What’s in a Song: Cry Me a River (2)

[This is Part 2 of a two-part series about the song “Cry Me a River,” made popular, originally, in a recording released in 1955. Part 1, about the song’s history, appeared a few days ago. As I indicated there, if you hope to learn anything from this about the Justin Timberlake song of the same title, you should proceed down the street and rattle the next doorknob.]

You hear the expression every now and then: Party A is complaining bitterly about the course his life has taken, or about the weather, or about the cancellation of a favorite TV show… whatever. The complaint falls upon the ears of Party B, an especially unsympathetic listener, who often has what B believes to be even sorrier woes. B sneers and says something like: Yeah, yeah — all right. Cry me a river, why dontcha.

One measure of the phrase’s popularity: the Urban Dictionary offers no fewer than three user-supplied definitions and colorful examples (not counting references to any songs by that title; the following is copied and pasted unchanged from the UD, so brace yourself for offenses to the Mother Tongue and good taste):

to tell a moaning person to shut up and that you dont care.
your cat got ran over and your giro is late, Cry me a river love!

…an expression that means i’ve been through worse, you’re being a drama queen

person: omg my chihuahua is sick
you: cry me a river loser both of my dogs are dead.

Said in response to some ones sob story. Shortened from the full statement of “Cry me a river, build a bridge and GET THE FUCK OVER IT!”

Very old saying predating any Justin Timberflake warbles or other pop culture references. Interestingly still in common use today.

Whinger: My cars broken down and Im poor and I lost my job and my wife left me and when she left, she ran over my dog.
Cold Hard Bastard: Cry me a river buddy, cry me a river.

Whatever the specifics: Isn’t that a great metaphor?

At the Yahoo! Answers UK site, one poster provided my favorite creative explanation (an example, btw, of a mondegreen) for the phrase’s origin:

It’s actually ‘Crimea River’. An English soldier was writing home during the Crimean war and wrote “It’s terrible being away from home. I miss you all. I hate this Crimea River, it’s so dirty and depressing, but it’s the only water we have”. When his wife read it out loud to his children, they mistook the words for Cry Me A River and not Crimea River.
Source(s):
My very own Great Grandpa.

As for covers of the song, other than Julie London’s, since its official publication in 1953…

As I mentioned in Part 1, “Cry Me a River” was written with the understanding that Ella Fitzgerald would introduce it in the film Pete Kelly’s Blues. In the event, the song didn’t make it into the film. (One source, which I can no longer find, suggested that producer/director Jack Webb objected to the word “plebeian” specifically because it was unlikely to appear in a song sung by a black woman in the Kansas City of the 1920s. Whether this subtly racist non-racist story is true is anyone’s guess.)

Fitzgerald didn’t get to do her own interpretation until her 1961 studio album called Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! She handled “plebeian” just fine — twice, in fact:

(For all the clips included with this post, if streaming audio does not work for you, there’s always an alternative — clumsier, but it should work just fine: just keep an eye on the correct bracket. (Think about it.) About the little Flash audio player widget: click the Play button to begin. While the audio is playing, a row of small vertical bars at the left is the volume control, and you can change your position within the song by dragging the progress meter to the left or right. Approximate length of each clip is shown.)

[Ella Fitzgerald: This clip is 4:16 long.]

One of the more unlikely pairings of “Cry Me a River” and a performer cropped up in Mad Dogs & Englishmen, a 1970 live album by Joe Cocker. The languorous melody and melancholy lyrics are something of a round peg in the square hole of Cocker’s characteristic smooth/spastic performance style, and the intermittent boogie-woogie-barrelhouse arrangement certainly surprises. Somehow Cocker and his backup group made it work well enough for the song to reach #11 on the US Billboard Singles (“Hot 100”) chart. (In its unfavorable original review of the album, Rolling Stone declared Cocker’s version of “Cry Me a River” “in its own way as embarrassing as the original.” Umm, okay, RS.)

[Joe Cocker: This clip is 4:05 long.]

As with many songs with lyrics, at first it may be hard to visualize “Cry Me a River” as an instrumental. But the blue-noted tune lends itself perfectly to the sort of jazz interpretation associated with darkened basement nightclubs, air redolent of cigarette smoke and cynicism, men in loosened ties, and lipstick-rimmed rocks glasses.

Here’s tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon’s version:

[Dexter Gordon: This clip is 3:48 long.]

As I mentioned in Part 1, “Cry Me a River” was the first song on Julie London’s first album. Likewise, it opened another debut LP: The Barbra Streisand Album (1963). Technically, this wasn’t her first-first album — the soundtrack from I Can Get Get It for You Wholesale came out the year before. But for all intents and purposes, The Barbra Streisand Album was the first all-Barbra record — and a bestseller from the start.

What sort of performance did she choose to open her amazing career with? Says the All Music Guide to Rock:

[She] doesn’t only surpass London, she sets off a thermonuclear explosion.

Whoa, right? Hyperbole much? And yet conflicting — or at least more nuanced — views show up here and there. For instance, one blogger says (writing of Streisand’s performance of “Cry Me a River” on The Dinah Shore Show in 1963 — about the same time her album came out — a performance which is, yes, available on YouTube):

To me, the song is a sad piece, but not a vengeful one. I’ve always considered the phrase “cry me a river” to be an overly dramatic metaphor, but it was pointed out to me that the song could have an entirely different tone. The sentiment, taken a few steps further, could actually border on the psychotic. An example of this interpretation is in Barbara Streisand’s performance on the Dinah Shore show in 1963… I think Ms. Streisand’s performance is incredible, though a little disturbing.

This is an incredible interpretation. I’ve got one caveat about it, but will wait till you’ve heard it yourself:

[Barbra Streisand: This clip is 3:38 long.]

The caveat: I have to tell you that it’s overshadowed in my mind by a vague memory — maybe even a false one — of a TV or other recording of a comic bit, a routine whose premise (I think) had to do with someone learning to sing like Ms. Streisand. In it, the voice teacher is instructing the student, who hasn’t quite got the phrasing right: “RIB-uh! RIB-uh! Say RIB-uh!”

One more take on “Cry Me a River,” and then I’ll let you off the hook…

If you Google a singing group called the Harmony Sisters, you’ll find (at least) two: One is a contemporary American bluegrass group of three women vocalists and fiddle, mandolin, etc. players.

The other was a Finnish group which traveled around Europe before (and even during) World War II. According to a review of Harmony Sisters in Europe 1942-48, which I gather is (was?) an album of theirs:

“3 real sisters singing in 10 Languages: American Hits – French Chansons – Finnish Folksongs” is the letterhead on their stationery from 1942. In a photo dating back to WWII the three beauties are dressed in white crêpe dresses with golden epaulets on shoulders. The letterhead was designed for a career in the United States and was still used in 1992 by the bandleader, soprano Raija Valtonen, during her last stay in Helsinki in Hotelli Torni.

However, the American dream about a career in the entertainment business never came through for the Harmony Sisters (1934-54). Making their breakthrough through the radio (Finnish Broadcasting Company, Yleisradio). They were the first Finnish vocal group, three sisters from the city of Kotka, Vera, Maire and Raija, were the sensation of their time. They were the first professional female entertainers in Finland singing with soft modern microphone tone. During their formative years the swing music loving girls performed only in English, until they met their new conductor in Vyborg in 1937, an emigrant musician, George de Codzinsky, from St. Petersburg.

As a result of this there was a vocal trio with a versatile program and who was rocketed to fame by hits like Sataman Valot (Harbour lights)(1937), Purppurapurjeet (Red sails in the sunset) (1939) and a tango Pieni Sydän (1939). Mr. Godzinsky’s arranging skill made the angel-like and skillful vocal group change from one language to another and master the whole scale of entertainment from Wiener waltzes to folk songs, from ballads to popular hits.

After the war, the group eventually broke up. But at least one embarked on a solo career, Maire Ojonen. In 1956 she recorded “Cry Me a River” (Joet tulvimaan itke) in Finnish — preserved on YouTube, over a montage of scenes from Finnish films of the time:

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P.S. Okay, one more… Maybe not surprisingly, “Cry Me a River” seems to have been performed mostly by women singers. But I did encounter one by a — sitting down? — German Native American, named Pete Wyoming Bender. His quite good, raw-shoutin’-blues performance at times might be better titled “Ululate Me a River”:

[Pete Wyoming Bender: This clip is 6:52 long.]