In “The Torch Singer,” John Prine provides a view of himself not as we usually think of him, as a songwriter and performer, but as an audience member — that is, now he’s in our shoes. And it’s a grim vision.
Prine has always thought deeply about women’s voices, and has even recorded an entire album of duets between himself and women singers. Here, in 1972, the torch singer’s song leaves him in some kind of exquisite pain and self-loathing:
She sang of the love that left her
And of the woman that she’ll never be
Made me feel like the buck and the quarter
That I paid ’em to listen and see
Maybe Prine’s narrator is the torch singer’s ex — that is, he’s the love that left her — and her song leaves him guilt-ridden. Or maybe she reminds him of other women he’s wronged. Or, most interesting to me, maybe he recognizes himself in her, and in her performer’s servitude to the audience, which now includes him:
I picked through the ashes of the torch singer’s song
And I ordered my money around
For whiskey and fame both taste the same
During the time they go down
Ultimately, what troubles the singer is intense but uncertain, like the unspecified troubles facing the characters in the album’s previous song.
To me, this song has always been vaguely flawed in a way that only makes it more perfect. “The Torch Singer” is a waltz, which is just about the last meter I’d expect a torch song to use. But this isn’t a torch song, it’s about a torch song. It’s not the torch singer’s point of view, but the audience’s — and their perspective requires a tragic country waltz.
The cut starts with a kind of a cappella cry from Prine, “The nightcluuuuuub was burning,” With “burning,” Prine’s guitar and Steve Burgh’s bass come in, thumping down on the first beat of the waltz-time measure (ONE two three). Two beats later, John’s older brother and his strongest early influence, the versatile Dave Prine makes his first appearance of the album, on the dobro. The sliding, whining dobro gives this recording — or just about any recording — a strong country feel.
It’s only after the second line of the lyrics that the arrangement finally declares itself as bluegrass, via David Bromberg’s remarkable mandolin accompaniment. In the spirit of Bill Monroe’s approach to the instrument, Bromberg uses the whole pig, squeal and all. As Robert Cantwell writes:
The shallow, metallic, sometimes toylike sound characteristic of the mandolin … is the problem that Monroe solved by abandoning the effort to produce discrete, pure tones. Monroe’s tones are not discrete: they come at us like meteors trailing the smoke and flames of … tones, overtones, and sheer noise … Its texture arises in part from the undercurrent of noise made by the washboardng of the pick itself on the strings and from the many complex overtones in the mandolin … Whereas the jazz trumpet seems to take the smoke of the cabaret into its throat, the mandolin’s sound, like that of a distant engine, is a noise that seems to resolve itself into a tone.
The song’s storyline, if any, is left to the listener. The point of this recording is to convey a feeling and an atmosphere using John’s almost yelling voice, the country waltztime, the whining dobro and noisy mandolin, and — most of all — John’s hellish lyrics. They bring to mind the atmospherics of Heartbreak Hotel, which I once heard compared to Dante’s Inferno:
The nightclub was burning from the torch singer’s song
And the sweat was flooding her eyes
The catwalk squeaked ‘neath the bartender’s feet
And the smoke was too heavy to rise
The narrator’s entire life seems drawn up into the atmosphere of this nightclub only to be burnt up by the torch song’s grief and humiliation:
I was born down in Kansas ‘neath the October sky
Worked the dayshift from seven to three
And the only relief that I received
Was nearer, my God, to thee
She constantly throws me off timing,
Leaves me standing both naked and bare
Makes me feel like the Sunday funnies
After everything’s gone off the air
Air, everything’s gone off the air
The intervening years have left this song not dated, but poignantly situated in time. Was there really ever a moment in history when the darkness and lonesomeness of nighttime could deepen to the point where even the media of radio and television exhausted themselves, leaving us alone with our own troubled minds?
(This is part of my song-by-song series on John Prine’s second album, Diamonds in the Rough: Everybody * The Torch Singer * Souvenirs * The Late John Garfield Blues * Sour Grapes * Billy The Bum * The Frying Pan * Yes I Guess They Oughta Name a Drink After You * Take the Star Out of the Window * The Great Compromise * Clocks and Spoons * Rocky Mountain Time * Diamonds in the Rough)