First off, have you seen Ratatouille? You know, that movie about rats and cooking? If you have, I'm giving you a fist bump through your computer/phone/itouch right now. If not, I think you should drive down to Wal-Mart (the best place for entertainment...usually...) and buy it. Why, do you ask? Listening to "Me and Mr. Wolf", a jazzy number by The Real Tuesday Weld, reminded me of the soundtrack. Yes, that's the point. Sure, by describing it as "jazzy", you must assume that it's a slow-tempo, crooning vocal mash-up that could bore my 92 year-old grandmother into throwing an album out the window. You would be wrong, good sir. "Me and Mr. Wolf" is upbeat, full of life, and sounds like it came right out of the Disney movie mentioned earlier (though it's not about rats, it's about wolves).
It is a conversation between the big bad wolf and the girl (Red Riding Hood, perhaps?). Wolf: Hey little girl, you look so nice with that pretty red dress and those pretty back eyes. Girl: Hello Mr. Wolf, oh what a surprise to find you here so deep in the night. The element of conversation makes this song the piece of greatness that it is. The conversing extends beyond the male and female vocalists, covering the horns that speak to each other in the second half of the song. The twisting horns have to me my favourite part of this four-minute masterpiece, and sound a little European, though it doesn't take away from the upbeat jazz of the song. I could even dance to this if I had a big bad wolf lurking around.
So what's the moral of this story? Don't talk to strangers? Don't trust a wolf dressed in your grandmother's clothes? No, it's that jazz doesn't have to be boring. It can be full of life. It can speak to itself, and can speak to you as well.
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