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Asha
Puthli Is In The Studio Recording Once Again |
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Pop
/ Jazz singer Asha Puthli. with some assistance from her friends Ron and Mara
New, has been recording songs for a new and yet to be named album. When Ms.
Puthli left her homeland India in the 1970’s and traveled to America on a dance
scholarship, armed with a background in Classical and Opera music, her goal was
to bridge the Indian and American cultures and to record and perform the type of
music she had listened to on the radio shows Voice of America, hosted by Willis
Conover and Radio Ceylon. “I listened to what was called Radio Ceylon in those
days and now it (the country) is called Sri Lanka. I was fascinated by Jazz,
because of the similarity of Indian music and Jazz in so many ways, in the sense
of the freedom and the improvisation quality and a lot of it used chords
(similar to) raga music, which I was studying. It was Jazz, which I was so
passionate about, but it only came on for an hour. The other one was the Voice
of America. Radio Ceylon taught me
Rock and Roll. It had Elvis Presley, Pat Boone and Cliff Richard. Little did I
realize that one day I would meet Pat Boone and one day I would do a television
show with Cliff Richard. A year and one-half after I left for America Willis
Conover, was playing Ornette Coleman’s album that I had sung on, so it was like
a cycle coming complete. In Willis Conover’s autobiography called
Broadcasting To The World he mentions
John Coltrane and me as being the first people to bring Indian music to Jazz and
mixing the two genres of music,” says Asha Puthli.
When reminded of that article, Ms. Puthli says, “I am
happy that people think in some small way I have made a difference and a
contribution. When you are young you just do it, because you have a passion to
do it. I just wanted to build a cultural bridge and I am happy that people feel
that way. I hope that I opened the door for others to do the same. We all have a
collective consciousness, but they may not do it for various reasons.
Hopefully they got more motivation to do
it or to pursue it.” In recent years Ms. Puthli has been mentioned in two
books about the evolution of music in India and she finds it funny that she is
mentioned in both, because of the diverse genres. The books are,
Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's
Jazz Age and India Psychedelic, The
Story of a Rocking Generation, by Sidharth Bhatia.
Ms. Puthli talks about her new EP, “Ron
New is very fond of Jazz music and that concept and I had for some time wanted
to pay tribute to the wonderful Jazz people (that I met). That was my original
goal to sing basic Standard Jazz, which I heard over
The Voice of America. The very first
man I met (in America) was Duke Ellington. I was asked to sing in a church, the
St Peter’s Lutheran church. While I was singing there was a lovely lady in the
front row all dressed up in a hat with blond hair and a pink dress and she came
up to me after I sang and she said you have an amazing voice, I want you to meet
my brother. I didn’t know who she was and I didn’t know who her brother was
until she gave me her card and it said Ruth Ellington at Central Park West. I
said is your brother Duke Ellington and I almost fainted and I said oh my God. I
had not even been in the country for two months. I went and he was very dapper
looking with a cravat on. He was so well dressed and I couldn’t believe it. I
looked so scruffy. He said why don’t you sing for me and how stupid of me, I was
totally unprepared with his own songs. All I could think of was “Summertime,”
which I knew (Editor’s note: George
Gershwin composed Summertime and Duke Ellington was one of several artists to
record it). He liked that and he said would you like to go on tour with me?
When I entered America they said you are not allowed to work. You are here as a
student, blah, blah, blah. I had worked too hard to risk being deported, just
because I was going on tour without a work permit. They were going in two weeks.
As you know there are so many pebbles on
the beach, so why go through all that trouble for me. He would have probably
taken some other singer if I had said oh I don’t have a green card. There was a
wonderful opportunity and I had to say, I’m sorry I can’t go now. The first
person that I sang for (in America) was Duke Ellington.
The second (person I met) was Ornette Coleman and that was because of John
Hammond who sent me to the studio. Ornette asked if I wanted him to write the
music (out for me) and I just said play it a few times and I will sing it.
DownBeat Magazine was there and Rolling Stone. I got it and that is what they
wrote about. On the strength of those songs I won the DownBeat Female Vocalist.
(On this record) I wanted to do a new take on Ornette Coleman and I wanted to
make it easier for listeners. I wanted to make it adaptable to a different
audience not just an avant-garde audience. I wanted to make it (accessible) to
people of all kinds and who love Standard Jazz and not so esoteric or cutting
edge. We finished four tracks of
Duke and two tracks of Ornette.
The third and fourth people that I met were Lionel Hampton and Cy Coleman. I
want to do a couple of Cy Coleman songs and I want to do them as Blues, which I
haven’t done yet. I would like to write a book with the album and to write about
my experiences with these four people.”
The seeds for Asha Puthli’s music career were sown in what was then called
Bombay, India and the city has now reverted to an Indian name and is known as
Mumbai. Ms. Puthli explains that the city is now named for Mumbai Devi, one of
India’s goddesses. She says her family was not really a musical family and she
describes her father as “an industrialist and a very self-made man.” Although
her family was not musically inclined, Asha Puthli did study Classical and Opera
music under Hyacinth Brown at the Royal Conservatory of Music. “Most of the children from upper middle class families
would go to English speaking schools, so we were very influenced by western
culture. For example I went to a convent, St. Joseph’s Convent and nuns taught
us. There was one nun who was (mean), but most of them were adorable and chubby
and cute. All I remember was when I was in boarding school they gave us castor
oil. We learned to get on our knees and every Sunday we had to go to the church.
It was an interesting thing, because I came from a Hindu background and I
only bring this up because I was exposed to everything.
From the point of view of religions, I
believe all religions are one. I grew up
surrounded in a secular country with many different influences. Also lifestyle is very important, because in most Hindu
homes when you enter a home you have to take off your shoes and we used to sit
on the floor to eat our food when I was very, very young.
We used to eat with our fingers. We
didn’t use forks and knives and I was a vegetarian growing up,” she says.
Asha
Puthli shares a funny story from the first talent contest that she was in when
she was thirteen years old, well funny now, not so funny at the time. “I snuck out of the house and I didn’t tell my parents.
I was in a big rush. I remembered my dad had bought this beautiful pleated
skirt. He had gone to the Leipzig textile sale at some fair. He brought back
this beautiful skirt and I was so desperate to wear it. I rushed out and I
didn’t tell my parents I was going to this competition, to this singing thing
and I realized that all of the spotlights and floodlights were coming right on
my skirt and I had forgotten to wear a slip. It was in the Taj Mahal Hotel. It
is still there and it was one of the best hotels in Bombay. I ran into the
ladies room and I put a towel around my waist. Luckily I was skinny and the
towel did fit,” she says laughing.
When Asha Puthli decided she wanted to pursue Jazz music
she also felt it was time to give up singing Opera. “I was studying both techniques and one of the reasons
that I gave up Opera was because my guru said you don’t have to give up Opera
you can study both techniques, the western and the eastern and my Opera teacher
Mrs. Brown said, oh no, I don’t want you to sing any more Indian music or any
kind of music except Opera, because your voice (is too good). She really wanted
to make me a big Opera star and she wanted me to focus on it, which I can
understand. I didn’t want to do that, I
wanted to be open to every kind of music, so that is one of the reasons that I
gave up singing Opera. I felt if it
made me have to choose only one and I was not open to anything else then I would
drop it,” she says. Asha Puthli talks about her efforts to move to America,
“After I did my Bachelor of Science (and
she started working on her Masters in Science) I applied to many, many
American schools, including writing to DownBeat Magazine and saying can you
please advise me, as to which schools I can apply to? At the time there weren’t
any scholarships. Everything was
negative, but it so happened that a few months earlier Martha Graham had come to
Bombay and I mentioned to her that I had applied to the music schools and they
all said that there weren’t any scholarships. I asked if she had any kind of a
scholarship for her dance school. I was
learning two forms of Indian Classical music at the time.
I told her that and I said I would like to do the same thing that I did
with music, but with dance. As I said earlier, my idea was to bridge the cultures
and America was one of the youngest cultures to date. In India we pride
ourselves of having 6,000 years of culture. I just wanted to fuse the two
together, whether it was through dance form or through music, ideally through
music, but if I couldn’t do that, I was prepared to do it through dance. She said I can only give it to you after I see you dance
and you can’t do it here, you have to come to the States to do it. It looked
like all doors were closed, as far as music schools were concerned.
When she said I had to go there the whole point was defeated, because I
needed a sponsor or I couldn’t leave India. In the late sixties, because it was
so soon after independence most Indians did not have a passport, I did not have
a passport when I was young. To get a passport you had to have a permission to
leave form and you had to have a sponsor. The early immigrants who came from
India, not the asylum ones, but the doctors and engineers who came (to America)
for an education did so with the promise that they would go back to India and
they were the only ones who were allowed to leave.
That is why you see so many doctors and
engineers in the west (from India). Musicians were not considered important
enough (to allow them to leave).” That was all about to change, just because Asha Puthli
decided to drive her girlfriend to pick up a paycheck.
“I didn’t have a passport and when we walked into
British Airways, it was called BOAC in those days (the man said) why don’t young
women like you come for interviews? He had gone through 500 interviews and all
he wanted was two girls and he had not found them yet.
What they were looking for was someone
who could speak English well, as well as Hindi and who looked reasonably
attractive. In those days stewardesses had to look at least reasonably
attractive. If you agree to go in
to meet (she tries to remember the lady’s
name) and have a quick interview with her, I know she is going to grab you
and you can have your passport in two weeks and we will send you to London for
two months of training. That is all I needed to hear. I had just come to do a
good deed for my girlfriend to pick up her check and instead now the door was
opening for me with a passport. It was unbelievable and I got to stay in London
for two months where I would get to hear real Jazz and I went to Ronnie Scott’s.
That was in the late sixties. I think it was ’68. I resigned from British Airways, after vacationing in
America and auditioning for Martha Graham. On your last trip (after you
resigned) you could request any place that you wanted to go and we used to love
going either to Beirut or to Singapore, because they had the best shopping. I suggested Singapore and here I was in Singapore and
someone said Asha you were in the Asia Magazine just last week. It was about
five beautiful women of India. One was a dancer, who was Miss India at one time.
They spelled my name wrong, but they talked about me being a BOAC stewardess,
that I loved to sing and that I had an amazing voice. By then I had done the
song “Pain.” I was going to the office of Asia Magazine (so she could
see the article) and I got hit by a motorbike and I had to go to the British
Airways doctor. He said you can’t go on the flight. We have to bring in a
different stewardess to take your flight and we will have to fly you home (as a
passenger). When I went back to the hotel there was a message from EMI. I said I
happen to be here on my last trip with British Airways and I got hit by a
motorbike, so now I am laid up and my leg is in a cast. She said that’s okay as
long as you can sing on a record for us.
I said sure and that is how the record
Angel of the Morning happened.
It was an EP with “Sounds of Silence,”
“Angel of the Morning,” “Fever,” and I forget the fourth one.
I had to be escorted by the immigration people out,
because I missed my flight. They said you can’t stay in this country, because
you are not employed with British Airways anymore and your stay in the country
has expired. You don’t have a tourist
visa to be here, so you have to go on the next flight. The next flight was the
next day, but we finished the recording.
It happened under weird circumstances, but now that record is in the
Singapore Sixties Hall of Fame.
Asha
Puthli recalls another part of her career aside from music, “I was so desperate
to go abroad and I had applied and it was not happening. It could have been in
’68 or ’69 I can’t remember they were shooting (the film)
Guru. There was a big buzz in Bombay
and an American director, James Ivory was coming. My girlfriend let them use her
rather large home on the beach (to shoot the film). They were on one side of the
house and we were on the private side. The director said in a loud voice, quiet
on the set. James Ivory thought he was Cecil B. DeMille. I knew I was supposed
to be quiet and if I laughed loudly I knew they would hear it. My laugh was
still Operatic, because I had studied Opera. It changes your laugh. I don’t
laugh like that anymore. It was very high and it would come cascading down (she
imitates the laugh). I burst out laughing, just after he said quiet on the
set, because I found it amusing how he was carrying on. He threw open the doors
and he said who was laughing? I thought oh my God I have had it now. I said I am
so sorry. You said quiet on the set and I didn’t think you would do it in one
second. I thought they would have to simmer down, before you started to shoot.
He said no we haven’t started to shoot, but I want you in my movie. He asked my
host if she had a sari that I could put on, so I could be one of the guests (in
the film). I had to be a guest in the scene and I had to keep laughing. He put
my laugh on a loop.
Asha Puthli also appeared in Bruno Corbucci’s Italian made film
Squadra Antigangsters (released
in 1979) or in English it was named
The Gang That Sold America. She says originally she had been signed just to
do the music, but when Ursula Andress who was supposed to appear in the film and
lip synch, had to bow out unexpectedly, Asha Puthli was asked if she also wanted
to act in the film. She played the character Fiona Strike and she did the
singing.
As for Asha Puthli’s move to the United States,
“I arrived
in America in late ’69. I came two weeks before Woodstock. It was amazing, that
whole experience was like culture shock for me. I kept calling (producer) John Hammond and his secretary
kept saying he’s not here, leave a message and I will send him your tape. I kept
sending the tape, of Indian Classical with Jazz and I always got the same thing
over and over again, he’s not here. John Hammond happened to be in the Century Club, which
was a men’s only literary club and you had to have written at least two books to
be a part of it. He was sitting there when Ved Mehta the author of
A Portrait of India (was there) and
there is a chapter on me in the book, which is about Jazz in Bombay. It
described how I was trying to get out of India. There are several books that
have parts of my life, but that is the very first one.
The book came out in the New Yorker as a series. John Hammond, said Mr.
Mehta I was reading your article on Jazz in Bombay and what happened to that
young girl? Did she finally make it out of India and did she get her
scholarship? He talked about me (in the book) joining the airline and
everything. He said, yes in fact she has
been here for six months. (This took place) in January of 1970. I had been
trying to get (reach) John for six months since I arrived and I hadn’t had any
luck. Ved Mehta called me up and he
said Mr. Hammond wants to meet you.
Will you call him at this number, because he is expecting your call? I called
him and I gave an attitude to the secretary who had been so mean to me (she
laughs). John heard my Indian Classical Jazz music.
Initially John put me in the studio to do what he called Asha’s thing and we did
acetate of Indian Classical and Jazz. He called Clive Davis down. Clive was
highly regarded by now. He had discovered Sly and the Family Stone and Janis
Joplin, but he didn’t care for Jazz. John Hammond was pretty well retired by
this time. He must have been in his seventies and he had discovered only amazing
Jazz artists. Clive said, John that’s not going to sell, that’s Jazz and he
walked out. John said to me I am going to show Clive that you can sing anything
at all. He said anything that you want to sing you will be able to sing with
both Ornette (Coleman) and with something completely different with Peter Ivers.
Both were on the cutting edge, one was on the cutting edge of Jazz and one was
on the cutting edge of R&B. I enjoyed working with both of them. They were very
diverse and they were very challenging. I spent more time with Peter Ivers and
the Band, because we went to Massachusetts where we hung out together.”
The Peter Ivers Band and Asha Puthli cut the single “Ain’t That Peculiar,” which
unfortunately was not released until many years later, but it drew rave reviews
from Rolling Stone, Cash Box and other notable publications.
In 1971 and again in 1972
the television’s American Playhous series aired
Jesus, A Passion Play for Americans
and Peter Ivers’ music and lyrics from the album Knight of The Blue, the same
album that “Ain’t That Peculiar,” appeared on, was used for the television
special. Asha Puthli appeared in the musical as Salome.
Ms. Puthli remembers, “Ain’t That Peculiar,” was only released in North America.
It entered on the bottom of the charts and then CBS (the
international division of Columbia Records) called me up and said they would
like to sign me.
At this time my visa was coming up, as I only had a one year visa, so I would
have to go back, but in the interim I got married, so I didn’t have to rush
back. My parents were getting a little concerned that I had not returned home. I
had got married and I was still in America and almost one and one-half years had
passed.
Columbia Records, which was run by Clive (Davis), did not make a move on me.
When you get into a company there is a lot of corporate hierarchy and a lot of
corporate politics. Depending on who introduces you to the company there are
many egos that play out. Don Ellis, not the musician, but the executive from
Epic Records (owned by Columbia Records)
called me up and said that Epic would like to sign me. I had been in the country
for over a year, but I didn’t know anybody or any managers or how the industry
worked. I didn’t have an agent and I never did this professionally so to speak.
When he made that offer to me instead of me saying let me get a manager, I
decided to negotiate it myself. I said oh, no. I had seen so many Hollywood
films (she starts to laugh), I
started to play a whole role and I said money talks. I knew I needed money to
get back home and the tickets in those days were much more expensive than they
are today. Don Ellis then said and bullshit walks. We were jesting with each
other. I quickly became very, very Americanized.”
Asha Puthli would release five records with CBS and she debuted with a
self-titled album. She was also asked to change her name.
“I refused to change my name. If I had a manager I probably would have done it,
because he would have made me see the light, but there was no one to explain to
me. Many years later after I had been in the business I realized in retrospect I
should have changed it. It would have changed the entire trajectory of my career
if I had changed it. They said you can change your name to anything with A and
P, but your name is too exotic. Nobody explained to me that there is marketing
dissonance and that is why it was going to be difficult to market me and it
would impede my career.
Immediately, they started calling me a difficult artist, because I didn’t want
to change my name. The reason that I did not want to change my name is all of
this time I felt it was not a level playing field (between cultures) and I
wanted to change that and to make it an even field. I wanted people to realize
that people from other parts of the world are able to sing or to do things. It
is one world. We are all one and just because my name is exotic it didn’t mean
that I was any different in understanding the culture. For instance The Beatles
had come to India and they adopted the sitar. It was fine and the sitar was
accepted even though it was an Indian instrument. That is the difference between
when you have a voice or you have an instrument that is outside of your whole
person. Your voice is such an important part of you and the image that you
project is you. All of these things I hadn’t even thought of and I was too young
to think about them. I was impulsive and wrapped up in my passion for singing
instead of taking an objective look at it. I didn’t change my name, because of
that, as I wanted to change perceptions. I always wanted to bridge the gap and
to bridge the cultures,” she says.
In 1973 Asha Puthli worked with producer Del Newman from London, England to
record her debut album. She had originally been given a choice of three American
producers with whom she could work, but she says they were all so busy at the
time she would have had to wait almost a year to get into the studio and she was
eager to get her career underway. At the time Del Newman had just finished
working with Cat Stevens on an album and he had also created the arrangements
for Elton John’s Yellow Brick Road
record.
In 1975 Asha Puthli’s second album She
Loves To Hear the Music was released and it was comprised of songs such as
“Paper Doll,” “You’ve Been Loud Too Long,” and a song written by Neil Sedaka,
“Laughter In The Rain,” (also recorded by
Neil Sedaka and went to #1 on the
Billboard Hot 100) There was also a song written by Ms. Puthli, “You’ve Been
Loud Too Long.” The album was released in the Netherlands, Japan and the U.K.,
but not in America.
The third album, The Devil Is Loose,
released in 1976 featured the
sultry title song and another seductive tune
“Say Yes.”
Ms. Puthli talks about the record The
Devil Is Loose, “I am so unhappy with the cover, because that is the cover
they wanted me with no makeup on and it was taken by somebody from CBS. I didn’t
like the way I looked in it and I paid for the second cover myself, which is the
cover that you see now. That is a collector’s album and I know, because I had to
buy it myself. I didn’t have one and I had to buy it for $150 (she
laughs). I bought two of them, that one and
She Loves To Hear The Music. I even
kept the receipts.
CBS wouldn’t let me do my own songs, because they wanted to put me in a sort of
Shirley Bassey mode. One of the people who had made a bid when I was signed was
Johnny Franz from Polygram and he wanted to make me into a Shirley Bassey type
of singer, but not a songwriter, just a singer. That is why if you notice the
first album has songs written by everyone else, except one song, which is a
little bit Jazz, influenced which is called “Truth.”
I insisted that song (of mine) was in there. I had to fight for the cover
and I had to fight for that one song. I paid for that cover myself so they
wouldn’t use the other one.
The Devil Is Loose
(the album) went gold in certain countries in Europe (including
Italy). Epic gave me the gold album.
The album was popular in Europe and it was never released in America. They were
never, never released in America, because I was considered difficult, because I
wouldn’t change my name. The people at CBS America had the audacity to tell me,
you are not black and you are not white and Indians don’t buy western music.
They said we have done a focus study group and they (only) buy Indian songs.
That is exactly what I was trying to change and now the second and third
generation they definitely buy (other kinds of music). Artist wise the roster
was more Country oriented with the exception of Earth, Wind & Fire and they were
always puzzled why Earth, Wind & Fire was getting hits when they were not really
pushing it. Then there was Michael Jackson of course.”
Between 1973 and 2009 Asha Puthli would record nine albums and one EP. As we
mentioned during the first part of this interview Asha Puthli is in the midst of
recording her eleventh album.
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It was not the only time that Asha Puthli had been
referred to as an innovator. Ann Powers writing for the New York Times referred
to her as a pioneer of Fushion music, along with Ravi Shankar. 
After they (Merchant Ivory Productions) met me I mentioned that I was trying to
work my way to America and that I had applied for scholarships and I would be
coming eventually. James Ivory said whenever you come call us, because we would
love to work with you. That is how it happened and then we did (the film)
Savages (released in 1972).”