Stormy Weather — Part 2
Stormy Weather—Part 2 is about a song. Stormy Weather—Part 1 is a collection of photos I took during a blizzard.
I am planning a day trip to the south shore of Lake Superior. I consider the weather; temperature, cloudiness, sunset conditions, etc. I check what the waves would be like on the days I was considering. I thought the ideal day for photography would be big waves and stormy weather. What then popped into my mind? These lyrics
Stormy weather
Since my man and I ain’t together
Keeps raining all of the time
They are from the song “Stormy Weather” sung by Etta James in 1960. “Stormy Weather” was recorded in 1960 when I was twelve years old. In my school days, I listened to a lot of music and didn’t think too much about it other than to like or dislike it. I didn’t delve any further into the nature of the music. That had to wait until I was in college and learned to be pretentious.
Anyway, back to Etta James. “Stormy Weather” is on the album At Last. I came to that album not through “Stormy Weather” but via “At Last”, a truly great song. The album is a classic. Besides “Stormy Weather” and “At Last”, it has other songs on my favorites list: “My Heart Cries” and “A Sunday Kind Of Love”. More than just favorites, these are some of my five-star favorites that I never tire of.
Etta James’s version of “At Last” was inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1999. The song was written in 1941 for a movie musical, Sun Valley Serenade, and was in the soundtrack in 1942 of another movie, Orchestra Wives. Here is a clip from Orchestra Wives.
“Stormy Weather” was written in 1933 by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. Ethel Waters first performed the song at the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem. Her performance was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Here is a great video of Lena Horne singing in the movie Stormy Weather from 1943. Horne’s version is number 30 on the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 movie songs.
“Stormy Weather” is about sadness. The lyrics express sadness as well as any song I know.
Don’t know why
There’s no sun up in the sky
. . .
Life is bad
Gloom and misery everywhere
. . .
Oh, I’m weary all of the time
The time, so weary all of the time
How many of us have had the blues so bad that we were weary all the time?
“Stormy Weather” is about separation. “At Last” is about connection and joy; another classic at expressing a basic emotion.
At last, my love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
Ooh, yeah, yeah
At last, the skies are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clover
The night I looked at you
“My Heart Cries” was written by James and Harvey Fuqua who joined her in a duet on the At Last album. “A Sunday Kind Of Love” was written in the mid-1940s by Barbara Belle, Anita Leonard, Stan Rhodes, and Louis Prima.
I once owned the album. In a perhaps misguided effort to downsize and minimize, I sold my entire LP and CD collections, not to mention all my books. I’m not a purist and have left behind my college-age pretensions. I regret one thing; the information that one could read on the backs of LPs and in the booklets enclosed in CDs. Oh well, life goes on. Carpe Diem. Keep on truckin’
Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home . . . it’s your responsibility to love it or change it.
—Chuck Palahniuk