Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone: Remembering Annie Brazil

IT was a small bar behind the now-defunct Delta Theater, tucked into a space partly hidden by a Chinese restaurant selling dumplings. My friend and I, forever in search of a quiet drinking place and, perhaps, some old music, saw the place. I do not remember the name of the bar. I remember the song and the singer.

Her name was outside written on a small board: Annie Brazil.

I did not know her except for old reviews. But nothing prepared me for what I was hearing: Billie Holiday sweeter by an ounce and yet the grief intact. I was also not ready for that voice, gravelly and whispery, velvet and violent with the beat, achingly musical. And I was not ready for the songs she sang.

I was stargazing, my eyes fixed on this lady, her hands and fingers making small, furtive gestures and singing the songs I thought Manila would never offer an old soul.

My friend and I were barely seated when she segued from a very fast, or what I thought was an unusually faster version of “It’s A Sin to Tell a Lie” to that old Cole Porter standard “So in Love.” In Annie’s voice, there was no standard: “Strange, dear/ But true, dear/When I’m close to you, dear/The stars will the sky .... ” It was not anymore the song popularized by Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel in Kiss Me Kate. The piano was percussive and the love-hate dynamics in the original gone. Annie, I would find out, had a darker, sadder, perhaps more grounded approach to something we assume to be always ethereal. “In love with the night mysterious/The night when you first were there/In love with my joy, delirious/When I knew that you could care.” Annie was not just singing, she was reading: “So taunt me/And hurt me/Deceive me, desert me.”

She had barely ended the song when I applauded so loudly my friend almost wanted to stop me. I could not help myself, so I shouted, “Bravo.” It was so out of place, that lusty “bravo,” so showy and, perhaps, much too off-putting but I was this faithful jazz believer about to turn apostate and finding in Annie Brazil’s world a shrine. I became once more a devotee, a convert before I had even left the church.

After her set, she came to our table. As customary, we asked her to order anything. It was chivalry that was predictable and so old-fashioned but she relented. She ordered “Cointreau.” I remember the bottle: it was emerald green. I thought the fans (for I thought of everyone there as her fans) were all green with envy that Annie Brazil sat down with us. The small talk had to end. Before leaving us, she asked if we had any request for any song. I loved the glint in her eyes when she said, “any.” “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” was what I asked her to sing. Perched now on that tall chair, which was her trademark, she whispered to the band. Whereupon the band went into a brassy intro, which was followed by a banner-waving first two lines: “Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone/Oh honey, though our friendship ceases from now on.” The piano and the bass were relentless but so was that voice: “And listen, if you can’t say anything real nice/It’s better not to talk at all is my advice.” The words were acerbic. Then she went for the punch, the bitterness equaled the sweetness of the separation: “We’re parting, you go your way I’ll go mine/It’s best that we do/Here’s a kiss I hope that this brings lots of luck to you.”

Without waiting for the applause, which came anyway, she went full-throttle with “It Had To Be You.” The song just went up and up, the chords complicating and complicated. In that song, I would witness that unusual kick that came with an awkward flip of the hand as if reaching out for something that was elusive. (She would tell me she would kick to create a new sound.) I would hear also that cluck she made in between lines of a song. Then it was “Moonlight on Vermont.”

That night, I had become a fan.

I, of course, went back to that bar for many nights. She gave me permission to shout out my request. Each night, immediately after being seated or even as I walked to my table, I would already call out to her: “Please, Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone.” We followed her as she sang in other places. My friend and I even dared to invite her for lunch. But we never became friends. I remained—and this I like—a fan.

Years went by. I learned she had moved to the United States.

One day, the newspaper carried news of Annie singing in Makati, in the joint owned by her son, Richard Merk, who is also a singer, a jazz singer. It was the last day of her performance. The place was full: I sat near the bar. A waiter approached and I gave him a piece of paper. On it was the request to sing: “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone.” She searched for me in the dark as she started singing. There it was, that voice, the vowel curled and snapped at the end of the line, the quiver as each word almost ended with an unknown sound. As on that first night, I was not looking into Annie Brazil’s eyes. They were always the most beautiful sad eyes this side of moonlight jazz.

Then one day came the sad news: Annie Brazil had passed away at 85.

What was the name of that bar again...was it Buttercup? Annie, it does not really matter, what matters now are those songs and that voice.

As for more requests, there is a song that I hope you would get to sing once more. Remember “What’s New.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful when our time comes, for you to welcome us with those lines: “What’s new?/ How is the world treating you?/You haven’t changed a bit/Lovely as ever I must admit.”

As for your request not to talk about you when you are gone, that is one wish we cannot honor. Long before you have converted a small corner in Heaven into a jazz bar, we will still be talking about your music, the most elegant, rhythmic heartbreaks and joys you gifted us. ■