A commonplace book
This unforgettable tune has a mostly forgotten history. It originated in a prison film based on a book called Prisoners Are People.
In the film it is sung by Todd Duncan, the operatic baritone, a performance that is surprising with so many later versions in one’s ear.
Today’s selection is Moon River, the 1962 song from the movie of the same name. It was a big hit (and Academy Award winner) for Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. A perennial favorite at our house–I can plunk through it relatively successfully.
Here’s a nearly operatic version by Shirley Bassey.
Another hit song from a mostly forgotten film. (Martin Scorsese + musicals, perhaps not a marriage made in heaven.) But the tune certainly has done well for itself.
Here’s a bit of the film, courtesy of Turner Classic Movies.
And Liza doing her thing:
Franco Zeffirelli’s opulent film of “Romeo and Juliet” was a blockbuster in 1968, in part thanks to Nino Rota‘s score and a theme song that became a Billboard hit. Here is my dinged up copy.
Judging by this excerpt, the film hasn’t aged all that well.
And here is Johnny Mathis crooning it.
Evokes the line, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
So I can’t really scan (see first few days of 30 days of sheet music for my D- graphics production). But so focused on that, I managed to miss–until pointed out by an ever vigilant reader–that I don’t even know how to spell the last name of one of my idols Richard Rodgers. Got him confused with the other RR (of whom I am also a fan), architect Richard Rogers.
From Rogers and Hammerstein to Rodgers and Hart, sweet apple cider to dry gin and vermouth. To wit: ‘Bewitched’ from Pal Joey, from that brittle musical of theirs to stories by New Yorker writer John O’Hara.
And here is the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald singing it. As Ira Gershwin said, in a sentiment I bet Richard Rodgers shared, “I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.”
So many gorgeous bits from “A Game of Hide and Seek” to savor. Here’s one:
“Another day is another world. The difference between foreign countries is never so great as the difference between night and day. Not only are the landscape and the light changed, but people are different, relationships which the night before had progressed at a sudden pace, appear to be back where they were. Some hopes are renewed, but others dwindle: the state of the world looks rosier and death further off; but the the state of ourselves and our loves and ambitions seems more prosaic. We begin to regret promises, as if the influence of darkness were like the influence of drink. We do not love our friends so warmly: or ourselves. Children feel less in need of their parents: writers tear up the masterpieces they wrote the night before.”
Today a wonderful old cover from “South Pacific,” for me the best of the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows. (Although perhaps I am still in thrall to that wonderful Lincoln Center revival of a few years back with Kelli O’Hara and Paulo Szot, directed by Bartlett Sher. That production’s power came from a reminder (in the perhaps unlikely setting of a theater) that we are at war. The original production premiered in 1949, only 4 years after the end of WWII, you remember that one, “the war to end all wars.” Oh, or was that WWI? or the war before that?
And here’s a gentle (non-belted) version of it by Bing Crosby, perhaps a bit too suave to be the idealistic Lt. Joe Cable of the show, but a nice listen.
I promise to do better on the future scans, btw. As noted by loyal reader Sarah, quality control at this blog is not always top-notch, but even I can do better than that!
Just as Hemingway said Huck Finn was the well-spring of all American literature, it’s easy to argue that Show Boat, the 1927 Ziegfeld, Kern, and Hammerstein show on the story by Edna Ferber, gave birth to the American musical. (Take a look at what bowed that season on Broadway to see the context…Ziegfeld Follies, various “Scandals,” revues, and the Gershwins’ unsuccessful “Oh, Kay! spotting just a few.)
It wasn’t just that Show Boat‘s story unfolded through the music (rather than merely, “gee, I think I’ll sing a song now” a set up in so many earlier shows), or that it tackled the themes of race and what it means to be an American–core issues to be worked on in musicals from “Oklahoma” through “West Side Story,” it’s also that score! Jerome Kern knew his way around a tune, to wit, ‘Ol’ Man River,’ here performed by the great Jamaican bass, Sir Willard White (a notable Wotan among many other roles–which gives you a sense of the not inconsiderable vocal demands of SB, too.)
Funny story: Mrs. Oscar Hammerstein reportedly got peeved while attending parties when somebody would ask a pianist to play “Jerome Kern’s ‘Ol’ Man River.’ ” She shot back, “Jerome Kern didn’t write “Ol’ Man River,” he wrote, “Da-da, da-duh.” My husband wrote, “Ol’ Man River.” And not just the lyrics, he wrote the book too. So spare a moment for the great Oscar.
Another selection from the Sixties for today: “This Land is Your Land” was–perhaps to the shock of anybody under 30–something we sang in school assemblies when I was a primary school student in the 60s and 70s in the U.S. Its communal feel matched the spirit of the time, and although I can’t remember whether we sang the verses about private property and hunger, it wouldn’t have been out of place if we had. I hope kids are still singing it in school today.
The Wikipedia article about the song is worth checking out and opens with the info that Woody Guthrie’s inspiration to write “This Land” in 1940 was a result of his impatience with hearing Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” belted out by Kate Smith over and over on the radio. The original manuscript shows an interesting progression in the text. He originally included the line “God Blessed America,” but this eventually became, “This land was made for you and me.”
I don’t know when or how we acquired this particular piece of sheet music. The design feels like the music, and takes me back to that era in an instant.
A Few Reasonable Words 