Blue Valentines Part I

Je Ne Regrette Rien

I get along without you very well

Of course I do

Except perhaps in Spring

But I should never think of Spring

For that would surely break my heart in two

Nina Simone

In 1939, Hoagy Carmichael composed a melody to a poem called I Get Along Without You Very Well. A few years earlier he’d been handed the poem by a student at Indiana University. It was signed only J.B and the student author remained a mystery for many years. The song then gathered dust until 1952 when Jane Russell and Carmichael performed it in the film Las Vegas Story. After national Radio and Newspaper pleas for the writer to come forward the author was revealed as Jane Brown Thompson… Sadly, she passed away on the night before Dick Powell introduced the song on national radio.

Hoagy Carmichael and Lauren Bacall singing ‘Am I Blue’ in Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not… a song later recorded by everyone from Billie Holliday to Eddie Cochran… This one, by Ray Charles…

Baby please don’t go

Back to New Orleans

You know I love you so

Big Joe Williamson

Goodbye is Too Good a Word…

Artist, activist & muse, Suze Rotolo, appeared arm in arm with her man on the cover of ‘The Freewheelin Bob Dylan’ in May 1963. Rotollo, the inspiration for 'Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright' and 'Tomorrow is a Long Time' amongst others, died at her home on February 24th 2011, following a long-term illness…

She had a smile that could light up a street full of people and was extremely lively, had a particular type of voluptuousness—a Rodin sculpture come to life. She reminded me of a libertine heroine. She was just my type. Bob Dylan

Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin'

Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin'

Only if she was lyin' by me

Then I'd lie in my bed once again

Tomorrow is a long time - Bob Dylan

Folksinger Paul Clayton was a close friend and mentor to Bob Dylan. In 1962, Clayton’s song, Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I'm Gone) and the prolonged absence in Italy of Suze Rotolo were the inspiration for Dylan’s, Don't Think Twice (It's Alright).

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn.

Look out your window and I'll be gone...

On March 30, 1967, Clayton, thought by some, the missing link between Woody Guthrie and Dylan, committed suicide by taking an electric heater into the bathtub with him. Another folksinger Barry Kornfeld stated that Clayton was gay, "that it was sadly, something he couldn’t live with...Paul had a tremendous crush on Dylan. I believe that It Ain't Me, Babe was written for Paul.”

It ain't me babe
No, no, no, it ain't me babe

It ain't me you're lookin' for babe

Your baby doesn't love you anymore

It's over... It's over... It's over...

The Great Roy Orbison – The voice of God… When they need to know about heartbreak, Lefty Wilbury is the ‘to go to guy…' Only the Lonely, In Dreams, Love Hurts, and Blue Bayou being just the tip of the iceberg…

Crying…

Daniel Craig – Licensed to Cry

Co-Star of ‘The Crying Game’ Forest Witaker
Photographed by Sam Taylor Wood as part of her ‘Crying Men’ series.

A top 5 UK hit in 1964, Dave Berry’s, The Crying Game experienced a new lease of life in Neil Jordan’s film of the same name in 1992… Berry’s version was covered on a number of occasions but never bettered. The most gorgeous of guitar solos was played by the legendary Big Jim Sullivan, known as ‘Big Jim’ to distinguish him from fellow session musician ‘Little Jim’ Page who played rhythm guitar on the track and later went on to do quite well in Led Zeppelin.

Big Jim Sullivan worked on more than a thousand hit records in a career spanning three decades, playing on Ferry Across the Mersey, Ichycoo Park, It’s Not Unusual, Make it Easy On Yourself.’ The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, ‘Something in the Air,’ ’Je T’aime…Moi Non Plus’ and Cilla Black’s cover of Anyone Who Had a Heart, to name drop just a few.

Don't Gimme No Lip Child - the flip side to The Crying Game, was a regular part of the set in early Sex Pistols shows… subsequently given a release when they were flogging a dead bass player in 1979…

When Dionne Warwick recorded the original version of 'Anyone Who Had a Heart' at Bell Sound Studios in Manhattan with Bacharach and David in November 1963, 'Walk On By' was recorded in the same session…

Six years later Isaac Hayes walked on by for the Hot Buttered Soul album…

Laundromat?

You’re damn right!

Isaac Hayes - August 20, 1942 - August 10, 2008

It should be a while before I see Dr. Death

So it would sure be nice if I could get my breath

Well I'm not the crying or the whining kind

Till I hear the whistle of the 309

Johnny Cash

These Foolish Things

And still those little things remain

That bring me happiness or pain

Sooner or later… everyone stops smoking…

The beauty of quitting is, now that I've quit,

I can have one, 'cause I've quit.

Tom Waits – Jim Jarmusch's ‘Coffee and Cigarettes’

Take a walk on the wild side

So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying...

I smoke because it's bad... it's really simple.

Damien Hirst

Rock 'n' Roll Suicide

Subliminal...

A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces,

An airline ticket to romantic places,

And still my heart has wings...

These foolish things remind me of you...

‘These Foolish Things’ is a song about Jean Ross, the inspiration for Christopher Isherwood's ‘divinely decadent’ Sally Bowles in ‘Goodbye to Berlin.' 

Jean Ross

Liza Minnelli's fabulous Sally Bowles

Still lingering in 1930’s Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler was an anti-smoking zealot; believing smoking to be “decadent” and equal to “racial degeneracy” and that it was a sin for the master race to light up.

Seeing his highest officials as the obvious role models they were, he ordered them all to go cold turkey on tobacco... He even had propaganda machine remove a cigarette from the photos of comrade Stalin when he met with Nazi envoy, Joachim von Ribbentrop...

Only recently, similarly dark revisionist politically correct shenanigans had US Poster companies photoshopping the cigarette out of Paul McCartney’s hand on the cover of the Beatles Abbey Road cover… without, it should be said, the permission of  McCartney.

I'm so tired, I'm feeling so upset

Although I'm so tired I'll have another cigarette

And curse Sir Walter Raleigh

He was such a stupid get.

Lennon & McCartney

Sir Walter Raleigh, on-off favourite and confidante to Queen Elizabeth I, well known for popularising tobacco in England, smoked his last pipe in October 1618 when he was beheaded at Whitehall for his alleged involvement in a plot against King James I.

"Let us dispatch", he said to his executioner. "At this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear."

Upon seeing the axe that would behead him, he said: "This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries." His final words were: "Strike, man, strike!"

As early as 1605, King James I (who was never a fan of Raleigh) put the taxes on tobacco up by 4,000% hoping to convince people to quit a practice he considered, “…loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs.”

And yet…it’s hard to take the romance out of a cigarette…

But Tipalet took a shot…

There’s no denying that smoking has its dangers…

Smoking… Gun…

“We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug...” - 1963 internal memo from Addison Yeaman, executive vice president of Brown and Williamson, president of Council for Tobacco Research in the USA.

Many other leading brands will also be your best friend...

Cinematic...

Look! No hands...

The say he looked undressed without a cigarette...

Bogart died of cancer of the throat brought on by smoking, aged 57. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him the greatest male film star of all time.

Bogart smoked untipped Chesterfields... 

So did Rita Hayworth... Fire down below...

Deneuve by Helmut Newton

Dieu Fumeur de Havanes

America and the Britain always smoked light tobacco - "blondes" or blonds, as the French refer to Virginia cigarettes... In France they smoke brunettes... 'brunes.' Jean Nicot, France's ambassador to Portugal introduced tobacco to the French court in the 16th Century, his name would eventually be immortalised in the word nicotine… At the time he suggested it would ease the Queen’s (Catherine de' Medici’s) migraines.

But still... those little things remain.

 Even though... 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.' – Sigmund Freud

Do you mind if I don’t smoke?

Groucho Marx