JENNIFER WARNES
Twenty years later, this Blue Raincoat still fits
Recently re-released Leonard Cohen tribute is singer's crowning achievement
Dec 22, 2007 04:30 AM
GREG QUILL
ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST
Multi-award-winning, platinum-selling singer Jennifer Warnes knew from the start that Famous Blue Raincoat, her 1987 collection of pop- and rock-enhanced Leonard Cohen songs, would likely be her crowning achievement.
It was, first and foremost, a labour of love, an act of devotion to an artist she had always admired and with whom she felt blessed to have performed for a good many years prior to the sessions that yielded her enduringly popular interpretation of Cohen's best-known songs.
"I knew 20 years ago it was one for the archives, and that it would outlive me," Warnes said recently in a phone interview from her home in Los Angeles, not long after the release of a 20th-anniversary edition of the classic album. It has been digitally remastered, "with more kick and bass in the bottom end," and embellished with four additional Cohen pieces recorded by Warnes a decade ago but withheld till now.
When her landmark recording was released, the singer had already scored major hits – "It's the Right Time of the Night" and duets with Joe Cocker (Canadian songwriter Buffy Sainte Marie's and American movie score composer Jack Nitzche's "Up Where We Belong," from the movie An Officer And A Gentleman) and Bill Medley ("I've Had The Time Of My Life," from Dirty Dancing), both Oscar winners.
She's more bemused than surprised Famous Blue Raincoat never achieved great commercial success, especially after the glowing reviews it received for the purity and power of Warnes' vocals, and stunning contributions from sidemen Stevie Ray Vaughan and Fred Tackett (Bob Dylan) on guitar, David Lindley on pedal steel, and Van Dyke Parks and Bill Payne (Little Feat) on keyboards.
The album is credited with having delivered Cohen – he's being inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame next year, along with Madonna, the Dave Clark Five, the Ventures and John Mellencamp – to an enormous mainstream pop music audience and for restarting the Canadian songwriter's failing career.
One song from the album, "The Singer Must Die," arranged by Parks, was nominated for a Grammy only after Kris Kristofferson mailed a personal plea to members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
"It got to 79 on Billboard's album chart, but it was released too late in the year to make an impression on the Grammys people," said Warnes, who was a regular singing member of The Smothers Brothers Show troupe in the 1960s, and has contributed as a session singer to albums by Harry Belafonte, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Sam & Dave, James Taylor, Tina Turner, Bobby Womack and Warren Zevon, among others.
The re-release of Famous Blue Raincoat, which has been out of print in North America for almost a decade, is a chance to restore the music to its original sonic glory, for the sake of Cohen's audience and devoted audiophiles, she added.
Recorded on digital equipment, Famous Blue Raincoat is considered one of the finest audio productions of its time, and is still used to test and demonstrate high-end stereos.
"When it was transferred from vinyl to CD, no one was paying attention, and the music lost all its warm features," Warnes continued. "Several generations down the line, the music sounded thin and creepy."
After a tussle with the original label – "It's a sad and treacherous story," Warnes said – the singer managed to secure ownership of the masters and to have them polished up by the best professional ears in L.A.
"It's exactly the same record – the same music, the same sequence – with the exception of four new songs."
One was recorded in concert in Belgium ("Joan Of Arc"), and three in an Austin, Tex., studio ("Night Comes On," "Ballad of the Runaway Horse" and "If It Be Your Will").
Content with her role as a session singer – "In L.A., that's an art, and the essence of what I do," she said – Warnes is particularly proud of recent work with other Canadians, a Christmas duet with Quebec's Michel Bérubé and her contribution to The Gift, an all-star tribute to Ian Tyson.
But Famous Blue Raincoat, on which Cohen collaborated, is her lasting gift to popular music.
"I just wanted to hear his songs with more colour and texture," she said. "I'm not sure he approved at the time, though he loves working with women. He doesn't hear music the same way most people do."
