Tinza’s Tiddley-Bits: {album covers, jazz, music, & mics}

I’ve always loved album covers…especially jazz covers. My love for jazz started early. I’d pick through my parent’s records & play them on our old record player. The album covers always fascinated me…I loved Sergio Mendez’s Fool on the Hill album, and admired the cover, until my sister Rachel told me that they were sitting on a woman’s body and you could actually see a “mummy mokey” (my younger self’s terminology for a breast). I was rather shocked & was embarrassed to play it…and was super nervous when I had friends over in the event that they should see it!

I loved jazz before I knew what it was. I’d sing with my Dad on the piano, often accompanying him on the treble or with my voice…My Dad is a brilliant piano player who composes songs in his free time, but he never learned to read music. Everything he plays is played by ear. A gift I unfortunately didn’t inherit. Every time I’m home (& when my parents are living not on a boat but in a house & have a piano at their disposal) I still accompany him.

Jenno—a dear friend of ours from the boat –brought over Harry Connick one summer when I wasn’t even a teenager yet & my love affair with him began soon after. I’d blare his music & believe he was singing it to me. His album We Are in Love reminds me most of the third & fourth leg of the third offshore voyage, as I listened to him playing in my walkman, sailing through the Caribbean and then up the eastern seaboard.

{How handsome is he? This is an album I've listened to a million times & I could listen to a million times more}

My love for Chet Baker soon followed. My sister Julia made me a mixed tape to listen to on my fourth offshore voyage (she stayed at home in love with her now husband). I listened to Chet non-stop. To begin with I thought he just sounded like a flat Harry, but his crooning wooed me along with the soft rock of the boat, and My Funny Valentine & Lets Get Lost were soon favourites.

{how apt is this album cover? I fell in love with Chet while sailing}

In High School I began spending my money on jazz albums. My first was Ella Fitzgerald’s Greatest Hits. Some of her songs made me laugh (Miss Otis Regrets, That’s why the Lady is a Tramp); some others hit closer to home. I got my Mum to buy a jazz piano book & I started learning how to play Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered, a particularly apt song for a teenager dealing with general angst caused by some crush or other.

Soon I began amassing a jazz library & learned all of the favourites on the piano, The girl from Ipanema, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Autumn Leaves, Long Ago & Far Away, Under My Skin, Our Love is Here to Stay…the list goes on.

When I moved to France right after High School I was re-introduced to Edith Piaf (she had been an important part of my French Immersion education). The little sparrow’s voice touched me, evoking a past France—a romantic France—that I longed for. Edith’s voice and her lyrics are unique & deeply touching…”non…rien de rien, non je ne regrette rien…” and also touched my own love: “le piano, il etait beau…”

{the movie la vie en rose is an excellent re-telling of Piaf's life}

Dave Brubeck & Oscar Peterson were staples in the Clark household, and truly, Canadian legends. I was fortunate to be able to see Dave Brubeck in concert with my parent’s for their anniversary a few summers ago. He shuffled onto the stage, fragile in his age, yet when he got up there, he performed as if he had the energy of a teenager…yet with the grace & experience of a man who had been doing it his whole life.