At first, it sounds like the jazz soundtrack to your favorite “noir” film. But then you realize that it isn’t quite jazz at all but the orchestrated sound of six accomplished jazz musicians playing an eclectic but clearly defined original music. On stage, the band looks just like it sounds: very sharp suits in different shades of sharkskin. The music is adult and urbane. The grooves are soul deep. The lyrics are a disconcerting mélange of highly crafted stories that cast a cinematic spell. And singer, Marilyn Older, delivers these short stories, these songs, with an easy and sophisticated grace. The blend of upright bass, an old Gretsch drum kit, a fat Gibson electric guitar, trombone and sax make up a sound that rocks and swings and grooves as hard as that Stax/Volt 45rpm that is still spinning in your head.
I Don’t Want To
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you applied a three year-old’s simple and VERY effective arguments to your own adult issues? This song explains it all. Gary and John are something of a circus act, here spiraling around each other like the Flying Wallendas of brass, astonishing the crowd as they land on a dime.
Second Hand Smoke
Those guys over there… THEY’RE the ones grooving along without a care in the world. Just once I would like to be the one having the oblivious great time. Gary’s sax solo on this is just the right easy mix of cha cha and smoke.
Like Young
This Andre Previn song from 1959 captures every cool thing you will want to say at the next perfect moment. “Now we’re riding a rainbow to cloudsville,” - if you can find the right time to say this, you will know you are finally living right.
Pretty Face on a Mission
Last year, Charlie was asked to score a documentary called Bama Girl, a film about electing the Homecoming Queen at the University of Alabama. The director asked for a song for the final credits. Apparently Homecoming Queens are the limit of his ability to write from the female point of view. He asked Marilyn to take a crack at it. Here is her take on what that sort of royalty is all about.
I Got the Girl
As often as Charlie Barnett writes from the distaff perspective, it is only fair turnabout that in this song we get to hear Marilyn Older writing from the male side.
Blackbird
This is one of the songs that, once upon a time, every guitarist was obliged to learn. And perhaps it was overplayed for a while. Including an effortless, thoughtful Dixieland section lifts this Beatles classic gently out of the cover category into becoming a bird of an altogether different feather.
A Little More
This is a Summer song. It is about taking things as they come. Tommy and Pete are as locked as locked gets. There are only three guys as groovy as drummer Tommy Barrick. And the other two live in Argentina.
Upon Changing the Strings on My Guitar
Sometimes a song just comes out like it simply had to be there. Or maybe that it was always there. This is one of those.
I’m Going to Kiss That Boy
This is the thought that ALL men hope ALL women have.
Everybody Feels the Heat
Chill is the vibe. And chill is the lesson.
The Trail of His Kisses
A stalker song.
Blue (The Distracted Reader)
This is as much a poem put to music as anything. John Jensen’s haunting trombone solo is joined by Gary Gregg’s obligato passage on clarinet. It is all massaged by guest Bill Deputy’s cloud-like wash of lap steel. I’m not sure there has ever been a better Chaise Lounge match than Marilyn’s voice and this song.
Dude, She’s Waiting
This is a song written just to see if the word “dude” could actually be used in a song.
Big Deal on M Street
Bassist Pete Ostle lifted this tune from the soundtrack to Big Deal on Madonna Street, an Italian film from the 1960s. Knowing instinctively that this would be a perfect song for Chaise Lounge is the sort of agile intellectual and aesthetic leap that sometimes only he is able to make. It is beautifully arranged here by Paul Murtha.
No One is Better than You
A lesson in punctuation. Oh the difference a well-placed comma can make in the ongoing skirmish between men and women.
Mood Swing
How does Marilyn do this? Sound so young and so completely urbane at the same time? This track goes through and past any sort of retro-groovy lounge vibe and becomes a mod anthem for anyone with a relationship that just won't sit still.
Ipso Facto
Tommy Barrick learned so very much about percussion from Flintstones re-runs. And how is it that John Jensen on trombone and Gary Gregg on tenor sax can play madly at the same time, and you can listen to either of them or both of them? Or just those cool bongos?
Gypsy in My Soul
With only the first four notes Pete Ostle swings harder than most do in a lifetime. Really… just listen to those first four notes. Everything else that follows just has to go the way it does.
That Old Black Magic
Marilyn Older, the cool center of a swinging hurricane.
Euphoric Acid
This is a tune that Charlie had in his head for years - searching for the right lyrics. It took the combination of Marilyn and John playing and singing in unison to convince him that the only words necessary were ba and da.
Burnin’ Down the House
Who knew that bongos and brushes would serve this song so well? We did.
About Sex
Ahhhh, what we say and then what we really think. This is dedicated to Sigmund Freud.
Girl Talk
Dig this. Dig the bass line. Dig the lyrics.
In Walked MO
Again with the ba and the da. John and Marilyn sing and play as one. And check out the 5 part soli section. Just beautiful.
Heatwave
What year is this? 1951? John's trombone solo could be right out of a Perez Prado collection.
One
Thus proving that any song, given the right treatment, can swing. There is one bass drum note in this that is so right that only Tommy Barrick could have played it.
Bom
This song has been featured in several films. Is it the lyrics? Or maybe the ultimate cool bossa feel.
Close Enough
With this song Marilyn has written a song to fall in love by. She asks: “Are you nervous?” “Are you quite shy?” Why is it we all desperately raise our hands to answer her?
Hit the Road to Dreamland
Dean Martin would be proud.
Lonely Is As Lonely Does
Charlie’s song is one of most requested songs of 1957… or certainly would have been. “A little make-up and a brand new hat.” Is that all it takes, really?
2002 - 4 Movements - Duration: 33 minutes
A musical road trip. My parents used to drive us up Rt. 1 from Virginia to Maine each Summer. This is my memory of that trip. This has been performed as individual movements. Especially “The Detour, the Argument, and Finally, the Map” (movement 3) and “Home” (movement 4)
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
2001 - 4 Movements - Duration: 30 minutes
This piece is a blast to play and to conduct. The violinist Janice Martin knows this piece well and is available to play it.
2007 - 5 Movements - Duration: 15 minutes
Five movements. A misty, romantic piece about going to a tiny carnival in a small town at night. The movements are based loosely on the experiences of the attractions at the carnival: Ferris Wheel, Shooting Gallery, etc. Ben Redwine plays this piece really well and would certainly be available to perform this again. (a shameless plug)
2007 - 3 Movements - Duration: 18 minutes
I wrote this for Osman Kivrak, who is Turkish. And although each movement is named after a town in Turkey the music itself is more of a western tourist’s look at the sights and sounds of Turkey. A postcard, if you will. The middle movement is one of the prettiest pieces of music I have ever written.
2007 - 1 Movement - Duration: 15 minutes
I have always wanted only two things in my film music career: 1. to write a Sweeping Western and 2. to score a pirate movie. This is the pirate movie… without the visuals. It is programmatic, although I have yet to determine how much of that information to share with the audience?
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