House Music: Hugh Laurie Plays the Blues

I was in a Starbucks recently, waiting while the person ahead of me struggled to decide between an iced caramel macchiato and an iced cinnamon dolce latte, when I noticed a stack of CDs on the counter with an instantly recognizable grizzled visage frowning back at me.

Hugh Laurie, star of Fox's House, has released a new CD, Let Them Talk, featuring the same roots blues that the chronically dyspeptic, sarcastic Dr. House frequently plays on piano or guitar to soothe his existential rage.

I initially resisted buying Laurie's CD, dissuaded by its potential for the sort of cringe-worthiness that made John Belushi's and Dan Aykroyd's performances on the soundtrack to The Blues Brothers movie such a painful aural experience. As it turns out, though, Let Them Talk is surprisingly pleasant listening, and not just because the 52-year-old actor enticed top-notch producer Joe Henry, musician-composer-arranger Allen Toussaint, singer Dr. John (who sings on "After You're Gone") and other virtuoso musicians to work with him.

Laurie is a deftly rollicking pianist, actually has good pipes and possesses a skillful but unaffected knack for vocal phrasing that could almost fool you into thinking that he's spent the last seven years opening for the late Solomon Burke instead of starring in a popular TV show. You can almost sense Laurie's glee at shocking us with his unexpected musical chops. As he playfully offers in an essay on his website:

Worst of all, I've broken a cardinal rule of art, music and career paths: actors are supposed to act, and musicians are supposed to music. That's how it works. You don't buy fish from a dentist, or ask a plumber for financial advice, so why listen to an actor's music?

Indeed. Laurie is charmingly self-deprecating about his dual career; in this New York Times story, he jokes that "I could probably act better than Dr. John and play the piano better than Al Pacino."

But he also knows he's likely to evoke some grumbling in Tinseltown by those who suffered through previous offerings of TV actors who fancied themselves singers or musicians. Here are a few of the songs that have been pushed down even deeper into the bargain bin of history as a result.

1. "Heartbeat" by Don Johnson (1986). The perpetually sockless, unshaven detective from NBC's Miami Vice seems to have spent a long time studying Mickey Thomas of Starship to get all those dramatic eighties lite-rock histrionics down perfectly, as you can see in this video. On the plus side, Johnson's performance is far more tolerable than co-star Philip Michael Thomas' dancing in this video for his own vanity single, "Just the Way I Planned It."
2. "Rocketman" by William Shatner (1978). In a live performance at a 1978 sci-fi awards ceremony, the Shatman clearly was putting us on with this Rex Harrison-style spoken-word performance of the Elton John hit. Even so, one listen is plenty.
3. "Bonanza" by Lorne Greene (1964). Who knew there were even words to the theme song of the long-running 1960s horse opera? Or that Pa Cartwright, when he wasn't taming the frontier, apparently had done summer stock musicals in Virginia City? Here's a fan video of the song.
4. "Save the Last Dance for Me" by Bruce Willis (1989). The Moonlighting star's wavering voice takes the steam out of this Zydeco-reinterpretation of the Doc Pomus-Mort Shuman composition, which was a hit for Ben E. King and the Drifters back in 1960. The schmaltzy video didn't help.
5. "Spinning Wheel" by Barbara Eden (1970). The I Dream of Jeannie star strangely morphed into a clone of Joey Heatherton in this TV performance of the Blood, Sweat and Tears hit. She does have a clear voice and a decent range, but the vamping is a bit over the top.

Also, the eighth season of Laurie's day job, House, premieres on Oct. 3 at 9 p.m.