a great little vintage decoupaged record box from my office to put them in, and bought a little red Crosley Spinnerette portable record player so I could play them easily without hassle, and if I wished, create mp files from them too.

But I also thought it would be nice to share these records.  So that’s the intent of this blog:  with each post, I will share the experience of pulling a record from Greta’s collection and playing it all the way though, as we might imagine what Greta was doing when she was listening.

Let’s go play Greta’s records!