Cherokee

[DudiousMax at aol.com]

Yo Neil,
            Good job. It is clear the lyric is vapid and nearly meaningless.  
The reason there are no memorable vocal versions of Cherokee is: no one 
wanted to sing that insipid adolescent longing.  And a guy should have sung 
it: Johnny Hartman, Billy Eckstine.  Now Shakespeare knew about longing.  "Oh 
to be a glove upon that hand."  etc.  And it is the treatment of the tune 
that matters.  Anybody have Wynton Marsalis in Standard Time (Vol I, or is it 
Vol II)?  He offers two takes on that album of Cherokee and he kills it.  The 
original "hit" in the thirties was by a Band fronted by a saxophonist, 
Charlie Barnett (I think.  Help me Paul.)  And it was filmed, and the 
trombones all had mutes that they played a Wah Wah backup with, and the mutes 
were made of...drum roll... Bah dah boom... rim shots... big cymbal crash, 
TOILET PLUNGERS.  Paul?  Dig it.  Now I don't mean to say that TRP was 
linking Slothrop's dive (Like the one in Trainspotting, dontcha think?) with 
the rubber toilet plunger bulbs that Charlie Barnet's band used, but stranger 
things have happened.  And after Charlie Parker, nobody dared touch that 
tune; it was like scorched earth.  What else could you do after KoKo?  We had 
to wait a generation for Wynton to "make it new" again.  So that's my take, 
but I'm only 
                                                  Max.