Song of The Week Archive

 

 

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.