http://www.box.net/shared/fng0kve6vxnsne287sad
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| George Boulanger, King of the Gypsy Violin Colosseum Records CRLP 200, New York, 1955 |
Our family home had a painting of a guitar playing gypsy boy with a tear in his eye in the living room. It was the only painting we had. Many living rooms in the Netherlands in the 1960s had a painting similar to ours. As a young boy paintings like this were synonymous for me with the whole of painting, the whole of art for that matter. Not until years later my horizon broadened and I knew our gypsy painting was kitsch, art for the masses. In that same decade, and well into the 70s, gypsy records were popular in our country too, on the continent, and from what I find in thrift stores these days, in the United States as well. A gypsy violinist was synonymous for virtuosity in music. Times have changed, the gypsies go by the name of the Rom people now, their music celebrated in the most advanced cultural cycles, but the records of the 60s, made for a mass audience, commercial as they are, still hold moments of brilliance, magic, and that equivalent of the “tear-in-the-eye painting” for me.
My latest 25 cent gypsy record is one of George Boulanger, the “King of the Gypsy Violin”. The best tunes are like that painting on the wall of my parent’s house, a tear running down the cheek. The tracks on the record are partially standards and partially Boulanger’s own compositions. The stand-out track is Gloomy Sunday, a song recorded by many singers in the western world. Billie Holiday’s version is one of sheer beauty. I did not know until recently that it originally was a Hungarian song, written by Rezsö Soress. Gloomy Sunday in Hungarian is Szomolá Vasárnap. On Boulanger’s record the title is listed in English, Boulanger is from Romania.
With friends we sometimes play the game “YouTube-off”, in which each participant selects a YouTube video within a certain category, the participants then vote on the winner. In the category “sad” I nominated the song Szomolá Vasárnap in the version by the Hungarian actress Erika Marozsán. The video was just a still, a photograph of a sad statue of a woman’s face that was rained upon (so it looked like tears).
It didn’t get any votes :_(
But I didn’t take the opportunity to elaborate on the song’s history. It was written in the direst of circumstances and myth has it that many people committed suicide after hearing the song. It may well be the saddest song ever written.
My latest 25 cent gypsy record is one of George Boulanger, the “King of the Gypsy Violin”. The best tunes are like that painting on the wall of my parent’s house, a tear running down the cheek. The tracks on the record are partially standards and partially Boulanger’s own compositions. The stand-out track is Gloomy Sunday, a song recorded by many singers in the western world. Billie Holiday’s version is one of sheer beauty. I did not know until recently that it originally was a Hungarian song, written by Rezsö Soress. Gloomy Sunday in Hungarian is Szomolá Vasárnap. On Boulanger’s record the title is listed in English, Boulanger is from Romania.
With friends we sometimes play the game “YouTube-off”, in which each participant selects a YouTube video within a certain category, the participants then vote on the winner. In the category “sad” I nominated the song Szomolá Vasárnap in the version by the Hungarian actress Erika Marozsán. The video was just a still, a photograph of a sad statue of a woman’s face that was rained upon (so it looked like tears).
It didn’t get any votes :_(
But I didn’t take the opportunity to elaborate on the song’s history. It was written in the direst of circumstances and myth has it that many people committed suicide after hearing the song. It may well be the saddest song ever written.
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