Natasha Miller: Press

“...part of the fabric of your lives...”

The rain poured down outside on March 21, but inside Yoshi’s the music was hot and the feelings were warm.
Alamedan Natasha Miller returned to Yoshi’s that rainy Monday night with new Bobby Sharp songs to debut. Miller’s first CD of Sharp’s songs, “I Had A Feeling: The Bobby Sharp Songbook,” was released in 2004. The March 21 concert was recorded live, and some tracks from the performance will be included on Miller’s next CD of Sharp’s music, “Don’t Move,” slated for release in August 2005. Miller’s 8 PM set at Yoshi’s was sold out and the 10 PM set was nearly full. “I have fans!” said Miller at the end of the evening.
The concert opened with an instrumental, “Bobby’s Bounce,” then Miller came on to sing “A Real Swinging Affair,” released on the previous CD. The first several numbers showcased the delicate, vulnerable side of Miller’s vocal range. Later in the set, when she sang, “Don’t Set Me Free,” Miller demonstrated vocal power more than capable of standing up to a horn section and drummer that were not holding back.
Most of the “new” songs were actually written years ago, and Sharp had kept them, “in the closet, the piano stool, under the bed.” The songs should have seen the light of day years ago, yet they do not sound dated. For example, Miller said that one of the debut songs, “Snow Covers the Mountain,” would have made a good theme song for “Cold Mountain,” a recent film that starred Nicole Kidman. Miller and Sharp sang “As The Years Come and Go” as a duet. The song seems destined for popularity at weddings and anniversaries.
In addition to the duet, Sharp sang two solo numbers on the program, accompanying himself on the piano. In the first set, he sang “Things Are Breakin’ Like Rocks,” a down-and-out tale that reflects some of the difficult times in his young adulthood. In the second set, he sang “Sweet Lenore,” a ballad inspired in part by his fascination with Edgar Allen Poe. Sharp’s voice is clear, strong, and natural, and his solo pieces were well received.
Miller thanked Sharp for his music and the friendship they have developed. “Bobby is clever and wise. He’s one of my best friends,” said Miller from the stage. Later, she said to Sharp, “You’ve done more for me in the past two years than anyone except my dad, my boyfriend, or my two brothers. Welcome to the family.”
Sharp also took the opportunity to acknowledge Miller. “Natasha did a lot of work to find these songs among the lead sheets, in the closets.” He gave Miller credit for bringing the songs to light and presenting them to new audiences.
Sharp wrote another of the debut songs, “At Midnight,” with Billie Holiday in mind. Holiday liked “At Midnight” but never recorded it, “So I get to,” said Miller. The arrangement is mysterious, calling to mind film noir or old detective stories. It starts with just a bass figure, very spare, then Miller sings. Then piano and percussion join the mix, ornamented by muted trumpet. It made a stunning closer. “I want this music to become part of the fabric of your lives, whether it’s me singing it, or in bars and clubs. I want it to go on for years and years,” said Miller from the stage. She believes that Sharp’s songs would already be part of the “American Songbook” if they had been released earlier.
Miller’s band included Josh Nelson at the piano, Dan Robbins on bass, Tim Bulkey on drums, Rob Roth on tenor sax, Jeff Lews on trumpet and flugelhorn, Adam Theis on trombone, Jessica Ivry on cello, and Liz Prior Runnicles on viola. Miller played violin in addition to singing. Each piece was instrumented differently. The trio of piano, bass and drums was the core of the band, included in every song. Some songs were trio plus strings or trio plus horns. A few songs, like “You Don’t Have to Learn (How to Sing the Blues)” and “Bye Bye Bayou,” in the second set, used the full ensemble. “This is what I call a mini-orchestra,” Miller said. “That’s stretching it a little, but this is my dream we’re in.”

Bobby Sharp/Natasha Miller-
“..Unchain MY Heart..”

“In the late 50s and early 60s, I was running up and down Broadway with the other song writers, trying to sell my songs,” said Bobby Sharp, who penned Unchain My Heart, made famous in 1960 by Ray Charles. Charles also recorded his follow-up song, Don’t Set Me Free. These days, Sharp, now in his 80s, lives in Alameda. He is collaborating with Alameda-based jazz singer Natasha Miller to record and perform his songs, including several that have never been heard before. The first album based on their collaboration, “I Had A Feeling: The Bobby Sharp Songbook” was released in 2004. A second album is in the works. With royalties from his songs and from the recent hit film Ray, Sharp says, “I don’t have to worry about paying the rent.” That was not always the case.
Sharp’s story is one of ups and downs, both before and after his most prolific song-writing period in the 1950s and 60s. After Sharp’s early childhood in Kansas, his parents left for New York to pursue his father’s singing career, and sent him to California to live with his father’s parents. “My father was a concert tenor, but during the Depression, no one was hiring tenors, black or white,” said Sharp. His strict Christian grandparents believed in “spare the rod, spoil the child,” and required Sharp to attend church 3 times every Sunday. “When I was 11-and-a-half, I wrote my mother and said, ‘Get me out of here.’ She had some friends driving through California. They picked me up, drove me across the country and dropped me off in front of a 15-story building on Sugar Hill in Harlem. I had never seen big buildings like that before. A cocktail party was going on. Langston Hughes and Aaron Douglas were there.
That was my introduction to New York.” Sharp smiled. “It was the Harlem renaissance. I used to serve drinks at cocktail parties when I was 13 and 14 years old. I met Duke Ellington, and I knew his son well.” When World War II broke out, Sharp said, “I volunteered, rather than waiting for the draft. My mother told me, ‘This is not your war,’ but I did it anyway.” After basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, his mother contacted some people she knew and got Sharp assigned to the 372nd Infantry, military police guarding New York. Sharp studied judo and carried a .45. With a partner, he canvassed Harlem in a Jeep, looking for soldiers gone AWOL.
They looked in the Savoy Ballroom and the bars up and down Harlem, checking soldiers’ passes and hauling in offenders. This plum assignment did not last the whole war. He was transferred to an outfit in Breckenridge, Kentucky, and was discharged in October 1944. Sharp, then 21 years old, went back to New York to live with his parents and became interested in music. “I used to sit at the piano for hours, plunking out chords. Then I met an arranger for Tommy Dorsey’s band and he told me to take piano lessons. I realized I needed to learn harmonies.” He used his GI Bill benefits to study at Greenwich House Music School and Manhattan School of Music. While he was still in school, he earned money by listening to demo records and transcribing what he heard to sheet music- $10 a transcription. He wrote and recorded a number of his own songs “on tiny labels,” he said. In 1956 he recorded his first single, Baby Girl of Mine. “I expected a check in the mail; instead I got a bill for the studio time.”
He recorded Last Night in the Moonlight, and he heard it on the radio – while he was serving 6 months on a drug charge. He appeared on the Dick Clark show under the name Mark Stone, singing. None of his recordings went on to be hits, and Sharp became discouraged. His songs were well-received by other singers, including Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughn, but only Ray Charles’s recordings of Sharp’s songs became hits.
“Publishers cheating writers is nothing new,” said Sharp. Teddy Powell, his publisher, took advantage of Sharp’s heroin problem when he bought the rights to Unchain My Heart and Don’t Set Me Free in 1963 for $1000. When Solly Loft, a mutual friend, found out, he told Powell, “That’s not right,” but Loft would not change Powell’s mind. Loft helped Sharp get a lawyer, Richard Aaronstein, and they sued Powell to get Sharp’s songs back. Five years later, Powell settled, and among other terms, Sharp had the right to renew the copyright when it came up in 1988. He now owns the publishing rights under the name B Sharp Music.
“To save my life, I had to get out of New York,” Sharp said of his heroin addiction. He went to a drug treatment center in Santa Monica, California. There he learned that he also had the skills to help others overcome their addiction. (“My mother always wanted me to be a psychiatrist,” said Sharp.) He went back to New York, relapsed, recovered, and finally took up drug addiction counseling as an occupation. His first counseling job was in New York, in a program where he had been a patient. Later, he drove a taxi in New York, and then came back to California in 1980 to live in Alameda and work until his retirement as a drug counselor in San Francisco.
Joe Cocker recorded Unchain My Heart in 1998, and the song was used for a Cadillac commercial in the 1990s, generating royalties for Sharp. But all that time, most of Sharp’s songs had been idle, on the piano or in the closet. One day, Sharp heard Natasha Miller on KCSM, found out she lived in Alameda, and called her up to offer her some of his songs. The working relationship began. Miller and Sharp may seem an unlikely pair. As he wrote in his notes for “I Had A Feeling: The Bobby Sharp Songbook”, most of the songs were written before Miller was born. No matter. Miller treats the songs with sensitivity and wisdom, faithfully delivering Sharp’s messages of disappointment in love, financial problems, and retreats to fantasy written decades ago.
“Bobby is a dear, close friend,” said Miller. “If there were no more of his music to record, we’d still work together. In the two years I’ve known him, we’ve never gone more than a day or two without talking.” That’s quite an endorsement. Their story has generated a good deal of press and has resulted in some Los Angeles producers optioning the story for a film, probably for television. “I’m not going to be a multi-kazillionaire,” said Miller of the money from the film, “but it will give me resources for the music I love, to record and perform.” Sharp refuses to get too excited about the film deal. “From my past, I’ve learned to take things with a grain of salt. If it happens, great, it happens.”
The 2004 album features Miller singing familiar and not-so-familiar Sharp songs. One track features Sharp singing Monica, a fine ballad that showcases Sharp’s voice and phrasing. The upcoming album is built around 12 more of Sharp’s unreleased songs. It will be recorded live at Yoshi’s March 21 and Kuumbwa on April 7. Miller is excited about the new arrangements of Sharp’s songs they have commissioned from notable Bay Area arrangers including Larry Dunlap (Mark Murphy, Joe Williams), Frank Martin (Sting, Ray Charles), and Bill Bell (Carmen McRae, Dizzy Gillespie). “I told them the instrumentation we have available, and to use as much or as little as they’d like,” Miller said. The arrangers have a lot of flexibility with the nine-piece band including a horn section and a string ensemble. “Each one is like opening a present. We’re getting lush, well-articulated arrangements.” “For the show at Yoshi’s, I hope it’s still at least half-full for the late show,” said Miller. “I need the energy. I’d like to say I give my best performance in a box, but I can’t.”
The Natasha Miller – Bobby Sharp show at Yoshi’s last year sold out on a Tuesday night, so Miller’s hopes for this year are justified. “The audience interaction is so important. Sometimes I’ll hear something – a breath, a sigh – and it can catapult me into a different mind frame, so I do something different, musically.” Miller trained as a classical violinist before turning to jazz. Her first exposure to jazz was her father playing jazz standards at the piano – no vocals. As a string player, she credits Izak Perlman and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg as influences. As a vocalist, she likes the phrasing and tone of Natalie Cole and Patti Cathcart Andress (of Tuck & Patti.) “With jazz vocals, I usually like a certain song by an artist, and that may have more to do with the production or direction than the artist.” Pop/rock artists Bonnie Raitt and Shawn Colvin inspired Miller to learn guitar and start singing.
“Now everything has crossed together,” Miller said of her musical influences. “Slowly, eventually, they had to parallel.” Miller’s musical ambitions led her to visit the Grammy Awards this February on a “reconnaissance mission.” At the last minute, a friend got VIP tickets. “It was as if I were nominated,” said Miller. “I got to walk down the “red carpet” (though it was green, really.) It was an overwhelming production. In LA and New York, no expense is too much. The rehearsals must have been intense. Everything was perfect.”