Marlene Dietrich

Think BLACK and I don’t mean AC/DC, Siouxsie Sioux, or Metallica

Think of a dark smoke-filled cabaret in Berlin or Vienna or sitting in front of the big screen during the 1920’s Hollywood glory days. This is the black that I speak of.
The smoky-rasp of this femme fatale will conjure up images of sitting in the Cabaret Voltaire in the late 20’s listening to a jazz act while Hugo Ball reads out the Dada Manifesto in a back room to the likes of Kandinsky, Klee, and de Chirico.
Her seductive sound would have swooned fearful but curious ears, while her unmatched glamour of the time melted hearts of men and women alike, while they chomped away on buttered popcorn and NECCO wafers.
There was no match worldwide in the first half of the twentieth century for the original blonde bombshell they called, Marlene.

Marlene Dietrich: Cocktail Hour

Believe me when I say, I’m not into show tunes and I’m not into musicals. Matter of fact, I’m totally freaked out by men in tights and cowboy hats singing about Oklahoma, but there is something really interesting in listening to the early songs and sound of black and white film and she is the epitome of that time and music.

For me, her singing strikes a cord for a time I feel certain that I should have been born to.
Dark cafes filled with patrons shouting through smoke who reek of bathtub gin and turpentine with only their vision of change in their pockets.
The world was caught between two world wars and the creative class was the underground. This was the place for the weird, the wild, and the new beginning. A new beginning for a changing world.

Her music is that bridge. The bridge between that noir or black coffeehouse past of Europe and the black and white movies or silverscreen of post-war America Hollywood.

Big movies, big productions, and big stars are where it was going and a former dance girl born Berlin was the connection.

Marlene Dietrich brought these two worlds together.

This isn’t driving music nor background music for a “party like a rock star” setting, but if you’re nostalgic or feel you’re an anachronism, you’ll enjoy this.