Iggy Pop – Préliminaires
Iggy Pop turns to jazz standards because he ”just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars.” Although he takes inspiration from Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, Préliminaires feels more like European pop than jazz. He flips “Les Feuilles Mortes,” one of the most covered jazz ballads, into a nihilistic French romance. On “King of the Dogs,” the only track that comes close to jazz, his low, raspy vocals drown out by the New Orlean jazz band. Dare I say that the Godfather of Punk ain’t got no chops for jazz? Prove me wrong, Mr. Iggy.
Well, Donny, Les Feuilles Mortes actually IS a French romantic pop song that was adopted (without given the credits) by the American music industry and turned into a jazz number which most of us think of as “Nat King Cole”‘s Autumn Leaves. It’s no more American than the Latin American Quizas quizas quizas that became Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps or Jacques Brel’s Les Moribonds all of a sudden became an “American song” called Seasons in the Sun. And the list goes on with A Mi Manera all of a sudden became Frank Sinatra’s or Paul Anka’s My Way, or Mexico’s Nuestra Tierra became This is our Land (both literally and figuratively LOL).
And then there are things that Americans generously dedicated to other people although they rightully owned them, like the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.
I hear ya. :)