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Vanilla
1979
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Cybill Shepherd got her first taste of Memphis music singing folk
songs for her High School Assembly. When she won Model of the Year
and left Memphis, she had a "perfect little southern voice".
Filming the Last Picture Show, Eileen Brennan encouraged her to
sing and suggested a teacher. Cybill studied opera and learned discipline.
After Cybill finished filming Special Delivery and Silver Bears,
her brother Bill came to Bel Air to visit. "One afternoon when
we were all alone he showed me a film he produced of the Beale Street
Musical Festival. I was flabbergasted by the whole sound of Memphis
music and I knew I had to go home and connect with it".
Orson Welles advised her to forget her singing lessons and go learn
from doing it.
August, 1978, Memphis, Tennessee, Sam Phillips Studio: Fred Ford,
the man who howled like a dog on Willie Mae "big mama"
Thorton's classic record "You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog,"
is there to produce Cybill's homecoming. He is surrounded by his
Beale Street USA Orchestra, usually 20 pieces but "mortified
down to 12 for the date."
One of the main production goals for this album is to record live
with no overdubbing. "Anything But Love" is the first
song cut. Jamil Nasser's bass becomes the hub of the wheel playing
straight ahead (up top, Charlie Freeman would have said). Fred does
an 8 bar alto solo and Cybill takes command of the last verse. Then
move over, here comes "Infinity at the Keyboard" playing
like "Patta-whiskey," dominating the moment with his incredible
piano, Phineas Newborn, Jr.
Afterward, everybody flipped.
Cybill pulled the arrangement for "My Ship" out of her
music case. Phineas said, "I don't play this much," which
might mean he hadn't played it for thirty years. Fred said, "You
can do it." They turned on the tape and that's what it is.
The last cut "Foggy Day In London Town" goes so far beyond
the classic Frank Sinatra version it reaches a frenzy. The horn
solos alternate at 4 bar intervals with Fred Ford on alto, William
"no key" Taylor on trumpet, and Irvin Reason (teacher
of Charles Llyod and Frank Strozier) on alto. That's not a train
rollin at the fade - that's Cybill Shepherd and the rocking Memphis
underground.
Cybill is "Fortune's favorite child" come home. Delta
painter Walter Anderson wrote, "When the proper relation of
two things produces a third which is completely satisfactory - that
third thing is a miracle."
This miracle will move you. Lay back and let the music do the rest.
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