What kind of music am I looking for?

Cafe Society
1

Stay with me here, I am musically inept and need to set the scene.

We are in a nightclub, somewhere between 1940 and 1960. Dark and smoky. The men wear suits, and have checked their hats but not their guns. Mike Hammer might be there, Easy Rawlins knows he wouldn’t be allowed in. There is a band, the drummer is only using brushes, and the focus is on the singer. She is a young woman, wearing a sheathe dress and matching gloves, singing into an old-fashioned standup microphone. She is not singing about happy things.

I have tried looking for “torch songs”, but I am not getting what I want from that search term. Any help re: genre, artists, etc. will be appreciated.

2

Standards, or jazz, maybe.

3

I’d say Billie Holiday, but I’m sure she displayed in your torch songs search.

4

How about Peggy Lee?

5

Nina Simone?

She was active a bit later than the time period you mention, but I thought maybe the music was more important than the era.

6

I think you mean like** this:**

"Blues" comes to mind. As someone famous once said (I forget who), "You don't have to be down and out [i.e., poor] to have the blues. Hell, even Howard Hughes had the blues!"
7

You definitely want Carmel’s “Bad Day”

8

Go to youtube. Type in “noir nightclub singers.”

You’ll likely find something you can use.

9

Probably singing “Love For Sale”.

Also try Ella Fitzgerald Sings Songs from Let No Man Write My Epitaph. Her character in the movie was rather similar to what you described.

I’m also thinking of Marilyn Monroe as Ginger singing “I’m Through With Love” in Some Like It Hot.

10

Here you go. Dinah Washington - Drinking Again

11

Black Coffee by Sarah Vaughan

Why Don’t You Do Right? by Peggy Lee

Street of Dreams by Lee Wiley