Microgrooving French Style

Record collectors like to show off.

So when - hypothetically, of course - they put on Dean Martin's 1960 gem, "This Time I'm Swingin'," they're inclined to say something cocky such as, "Only five or ten people in all of Richmond could play this for you."

Probably true.

Talk centers on the happy couple hosting me who have spent the afternoon trying to free up a vintage DeSoto from her long-ignored garage. Given the heat, I understood that it had been a sweaty and rather unpleasant undertaking. The manly one explained it best. "I don't do manual labor."

After swingin', we moved on to Sarah Vaughan's "After Hours at London House," an album recorded at 2 a.m. after she'd already done three shows that night. It's awe-inspiring: her energy, her ease and her improvisational skills while singing the final number, "Thanks for the Memories."

No doubt tired by that point, she improvises, singing the line, "Thanks for this night being over."

While we're listening to these albums, we're taking a stroll down record memory lane with the album sleeves touting the label's other offerings: Mort Sahl, Anita O'Day, Ethel Merman. But what's just as compelling are the dire warnings about equipment.

Play safe! Ask your dealer for the new Columbia needle. (Needles, the gateway drug...)

This monophonic microgroove recording is playable on monophonic and stereo phonographs. It cannot be obsolete. (Cannot is such a big word...)

The Vaughan sleeve had three distinct sections, all instructional: Taking care of your records, taking care of your needle and how to listen to high fidelity. A girl could learn a lot reading an album sleeve.

Our next selection for the turntable was ideal given our earlier meal at Amour. There, we'd come upon a chalkboard on the sidewalk with a weather report warning of a flooding of Rose at the bar. Time to get wet.

We'd begun with my friends ordering vichyssoise (the owner provided a cultural history lesson about the genesis of the soup that tied into Waldorf Astor, a major figure in the book I'm currently reading) while I'd made a bee line for the octopus salad with olives and frisee in lemon juice, olive oil, red peppers, shallots and parsley. Perfection.

"To me, this is what summer tastes like," the owner said, echoing what I was thinking about the salad. Ditto Le Petit Rouviere Rose and a tomato and Dijon mustard tart that rewarded me up front with the sweetest of tomatoes before finishing with a hit of sinus-clearing mustard to put your taste buds on alert. Just beautiful.

We'd finished with desserts of sorbets (decadent cocoa, lychee, cantaloupe pastis, raspberry) and a dessert special of an espresso chocolate tort with blueberries and cream, naturally. Summer fruit was in every bite.

Post dinner, fat and satisfied, we were now listening to Dean's "French Style," a 1962 record that showed him wearing a beret and with a cigarette holder in his mouth. Tres continental, if a bit condescending.

But, oh, how it sounded! With the smuggest of looks (and completely correct), my host observed, "There are only two other places in Richmond where you might hear this."

The record was as much a cultural artifact as a collection of French-inspired songs, ranging from "C'est si Bon" (with chorus) to "April in Paris" to "La Vie en Rose." We danced in place and swooned to all the accordion.

When "The Poor People of Paris" (also with chorus) came on, my gregarious and only slightly loopy host observed, "This was my first favorite song when I was four. But it was an instrumental version." (Note to self: how come you don't have a favorite song from when you were four?)

Frankly, I credit his music-loving parents for having exposed the four-year old to such a song. Well done.

Returning to our swingin' roots (and after a discussion of how the connotation of swingin' has morphed since the early '60s), we closed out the night with the obscure album, "Ella Sings Sweet Songs for Swingers."

Ah, for the days of such alluring album alliteration.

"Let's Fall in Love" was fine but her version of "Makin' Whoopee was sublime, her voice crystal clear, the take definitely swingin' but also hugely atmospheric.

Not to give anybody a big head, but I'm willing to wager that there's nowhere else in Richmond I could have heard that tonight. Especially after a charming French meal that tasted completely of summer.

Such evenings can never become obsolete.