Good, Better, Best: “Send In the Clowns” (Part 2)

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

 

After all, the whole idea of art is bringing order out of chaos. It’s the organization of material and that really is what making a puzzle is. – Stephen Sondheim

 

More than once, Stephen Sondheim said, “I have a puzzle mind.” He loved cryptic crossword puzzles, designing a few dozen for New York magazine in the late ’60s. He used to run murder-mystery games, and cowrote (with Anthony Perkins) a movie about one that turned real, 1973’s The Last of Sheila. (That was a big influence on the Knives Out movie Glass Onion, in which Sondheim has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo.) And he thought of his songs as puzzles, where he was given clues and worked toward solving them. “Send In the Clowns,” from his 1973 production of A Little Night Music, may well have been his greatest solution.

To begin with, Sondheim had to write for Glynis Johns, who had what Sondheim described as “a nice little silvery voice” and whom a less generous critic called “that cousin of bullfrogs.” He structured the song with Johns’ limits in mind – lots of space to breathe, short phrases, words ending in consonants so there would be little sustain. He gave it a very pretty melody, so a performer could sing the song or act it. He imbued the lyrics with rueful loss for missed opportunities that would strike the heart of any listener. And, like all the songs in A Little Night Music, he set it to waltz time.

“Send In the Clowns” became the unqualified hit of the show, thanks in no small part to Johns’ delivery of it. In The Book of Musicals, Arthur Jackson wrote, “Her odd little non-singing voice added the true heartbreak quality called for in the context of the story.” It remains a smash onstage – Judi Dench’s rendition approaches legendary. But it was out of the story’s context that “Send In the Clowns” truly began to soar, as artists fell over themselves rushing to cover it. Sondheim’s songs were often bound to the show by being plot-specific, but this was one song that made the leap from stages to studios and back again with unusual flair.

Seuras Og’s post found three quality covers from the more than half a thousand released versions out there. Without taking anything away from those excellent selections, I would like to add three more.

The Lorez Alexandria version is good.

The Lou Rawls version is better.

And the Mark Kozelek version is best.

Lorez Alexandria – Send In the Clowns (Glynis Johns cover)

Lorez Alexandria is a jazz vocalist who, these days, is best known for not being well known. Or, at least, not as well known as she should be. Her talent comes through loud and clear on her cover of “Send In the Clowns.” She weaves her voice over and throughout a brisk bebop arrangement, sometimes playful, sometimes hurt, ever moving. It’s not a waltz anymore, but boy does it dance.

Lou Rawls – Send In the Clowns (Glynis Johns cover)

“Soul is truth,” Lou Rawls said in a 1968 interview, “no matter where it comes from, no matter how it is presented.” That would qualify his cover of “Send In the Clowns” as soul music, even without the trimmings we associate with that branch of R&B. The musical arrangement is very tasteful, but make no mistake – Rawls’s vocal is the star of the show here. Isn’t it rich? Why, yes, it is – teasing out some words, rushing others, always surefooted whenever it lands. Truly, his take is full of truth and soul.

Mark Kozelek – Send In the Clowns (Glynis Johns cover)

There are a lot of things that I like about Mark Kozelek’s cover of “Send In the Clowns.” I like its gentility, Kozelek’s warm voice and acoustic guitar making for a soft bed. I like the hypnotic figure he plays on the guitar, very lulling – “you in midair,” indeed. But I think what I like best about it is the lack of resolution. He simply stops playing the instrument, leaving out the “Don’t bother – they’re here” and “Well, maybe next year” lines. It conveys both loss and lost, and the empty space where the answer usually goes makes the question “Where are the clowns?” that much emptier.

Click here to watch Stephen Sondheim himself, full of kindness and insightfulness, teaching “Send In the Clowns” to a master class.

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