When Bob Thiele and George David Weiss wrote “What a Wonderful World” in 1967, the man lined up to sing it was not Louis Armstrong, but Tony Bennett. Fate dropped it into the crinkly hands of Satchmo when Bennett — peddler of schmaltz that he is — vetoed the track on account of its sentimentality. Taking the same name (more or less) as a great Sam Cooke (and later Heman’s Hermits) hit from less than a decade before, by rights the song should have failed commercially and artistically, buckling under its own mawkish sogginess. But sputtered from the mouth of a 66-year-old son of a whore and a drunk from squalid Uptown New Orleans, the thing became miraculously credible. Now, after 43 years of media saturation and consistently dismal covers (excepting some predominantly piss-taking versions by The Flaming Lips and then Shane MacGowan and Nick Cave in the early 90s), it’s almost inconceivable that there would be any life left to wring out of the song. Yet somehow Robert Wyatt, the grizzled old British commie prog-wizard of Canterbury, manages precisely that, granting it lost vitality by passing it through his musty veil of a tenor on the final track of For the Ghosts Within, his recent collaboration with firebrand Israeli/British sax man Gilad Atzmon and versatile violinist Ros Stephen.
The three collaged this record from a variety of sources: the majority of entries are torn from the songbook of American jazz standards, but alongside stand originals by both Atzmon and Stephen, reinterpretations of two old Wyatt tracks, and, bizarrely, a bit of mutant hip-hop. However, the vibe remains fairly consistent. For the Ghosts Within never reaches the briny chaotic depths of Wyatt’s more experimental work, but it hardly degrades into flat cocktail jazz either, thanks to the prominence of Stephen’s Sigamos String Quartet in the arrangements, the global purview of all involved, and of course Wyatt’s magnificently weather-beaten voice and flair for elegant idiosyncrasy.
“Where Are They Now,” the aforementioned beat-laden black sheep, tugs at your collar for a reaction. It is, in effect, a horrific reed-bedecked remix of Wyatt’s “Dondestan,” supplied with a barrage of furious Arabic by two members of a Palestinian hip-hop group. The explanation being that the original song was written in support of the anti-occupation cause and that Atzmon, who supplements the vexingly jaunty track here, happens to be a fervent Anti-Zionist whose writings have become de rigueur in circles of like-minded activists. That’s all well and good, and were the piece not an absolute earsore, it might do more than spin heads and help combat the rising atmosphere of white-people-dinner-party music.
The political message emerges slightly less intrusively through the lyrics and instrumentation of the title track, written by Atzmon and led by his adhan-aping soprano sax, Palestinian shepherd flute, and shadowy clarinet. Both Atzmon’s playing and presence on the record come off as overbearing more often than not, and anything that overshadows Robert Wyatt can safely be considered a con. Stephen’s additions, however, uniformly elevate the record. There’s a smoky richness to her work that fits with with her familiarity with tango. Her turn as primary composer, “Lullaby for Irena,” synthesizes disparate elements — the Middle-Eastern colorings, jazz base, typical Wyatt-ness, and so on — better than any other song on the album.
However, the trio is at its finest when tackling simpler subjects, on its fairly straightforward reinterpretations of ubiquitous classics. The opening version of “Laura” possesses a drizzly sweep that hearkens back to the standard’s origins as the overture to a 1944 noir. The airy, un-affected purity of Wyatt’s vocals plays against expectations of jazz singing, uncovering hidden naïvete in music intended to feel sensual and metropolitan. Even in territory so distinctly American, the man maintains every inflection of his accent. He imbues “Lush Life,” first composed by a 16-year-old Billy Strayhorn, with a lonesomeness that’s simultaneously boyish and senescent, while Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight” becomes a delicate interplay of whistling and and accordion. Wyatt, with the help of his collaborators, displays a preternatural understanding of the subtext of these standards, treating them not as showpieces but as raw emotional emissions, restoring a fair bit of the impact dulled by a century’s recycling.
Some may still find “What A Wonderful World” maudlin. Despite the understandable grimaces that the melody prompts in those of us more sensitive to pandering sentimentality, Wyatt’s version reaches a gut-level pocket of emotional weakness that few others have managed to access with the song. To hear these blankly optimistic words from a man who’s seen his fare share of the abyss, now approaching the age of Louis Armstrong when he first recorded it (albeit with a polar opposite voice), gives the song an undeniable pull. For the Ghosts Within provides another oddly-shaped window into the labyrinthine mind of Robert Wyatt, nearly as vital in its own way as Shleep or Rock Bottom.
More about: Wyatt, Atzmon, Stephen
