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Duke Ellington could make songwriting sound easy when he said, “I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” In reality, he often couldn’t discipline himself to compose until he was under pressure. He once told a writer, “Without a deadline, baby, I can’t finish nothing.” The night before a recording date or performance was when he liked to write and think about music. In his biography of Ellington, James Lincoln Collier states, “Virtually all of his compositions, including almost all of his greatest work – “Mood Indigo,” “Creole Love Call,” “Solitude,” and many others – were put together at the last minute to meet a recording deadline, often right in the studio.”
Irving Berlin wrote “Always” for the score of the Broadway musical comedy, The Cocoanuts, starring the Marx Brothers.
Actress and singer Judy Garland was Johnny Mercer’s muse. They began an intense love affair in 1941, when Garland was nineteen years old and engaged to bandleader David Rose and Mercer was thirty-one and married to his wife Ginger for ten years. Upon being counseled by a friend that if her affair with an older married man became public knowledge, it would be detrimental to her film star image as an ingénue, Garland abruptly eloped with Rose. When Mercer learned of the elopement, he was devastated. He wrote “I Remember You” as a paean to his love for her.
“I Can’t Get Started” got its start from a melody by Vernon Duke that literally couldn’t get started. Duke had written the melody for a song called “Face the Music with Me,” but, in his words, “since nothing had happened to that version” he told Ira Gershwin “the tune was free” and he “could write it up.” Gershwin took the tune and made it into “I Can’t Get Started.”
In 1936 Bing Crosby took a gamble. He was under contract to Paramount Studios but there was a clause in his contract that permitted him the option of working independently. He decided to exercise that option to star in a Columbia Pictures film, Pennies from Heaven, and even invested some of his own money in the film. The gamble paid off; New York Times critic Frank Nugent labeled the film “one of Mr. Crosby's best.” He went on to comment, “It makes for a light and briskly paced comedy and, naturally, it provides Mr. Crosby with several lyric opportunities. The score by Arthur Johnston and John Burke should be—probably already is— quite popular. It includes “Let's Call a Heart a Heart,” “Pennies from Heaven,” “One, Two, Button Your Shoe,” “So Do I” and “Skeleton in Your Closet,” the last being played by Louis Armstrong and his band.”
“Chelsea Bridge” began as a case of mistaken identity. Billy Strayhorn was inspired to compose the song after he saw a James McNeill Whistler painting, Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge.
A change of tempo can make the difference in whether a song succeeds or fails. “Someone to Watch Over Me,” one of the most popular songs written by George and Ira Gershwin, owes its success to a tempo change.
“Blue Skies” was born of more desperation than inspiration. It was introduced by well-known vaudeville star Belle Baker in the Broadway musical Betsy, but that doesn’t begin to describe the saga of how an Irving Berlin song ended up in a Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical.
Sometimes changing one word in a song can make a significant difference to the life of that song. Composer Irving Gordon wrote a song he titled “Uncomparable;” his music publisher, Bourne Company, asked that he change it to “Unforgettable,” thereby transforming a potential dud into a hit.
For centuries people have relied on music to help express feelings so intense they need more than words. Now we at WICN must find the words to say goodbye to Karen Mungal, who at the end of the week is leaving her staff position at the station. Words hardly seem adequate to express all that Karen has meant to WICN over the past ten years; we have come to depend on her expertise, dedication, integrity and kindness. To tell her how much she will be missed, it’s natural for a jazz station to turn to a jazz song. This week’s Song of the Week, “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye,” is dedicated to you, Karen, with the hope that Cole Porter’s song can convey our sadness at losing you better than mere words ever could.
“I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” is an ode to the kind of love that takes you by surprise.
Band members who contributed to the Ellington body of work include Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Bubber Miley, Billy Strayhorn, Juan Tizol and Cootie Williams, who wrote a theme that ultimately was to become “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me.”
“Get Happy” transformed Harold Arlen from a singer into a songwriter.
“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” has a more tumultuous history than most jazz standards. The song that became Jerome Kern’s most popular hit began as a throwaway instrumental he wrote to backup a tap dance during an intermission for the Kern-Hammerstein musical Showboat.
Oscar Hammerstein had a problem. He and Richard Rodgers were writing the score for the Twentieth Century-Fox the film State Fair, and he needed a song to fit the melancholy mood of a young girl who isn’t looking forward to going to the fair with her family, but doesn’t know why. He thought it sounded like a case of spring fever, but since state fairs always are held in autumn, he knew that idea wouldn’t work. In his biography of Hammerstein, Getting to Know Him, Hugh Fordin writes, “Rather half-heartedly he threw out the idea of having her say that although it’s autumn she has spring fever, so it might as well be spring. Dick [Rodgers] jumped up excitedly and said, “That’s it!” Within a week Oscar wrote the words for “It Might as Well be Spring.”
Vernon Duke and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg are the odd couple of songwriting. Duke was an urbane and sophisticated Russian émigré who had written classical music and ballets and lived in Paris in the 1920s. Harburg, who had a background in writing light verse, also had Russian roots, but his parents were poor immigrants to New York’s tough Lower East Side and he had never been abroad. Duke was born into the Russian nobility and left Russia to escape Communism, while Harburg was a populist and dedicated leftist. The only reason they came together was because they both were members of George and Ira Gershwin’s set of friends, but their unlikely pairing produced the great jazz standard, “April in Paris.”
“Love Is Here To Stay” is the last song that George Gershwin wrote. On July 11, 1937, at the age of 38, he died of a malignant brain tumor.
“Three strikes and you’re out” almost came to summarize the life story of “The Man I Love,” but it was saved from oblivion by a combination of cocktail parties and a member of the British royalty.
The perennial question in songwriting of which came first, the words or the music, is easily answered in the case of the Gershwins. George’s music came first, followed by brother Ira’s lyrics. George explained, “I hit on a new tune and play it for Ira and he hums it all over the place for awhile till he gets an idea for a lyric. Then we work the thing out together.” Ira confirmed that the music was first, saying, “Since most of the lyrics … were arrived at by fitting words mosaically to music already composed, any resemblance to actual poetry, living or dead, is highly improbable.” “Embraceable You” frequently is cited as the perfect fit of words to music.
“How long has this been going on?” usually is asked in reference to the discovery of something unpleasant, like when someone learns his or her lover is having an affair. However, lyricist Ira Gershwin twisted around the catchphrase to refer to the delight and wonderment discovered in a first kiss.
When Mae West introduced "My Old Flame" in the Paramount Pictures film Belle of the Nineties, she was relying more on her style of delivery than her actual singing ability.
You have to wonder how one of the most melancholy jazz songs about love came to be written for a film starring the slapstick comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Gene De Paul and Don Raye wrote “You Don’t Know What Love Is” for the 1941 Universal Pictures film Keep ‘Em Flying.
Most Valentine’s Day songs are dedicated to lovers, but this week’s song is for all the would-be lovers, the people who aren’t in love but want to be: “I Wish I Were In Love Again.”
In February the Song of the Week will focus on jazz standards with the theme of love, but not love of the sweetly romantic variety. Instead, this month’s songs will feature love on the edge, beginning with Cole Porter’s composition of anguished puzzlement, “What Is This Thing Called Love?”
Who was E.A. Swan? His name appears on sheet music for “When Your Lover Has Gone,” which was published in 1931 and recorded hundreds of times since then, but few jazz fans know anything about him.
“After You’ve Gone” is one of the few jazz songs written before 1920 that retained its popularity into the swing era of the 1930s. Along with “St. Louis Blues” and “Indiana” (aka “Back Home Again in Indiana”), it is one of the top three pre-1920s jazz standards.
As we bid farewell to the first decade of this century, Songs of the Week for January will feature jazz standards with a goodbye theme. The song for this week, one of the most recorded songs about parting, most aptly is titled “Goodbye.”
“Bye Bye Blackbird” was written in 1926 by composer Ray Henderson and lyricist Matt Dixon, and immediately became popular, appearing on the pop charts four times that year.
“Blue Moon” is the last Song of the Week for December, which ends with a blue moon on the 31st. The term “blue moon” appeared in English writings as early as 1528, and originally signified something absurd or outlandish. Over the past 500 years its meaning changed a few times, and now it usually means an event that rarely happens.
The moon doesn’t take a starring role in many songs with a holiday theme; snow is a much more important meteorological event. But “Moonlight in Vermont,” while not specifically a holiday song, has come to be associated with the season.
1909 was a particularly good year for giving birth to jazz luminaries; Benny Goodman was born May 30, 1909. In celebration of the centennial of his birth, this week’s song with a moon theme is one that he popularized, “Moonglow.”
There must be a natural affinity between the moon and jazz, because no other single celestial body has been the subject of so many jazz songs. Since this month has a blue moon, which is the second full moon to occur during a calendar month, and there won’t be another blue moon month until August 2012, each Song of the Week for December will salute the moon. For centuries the moon has been seen as an instigator of change, love and madness, and it does all that in this week’s song, “Old Devil Moon.”
If it wouldn’t have been for a show of temper by Audrey Hepburn, one of the best-loved songs in the American songbook could have been lost to oblivion. When the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s previewed in San Francisco prior to its release, it met with tepid audience response, and Paramount Pictures executives convened a hasty conference to discuss how to fix it. The producer said, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but that damned song can go.” “That damned song” was “Moon River,” and Audrey Hepburn, the star of the film, purportedly responded, “Over my dead body.”
“Too Marvelous for Words” applies to Johnny Mercer himself. As Chicago Tribune arts critic Howard Reich writes, “If you removed the lyrics of Johnny Mercer from the American songbook, you'd be left with a gaping silence where great art used to be.
Composer and pianist André Previn, who won four Academy Awards for scoring films, said, “If you’re talking about music that’s important to a movie and puts the movie on a different level, we’re not really talking about underscoring but about songs that have become part of the American folklore.” He could have been describing “Days of Wine and Roses.”
There was a natural affinity between Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer. Both were outsiders among all the New York born composers and lyricists, with Carmichael coming from Bloomington, Indiana, and Mercer from Savannah, Georgia. They shared an admiration for the jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke and each had a penchant for using avarian themes in song writing. “Skylark” was the greatest bird song that either one wrote.
Combine two shining lights of the Harlem Renaissance, writer Arna Bontemp and poet Countee Cullen, with the songwriting team of composer Harold Arlen and lyricist Johnny Mercer, then add Lena Horne as the leading lady and you should have the recipe for a hit Broadway musical – right? Wrong! The resulting musical, St. Louis Woman, in which “Come Rain or Come Shine” debuted, closed to bad reviews and poor attendance after only a short run.
The supernatural has been a source of inspiration for jazz musicians since the early 1900s, beginning with songs like "Spooky-Ooky Blues" and "I’m a Jazz Vampire." In 1918 the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made what may be the first recording of a jazz song with a Halloween motif, "Skeleton Jangle." Since that time, a number of jazz songs with a haunting theme have been written and recorded, and "Witchcraft" would have to rank as one of the most popular.
In a burst of longing for New York City, composer Vernon Duke wrote “Autumn in New York.” It was in the late summer of 1934 when he was vacationing in Westport, Connecticut, and feeling bored and discouraged after having spent the summer there writing music for an aborted musical.
When Ethel Waters sang “Taking a Chance on Love” in the Broadway musical Cabin in the Sky, she brought down the house every night. In his New York Times review of the play, theater critic Brooke Atkinson wrote, “Ethel Waters has never given a performance as rich as this before. This theatre-goer imagines that he has never heard a song better sung than “Taking a Chance on Love.” She stood that song on its head and should receive a Congressional Medal by way of award.”
Herbie Hancock was an 11-year-old piano prodigy when he began his professional career in 1951 performing a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony. By the time he composed "Watermelon Man" in 1962, he had moved from classical music and his Chicago birthplace to hard bop and New York City.
“We like you to meet a friend of ours who goes by the name Killer Joe. Picture a so-called hippie or hip-cat, standing on a corner wearing a neatly pressed double-breasted, form-fitting pinstriped suit. Pair of pointed toe shoes with bold white stitches around the sole. A black shirt, a long white tie. Black pencil mustache, and of course a very wide brim black felt hat. Killer Joe always has a pocket full of loot, but only the kind that jingles, see he likes to play the horses. He is most certainly a ladies man, as a matter of fact, he is always willing to accept a cash contribution from them for any cause, namely his own. The most important thing that you have to know is that he is very much against manual labor.” That spoken-word introduction by Benny Golson led into the first recording of his composition “Killer Joe,” performed by the Jazztet on their album, Meet the Jazztet.
During the Golden Age of Hollywood films, from the early 1930s until the advent of television, motion picture studios had eminent composers on staff, including Franz Waxman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner and Bronislaw Kaper, the composer of "Invitation." Hired by MGM in 1935 after leaving Nazi Germany, Kaper worked in Hollywood for more than 30 years and wrote music for a wide variety of films, including the scores for two melodramas that both featured "Invitation" as the musical theme.
The creation of “Stormy Weather” was anything but turbulent. At the time they composed the song, Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler were writing music for shows at the Cotton Club, the premier Harlem nightclub in the 1920s and 1930s, where wealthy white patrons paid a stiff cover charge of $3.00 to watch celebrity black entertainers and to drink beverages made illegal by Prohibition. Arlen and Koehler worked at the Cotton Club from 1930 to 1934, writing songs for two shows per year. At a party in 1933, while fiddling around at a piano, they wrote “Stormy Weather” in less than 30 minutes.
Even the sunniest of songs can have a cloudy origin, and the exuberant “On the Sunny Side of the Street” has its share of clouds. Credited to composer Jimmy McHugh and lyricist Dorothy Fields, there have been persistent rumors that jazz pianist and composer Fats Waller actually wrote the music for “On the Sunny Side of the Street” and sold the publication rights to McHugh.
“Careless Love” is a traditional song based on a folk melody of obscure origin, and the numerous versions of its lyrics usually feature abandoned love and heartbreak or tragic death.
It’s not uncommon for famous jazz songs to attract creation myths, and there are at least three versions of how and when “Night in Tunisia” came into being.
Billie Holiday wrote the words to “God Bless the Child” after a disagreement with her mother over money. Her mother asked for some financial help to open an after hours club, and Holiday refused. Later, describing how she came to write the song, Holiday recalled her argument-ending comment: “I said ‘God bless the child that’s got his own,’ and walked out.
George Cukor, the director of the film A Star is Born, wanted the sequence in which Judy Garland sang “The Man That Got Away” to be filmed in one long take as a night scene in an after hours jazz club, with the singer moving around the set. This created challenging problems with the lighting, staging and sound, and ultimately required twenty-seven takes over three days of filming.
“Lush Life,” the ultimate in sophisticated and cynical love ballads, was not written by a world-weary jetsetter, but by a teenager living in the working class neighborhood of Homewood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
On July 20, 1969, “Fly Me to the Moon” landed on the moon along with the Apollo 11 astronauts. It was one of the first songs played on the moon by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the lunar surface after Commander Neil Armstrong.
"Mack the Knife" is in a class by itself. What other jazz standard is about a man who robs, murders, rapes and commits arson? And what other jazz standard began as a German avant-garde theater song in a Marxist anti-capitalism satire?
Pianist Horace Silver, the composer of "Song for My Father," is credited as the co-creator, along with Art Blakey, of the new movement that came to be called hard bop.
Indiana native Hoagy Carmichael, the composer of "Star Dust," was supposed to become a lawyer, not a musician. He supported himself by playing piano with dance bands while studying law at Indiana University and did graduate with a law degree. However, he had little interest in practicing law, failing the bar exam and getting fired from a legal firm because he spent afternoons playing piano in clubs rather than doing his legal work.
It could be said that Boston Red Sox fans got "Tea for Two" in exchange for Babe Ruth. Harry Frazee, owner of the Boston Red Sox from 1916 to 1923, sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000 in December of 1919 and used the proceeds to finance his non-musical stage play called My Lady Friends that opened on Broadway in the same month. The musical No, No, Nanette, which introduced "Tea for Two," originated from that play.
"The Sidewinder" may have the distinction of being the only jazz standard that began its life written on toilet paper. Trumpeter Lee Morgan, typical of his tendency to procrastinate, composed the title tune for his best-selling album of the same name, The Sidewinder, at the album’s recording session.
Before Cole Porter made "under my skin" the catch phrase for another one of his obsessional love songs, the expression commonly was used to describe an annoyance that was more than skin deep and couldn’t be easily brushed off. The obsessive persistence conveyed by the phrase may have been what inspired Porter to use it to describe a lover’s addiction to a love affair that "never will go so well" in one of his most popular songs, "I’ve Got You Under My Skin."
When Harold Arlen composed the music for "Let’s Fall in Love" in 1933, he literally was falling in love. The prior year, while working on a song for Earl Carroll’s Vanities of 1932, he had met seventeen-year-old model and actress Anya Taranda, a member of the cast. Earl Carroll was a Ziegfield-like showman who produced Broadway revues noted for their salacious humor and for having the most scantily clad showgirls on Broadway. Carroll advertised that his shows had "The Most Beautiful Girls in the World," and Taranda fit that mold.
"At Last," written nearly 70 years ago, recently has been in the news more than most contemporary songs. It received worldwide notoriety when it was selected as the song for the first dance of President and Mrs. Obama at the ten official inaugural balls in January 2009. A month earlier the Tri-Star Pictures film Cadillac Records had been released, and "At Last" featured prominently on its soundtrack.
When Irving Berlin wrote "How Deep is the Ocean?" he was in a creative depression that must have seemed to him as deep as the ocean. From 1927 to 1932 he composed few songs that met with public success. The loss of most of his fortune in the 1929 stock market crash added to his professional anxiety, but before that he had suffered a much worse personal blow. His only son, Irving Berlin, Jr., died of sudden infant death syndrome on Christmas Day in 1928.
"How High the Moon" holds a special place in popular music recording history. In 1951 jazz guitarist Les Paul and vocalist Mary Ford recorded the song on the Capitol Records label using a new technique, multitrack recording. The record sold a million copies and stayed at the top of the pop charts for nine weeks.
The ballad "Spring Is Here" inadvertently became a swan song duet for Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, the legendary musical film team of the 1930s and early 1940s. If their film would have been the song's first outing, the song might have met the same fate.
Duke Ellington liked to tell anecdotes about how he came to write some of his most famous compositions. He said he wrote "In a Sentimental Mood" when he was playing at a party in Durham, North Carolina, and two women began fighting. He acted as the peacemaker by "dedicating a new song to them."
The on-line music guide, www.allmusic.com, lists Charlie Parker as having recorded "Milestones." This may cause some jazz fans to do a double take, since Parker died in 1955 and Miles Davis wrote the song in 1957. However, the answer is simple: there are two songs with the title "Milestones."
GAGS! NAGS! SWEETIES AND SWING! That was the tagline used on movie posters to advertise the 1942 film Ride ‘Em Cowboy, in which "I’ll Remember April" first appeared. Many jazz standards have had strange beginnings, but one of the most bizarre had to be in this film that starred the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello cast as peanut vendors pretending to be cowboys at a dude ranch.
Inspired by a "Dear John" letter from his wife, David Raksin composed the instrumental theme for the 1944 film noir classic "Laura." Director Otto Preminger wanted to use Duke Ellington’s "Sophisticated Lady" as the film’s theme, but Raksin, who had composed the score, protested that the song had nothing to do with the plot. Preminger, well known for his dictatorial ways, told Raksin on a Friday that he had until the following Monday to come up with something else.
"Cheek to Cheek" debuted in a blizzard of feathers in the 1935 RKO film Top Hat, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In the film, Rogers wore a gown that was covered with ostrich feathers for the "Cheek to Cheek" dance number. Because of the labor required to hand sew each ostrich feather to the dress, Astaire, who normally approved his partner's gowns and suggested modifications as needed during rehearsals, saw it for the first time at the dress rehearsal immediately prior to the shooting of the dance sequence. He was horrified by the way it shed feathers with every dance movement; as he and Rogers danced, feathers flew off the dress, getting into his nose and eyes and covering his black tuxedo and the dance floor. He later recalled, "It was like a chicken attacked by a coyote, I never saw so many feathers in my life."
Record producer Orrin Keepnews summarized the paradoxical relationship between Thelonious Monk and his most famous song: "‘Round Midnight" could easily be described as the national anthem of jazz....But there is a remarkable irony in its popularity, which surely must have pleased the supremely nonconformist Thelonious: this universally loved ballad, most beautiful of jazz songs, is the legacy of one of the leaders of the bebop revolution, a pianist whose work was generally regarded as harsh, angular, and quite frighteningly difficult."
In 2001 Brazil’s leading daily newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, polled more than 200 Brazilian journalists, musicians and cultural icons to ask them to name the all-time best Brazilian song. The champion was "Waters of March" ("Águas de Março"), written by Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim in 1972.
Charlie Parker had a musical epiphany while playing "Cherokee." In Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff’s book Hear Me Talkin’ to You, they quote Parker’s description of that moment, "I remember one night before Monroe’s I was jamming in a chili house on Seventh Avenue between 139th and 140th. It was December 1939. Now I had been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used at the time, and I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn’t play it. Well, that night I was working over "Cherokee," and as I did I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I’d been hearing. I came alive."
Fats Waller referred to "Ain't MisBehavin'" as "The Alimony Jail Song." He liked to recount how he composed it while in jail for non-payment of $250 in back alimony. He sent his lawyer to a nightclub for a miniature piano, at which he composed the song in two days; then his lawyer immediately sold the song to a publisher for $250, and Waller used the money to pay off his debt and go free.
The 1937 film musical A Damsel in Distress, adapted from a novel by P.G. Wodehouse and starring Fred Astaire, had an English setting and RKO Pictures asked George and Ira Gershwin to write songs that sounded British. The resulting film score included two future jazz standards, "A Foggy Day (in London Town)" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It."
On February 22, 2009, the 81st Academy Award Ceremony will be held at the Kodak Theater, built on the site where the Hollywood Hotel used to stand. That hotel was the setting for the Warner Brothers film Hollywood Hotel, which introduced "Hooray for Hollywood," the song that became the motion picture industry’s anthem and is a staple of every award ceremony soundtrack. Richard Whiting composed the music and Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for "Hooray for Hollywood."
Babes in Arms was the first of the "I’ve got a barn, let’s put on a show" musicals. What became a moldy movie cliché actually began life as a Broadway play, with a Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart score that added five standards to the Great American Songbook: "Where or When", "The Lady is a Tramp", "Johnny One Note", "I Wish I Were in Love Again", and the immortal "My Funny Valentine."
"Night and Day" saved the day for the Broadway musical in which it debuted, Gay Divorce. Critics gave the show mediocre reviews when it opened in November of 1932, but thanks to the immediate popularity of the song, the show was a success and ran for 248 performances; it became known as the "Night and Day" show. "Night and Day" appeared again in the 1934 RKO film, The Gay Divorcée.
Johnny Mercer collaborated with a car radio to write the lyrics for "Midnight Sun." The music had been composed by Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke in 1947 and Mercer added the words seven years later in 1954. He heard the instrumental on his car radio while driving along a California freeway. He was so captivated by the melody that he drove into a gas station, called the radio station and said, "This is Johnny Mercer. Would you mind playing that again? I love it." Committing the melody to his extraordinary memory, he composed the lyrics as he drove from Palm Beach to Hollywood.
January 16, 2009 was the 51st anniversary of pianist Ahmad Jamal’s historic recording of "Poinciana" performed live at the Pershing Lounge in Chicago with his piano trio. The Pershing Lounge, now long defunct, was a legendary jazz club located on Chicago’s South Side. That night recording equipment was set up at the club, and the record that resulted from the live performance captivated the jazz world.
The Kings of Swing, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, though rivals on the bandstand, shared a common complaint. Each had an albatross of a song that brought them fame but that they had tired of playing long before fans had tired of hearing it. For Artie Shaw, it was "Begin the Beguine"; for Benny Goodman, it was "Sing, Sing, Sing." Louis Prima wrote the song and Goodman’s arranger, Jimmy Mundy, created the chart for the band. Mundy referred to "Sing, Sing, Sing" as a "killer-diller", his term for songs that were high-energy, fast tempo instrumentals whose purpose was to create audience excitement and stir dancers into a frenzy.
Most jazz fans easily could compile a list of their top ten jazz songs with a Christmas theme, but just ask them to do the same for New Year’s Eve. They likely would have trouble compiling a list of ten songs about the holiday, period. Jazz composers seem to have ignored New Year’s Eve as an inspiration for songwriting and jazz musicians would rather be playing on New Year’s Eve than writing about it. The exception is Frank Loesser, who composed the music and lyrics for "What Are you Doing New Year’s Eve?" - the only notable jazz standard with a New Year’s Eve theme.
In the late 1930s Irving Berlin initially conceived "White Christmas" as the first-act finale of a vaudeville-style Broadway revue featuring skits ranging from juggling acrobats to trained dogs. Jody Rosen, in his book White Christmas, the Story of an American Song (Scribner 2002), describes Berlin’s original intent for the song: "It is difficult to imagine the "White Christmas" we know today as showstopper in a revue filled with dog tricks and pratfalls. Yet the song that reached the world in 1942 as a hymn was, in its inventor’s initial conception, something else entirely: wry, parodic, lighthearted – a novelty tune.
Composer Matt Dennis wasn’t happy with the title of the song that he and his lyricist, Earl Brent, had just written: "Have Another Beer on Me’’ didn’t sound right. Brent changed the song’s title to "Angel Eyes" and a saloon ballad to rival "One for My Baby" was born. Although one of the most covered jazz standards now, "Angel Eyes" had some bad breaks when it was first recorded.
In the depths of the Great Depression one of the most aggressively cheerful of jazz standards made its debut: "I’ve Got the World on a String." Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler wrote it for the Cotton Club Parade of 1932 revue. Allen Forte, in his book Listening to Classic American Popular Songs, said, "The mood of this joyous song stands in marked contrast to the situation that prevailed in the United States at the time it was composed and performed, a situation that affected almost everyone, excluding, perhaps, a select group that no doubt included the patrons of the Cotton Club and its proprietors."
In the RKO musical comedy Swing Time, Fred Astaire, accompanying himself, sings “The Way You Look Tonight” to Ginger Rodgers while she is in another room shampooing her hair. Charmed by his declaration of love, she emerges from the bathroom in an old robe and stands behind him at the piano, forgetting that her head is covered in soapsuds (actually whipped cream from the RKO commissary). As he sings the last line, “Just the way you look tonight,” he turns and is startled to see her there with her lather-covered head.
It’s hard to overstate the influence "Body and Soul" has had on jazz. It probably is the most recorded of all jazz songs, with nearly 3,000 versions to date, and new versions continue to proliferate. Tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins’ 1939 version of "Body and Soul" established it as the leading jazz ballad for instrumentalists, and it remains the acid test for tenors.
“Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” (official title “Bewitched”) was the best-known song from the Pal Joey score and was Lorenz Hart’s last great hit. The song gave full expression to his cynical view of human nature. In the show Vera Simpson sings “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” when, after a drunken romp, she awakens with Joey lying in the bed beside her.
"That Old Black Magic" was played behind the opening credits and then sung by Johnny Johnston, a big band singer who was popular in the 1940s and 1950s. While he sang, ballerina Vera Zorina performed a surrealistic dance number choreographed by her then husband, George Balanchine. Johnston also made a recording of the song that became one of Capitol Records’ first hits.
"The Lamp is Low" is one of the jazz standards with a classical forebear. Its melody was adapted by Peter De Rose and Bert Shefter from Maurice Ravel’s "Pavane pour une infante défunte" (Pavane for a Dead Princess). In 1899 Ravel was commissioned to write a somewhat whimsical salon piece for piano, and "Pavane for a
Dead Princess" was the result.
How many potentially great jazz standards have been relegated to obscurity because they debuted in failed Broadway plays or in mediocre movies? If it hadn’t been for Miles Davis, "On Green Dolphin Street" probably would have met that fate.
The musical Very Warm for May, which introduced “All the Things You Are” on Broadway in November of 1939, was a dismal flop that closed after 59 performances. Even though it was written by two Broadway legends, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, and had what many believe to be Kern’s finest score, it was the victim of a last-minute script rewrite demanded by the producer, Max Gordon, that eviscerated the plot of the play.
"Over the Rainbow" had to survive several pitfalls traveling its own yellow brick road on the way to becoming the theme song of The Wizard of Oz.
"September Song" was written to accommodate the limited vocal range of Walter Huston, who played the role of Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of New Amsterdam, in the musical comedy Knickerbocker Holiday. As the middle-aged Stuyvesant, he sang it to a much younger woman in an attempt to convince her to marry him.
"Desafinado" literally means "off key" and is an example of Jobim’s humor. The bossa nova celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Bossa nova means "new style" in Portuguese, and when it was introduced in Brazil in the late 1950s it created a musical revolution. The movement, led by guitarist-vocalist João Gilberto and composer Antônio Carlos Jobim, began in the affluent neighborhoods by the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. Early bossa nova music and lyrics were created by middle and upper class musicians who targeted listeners of similar economic groups.
"Teach Me Tonight" has been covered by hundreds of musicians, but only a case of DJ "flip-itis" prevented its first hit recording from becoming a flop. In the early 1950s the Abbott Record Company, a well-established country and western label that was looking for new talent and a change of pace, signed the De Castro Sisters.
"Caravan" has been recorded so many times that a radio station could play a different version of the song for 24 hours straight without a repetition. It has been called the first Latin jazz song, but it owes much to Middle Eastern influences as well. It seems that everyone has covered the song, beginning with Barney Bigard and his Jazzopaters in December of 1936.
"I Got Rhythm" already was becoming a jazz anthem by the time that Louis Armstrong and his band made their brilliant recording in 1931. Ethel Merman had officially stopped the show when she sang the song in the October 14, 1930 debut of the musical Girl Crazy by George and Ira Gershwin.
"Too sexy and profane" was how Marlene Dietrich described One Touch of Venus when she rejected the title role. Mary Martin went on to play Venus in the 1943 musical comedy that ran for over 500 performances on Broadway and made Martin a star. She sang "Speak Low", which became the signature tune of the show and went on to become one of the most recorded jazz standards.
Many jazz standards originally were written for a motion picture, and “Blues in the Night” is one of those songs; it debuted in 1941 in a film noir musical of the same name, Blues in the Night.
Ask many jazz fans who wrote "You Go to My Head", and chances are they will say that Cole Porter must have composed it. Certainly the effervescent lyrics and sophisticated melody suggest a Porter tune. However, the fans would be wrong...
Although Cole Porter wrote over 800 songs, “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” holds a special distinction: it was his first major hit. Porter was nearly 40 years old and had written over 200 songs, but was relatively unknown when his musical comedy Paris debuted in New York City in October of 1928.
“Call Me Irresponsible”, unequivocally associated with Frank Sinatra, actually made its debut sung by Jackie Gleason in a film released in March of 1963: Papa’s Delicate Condition. In the film Gleason played a lovable family man whose “delicate condition” referred to his penchant for imbibing alcoholic beverages and then behaving irresponsibly.
Most jazz fans think of “Fever” as Peggy Lee’s signature song and are unaware that it started life as a rhythm and blues hit. Otis Blackwell, who wrote "Fever" along with Eddie Cooley, was known as a composer of R&B and rock ‘n roll songs rather than jazz.
“You are My Sunshine” is widely considered the third best-known song in the world, right after “Happy Birthday” and “White Christmas”. It is less well known that the song may have been “stolen” from its actual composer.
Instead of ending up in Harlem, “Take the ‘A’ Train” nearly ended up in the trash. Legend has it that after Billy Strayhorn wrote the song, he tossed it in the wastebasket, declaring that it sounded too much like a Fletcher Henderson composition. Duke Ellington’s son Mercer retrieved it, saving from oblivion what later became the theme song of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. That was only another twist of fate in the life of a song born of chance and circumstance.
When Cole Porter’s musical, The New Yorkers, opened in New York City in December of 1930, “Love for Sale” was the scandalous highlight of the show. Although the lyrics are mild by today’s standards, they were shocking to 1930s audiences.
What do “Willow Weep for Me” and “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf” have in common? Ann Ronell wrote the lyrics for both songs. She was one of the few woman songwriters working in Tin Pan Alley during the 1930’s, when the chances of success for songwriters in general, and female songwriters in particular, were tenuous at best.
Who is the “Satin Doll” of the Ellington/Strayhorn/Mercer composition? The true identity of the mystery woman has not been verified, but it has been suggested that Billy Strayhorn’s pet name for his mother was Satin Doll and he titled the song for her.
“Play ‘Misty’ for me” – how ironic that such a tender, romantic ballad should be forever associated with a
creepy thriller of a movie in which the disc jockey dreaded receiving a call requesting that song. “Misty” was already a hit when it was featured in the 1971 movie Play Misty for Me, in which a late night disc jockey was stalked by a woman with whom he had had a casual affair and who obsessively called him requesting he play that song. That movie ensured that the song would be memorable for more than its beauty.
“Summertime”, reputed to be the most recorded jazz song in history, debuted as a lullaby sung by Abbie Mitchell in the opera Porgy and Bess. The opera was first performed in Boston in September 1935, and was favorably reviewed there, but was not well received when it opened in New York in October of that year. The show closed in December 1935 after it ran out of money, having completely depleted the initial $70,000 investment. A few days after it opened on Broadway with an all-black cast the Highlights from Porgy and Bess album was made using two white opera singers. The original cast did not record the music until 1940.
“The Girl from Ipanema” is the kind of song that inspires myth. In 1962 Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes purportedly composed the music and lyrics to “The Girl from Ipanema” while sitting at the bar of a Rio de Janeiro restaurant after observing the sensuous movements of the teen-age Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto (now Helô Pinheiro), as she passed by on her way to the beach.
