This is a somewhat off-beat disc for Marston to bring out but
it’s nevertheless very welcome. Elsie Houston was born in Rio
de Janeiro in 1902 to an American father and a Brazilian mother.
Early studies were subsequently augmented by a period in Germany,
training with Lilli Lehmann, and after her there were studies
with Ninon Vallin. It was in Paris in the mid 1920s that Houston
was introduced to the songs of her native Brazil and her direction
was decisive – away from opera and toward song and Brazilian
music. Her first records were of music by Villa-Lobos, made
in Paris in 1928, with the composer’s wife accompanying, but
her career was somewhat peripatetic and undercut by domestic
problems, though she continued to perform widely and record.
In 1937 she made New York her home, and whilst she was spectacularly
successful there at the 1940 Festival of Brazilian Music she
did not live long enough to enjoy the renown that she garnered.
She committed suicide in 1943. All these and other salient facts
are well outlined in Marston’s extensive booklet.
What kind of artist she was mattered very much to the more high-brow
auditors at the time. That she wasn’t a conventional classical
singer, despite her eminently ‘classical’ training, was clearly
a sore point for some. And yet what kind of classical singer
would you have wished to hear in the Brazilian songs she published,
performed and recorded? She was her own kind of singer, with
varied influences recognisable in a flexible, stylistically
apt vocal armoury. Back in 1928 those Villa-Lobos songs are
pert and authoritative with a well-defined sense of rhythm.
All four songs fitted two sides of a 10” disc. Back in Rio she
recorded four more songs, Brazilian ones this time in her own
arrangement. These are full of vitality and light charm. The
percussion and clarinet accompaniment adds variety and her tongue-twisting
O barão da Bahia a delight – a kind of parlando folk
delivery. The distant trumpet in this session is a demerit.
Back in Paris in 1933 she recorded three more folk songs. These
are better recorded and there’s a saxophone player on board.
Berceuse Africano-Bresilienne is a particular highlight,
and it must have been particularly delightful to have seen her
in concert – she wore vivid clothes, often green. Maybe her
most famous recording is Jongo, which she set down
in New York in 1938 for Liberty Music Shop. Perhaps we would
now call these kinds of songs ‘World Music’ but however it’s
categorised one can savour the vibrancy, colour, rhythmic precision,
variety of attacks, and sheer sense of fun that Houston evoked
– not least the ‘quacks’ in Jongo. There’s even an
example of Fado in these sessions, as well.
We are very fortunate that a collector taped a set of unissued
recordings made at around this time, because the original discs
seem to have vanished. Though they are a little dim and there’s
some hiss, they are not too bad and to have seven unpublished
tests of music by Villa-Lobos, Joaquín Nin, Ravel (Sur l’herbe)
and Nilvar is a tremendous coup. To hear Houston sing the Brazilian
Blues cum Gospel of Villa-Lobos’ Xangô is a real joy.
Her Ravel will remind one of her studies with Vallin, perhaps.
But one of my favourite of all Houston discs is that of Mon
Ami, a chanson that operates on a simple piano scale, accompanied
by cello, above which her voice rises and falls with true Gallic
intensity.
In New York in 1941 she made her last series of records. There’s
a haunting, melancholy Foi numa noite calmosa (No. 5 Modinha
Carioca) arranged by Luciano Gallet and Tayêras (Song
and dance of the Mulatresses from Bahia) which is the kind
of thing popularly associated with Carmen Miranda and her vogue
- though she was never an ethnomusicologist! Houston, meanwhile,
could perform these Brazilian numbers with authenticity and
flair whilst also continuing to perform the music of Villa-Lobos.
The last music in this disc, in fact, is an unpublished 1941
recording of his Siete canciones populares Españolas
with Pablo Miguel as the pianist. It would be interesting to
know the circumstances of this recording, and why it was never
issued, but there’s nothing in the booklet notes to help us.
Certainly the songs provide a fitting, appropriate envoi to
an unclassifiable singer who stamped her mark on the music of
her native country, and beyond.
Jonathan Woolf
Gramophone Company, Paris 20 June 1928
Desejo [Seresta No. 10] (Villa-Lobos) 0:47
Na paz do outono [Seresta No. 6] (Villa-Lobos) 1:33
(BT4114-1) P760
Realejo [Seresta No. 12] (Villa-Lobos) 0:41
Estrela do céu é lua nova (Villa-Lobos) 1:12
(BT4111-1) P760
Brazilian Columbia, Rio de Janeiro, early 1930
Côco dendê, trapiá (arranged by Houston) 1:16
Ai! Sabiá da mata (arranged by Houston) 2:17
(380885-1) 7050-B
O barão da Bahia (Maria Amelia Barros) 3:11
(380830-1) 7014-B
Cadeé minha pomba rola (arranged by Houston) 3:15
(380832-2) 7014-B
Gramophone Company, Paris 26 September 1933
Eh! Jurupanan [Côco] (arranged by Houston) 3:05
(OPG 1016-1) K7055
Berceuse Africano-Bresilienne (arranged by Houston) 1:01
Oia o sapo [Embolada] (arranged by Houston) 2:05
(OPG 1017-1) K7055
Liberty Music Shop, New York
Jongo (composer unknown) 2:34
June 1938; (1757) L232
Fado (composer unknown) 2:39
June 1938; (1758) L232
Toda p’ra você (Fernandez) 2:38
Recording date and matrix unknown; Unpublished test
Xangô (Villa-Lobos)1:17
Recording date and matrix unknown; Unpublished test
Villancico Andaluz (Joaquin Nin)1:50
Recording date and matrix unknown; Unpublished test
Villancico Gallego (Nin) 1:16
Recording date and matrix unknown; Unpublished test
Villancico Castellano (Nin) 1:19
Recording date and matrix unknown; Unpublished test
Sur l’herbe (Ravel) 1:58
Recording date and matrix unknown; Unpublished test
Quand je chante cette melodie (Nilvar) 2:10
Recording date and matrix unknown; Unpublished test
Mon ami (Jamblan/Herpin) 3:01
July 1939; (R163-1) L263
The cherry tree (S.L.M. Barlow) 2:58
July 1939; (R164-1) L263
RCA Victor, New York1941
Foi numa noite calmosa [No. 5 Modinha Carioca] (arranged by
Luciano Gallet) 4:01
17 January 1941; (CS-060345-1) 13667
Bahia [Carateristica] (Alvaro Moreira/Hekel Tavares) 1:51
Danza de caboclo [Côco] (arranged by Tavares) 0:50
24 January 1941; (CS-060371-1) 13667
Bia-ta-tá [Côco] (arranged by Tavares) 1:23
Benedicto pretinho (arranged by Tavares) 1:01
24 January 1941; (CS-060372-2) 13668
Berimbau, Op. 4 (Manuel Bandeira/Jayme Ovalle) 3:15
24 January 1941; (CS-060373-1) 13668
Chariô [Tres potos de Santo, Op. 10, No. 1] (Jayme Ovalle) 1:03
Aruanda [Tres potos de Santo, Op. 10, No. 2] (Jayme Ovalle)
1:05
Estrella do Mar [Tres potos de Santo, Op. 10, No. 3] (Jayme
Ovalle) 1:32
24 January 1941; (CS-060374-1) 13669
Tayêras [Song and dance of the Mulatresses from Bahia] (arranged
by Gallet) 1:39
Bambalelê [Song from Pernambuco] (arranged by Gallet) 1:22
January 1941; (CS-060375-1) 13669
Canção do carreiro [Seresta No. 8] (Villa-Lobos) 4:21
17 January 1941; (CS-060344-1) 17978
Siete canciones populares Españolas (Traditional, arranged by
de Falla)
El paño moruno 1:14
Seguidilla murciana 1:19
Asturiana 2:25
Jota 3:20.
Nana 1:12
Canción 0:59
Polo 1:29
18 April 1941; (CS-063377-1, CS-063378-1, CS-063379-1, and CS-063380-1)
unpublished
Elsie Houston (soprano)
Lucilia Guimarães Villa-Lobos (piano); Pablo Miguel (piano)
and other accompanists
Elsie Houston (soprano)
