nightandthecity
Practically Family
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- 1938
I’d second the Artie Shaw/Pauline Byrne version of Gloomy Sunday - my favourite version of one of the darkest songs of all time.Artie Shaw and his Orchestra -- Gloomy Sunday (1940)
[video=youtube;EkojinjvlpM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkojinjvlpM[/video]
The tune is supposedly a Hungarian traditional tune, and many of the early/mid-20th century European urban vernacular musics with folk roots are full of dark and angst ridden songs.
For example, French chanson - here’s Piaf singing of the suicide of two illicit young lovers……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBTIuFuS0LE
Though if you want DARK you can’t beat Greek Rembetika - subjects range from crime to drugs to death to the futility of everything to drugs and death again….here’s a scene from a 1980s movie based on the life of Marika Ninou that gives something of the flavour and context…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saUkUYkWL4s
and here’s the great Marika Papagika from 1919
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux_whsihlM0
Though for the depths of despair you can’t beat this classic of the Armenian diaspora - 23 year old Zabelle Panosian singing “Crane”, recorded in 1917.
“Ah, where does this long dark pathway lead
My god, where does it end, this obsession with fear
When shall night end today’s last glimmering spark
Where shall my weary feet tonight find rest”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GizgyxGSrFs