With a lot of new releases coming up but a gap tonight I thought I’d throw in this recent cover of a classic song which never charted, ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’, which was originally written by Jimmy Webb and subsequently performed by artists including Glen Campbell, Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, Joan Baez and Joe Cocker.
Our version is a cover by Marte Eberson, who provided our Christmas song, a version of another classic, ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas’.
In this case Marte recorded the song for a tribute programme on Norwegian television for Radka Toneff, the Oslo-born jazz singer of Bulgarian descent who is still considered one of Norway's greatest jazz singers. Toneff, who is regarded with great affection in Norway, committed suicide in 1982 at the age of only 30. In a poll of Norwegian musicians conducted by the newspaper Morgenbladet in November 2011, her 1982 album ‘Fairytales’, was voted the best Norwegian album of all time.
Marte herself has a formal jazz background and is the daughter of Jon Eberson, one of Norway’s greatest jazz guitarists and who was a member of the Radka Toneff quintet.
She says, “It was truly a great honour to have the opportunity to pay tribute to Radka Toneff. I've been listening to her and about her for as long as I can remember.”
I say that while she has a great career right now with a couple of bands including Löv, who have an EP coming out later this month, I’d like to see her doing more of this sort of solo thing, because it is simply gorgeous.
Unfortunately, this is only available here on Facebook momentarily.