“ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE” (1939)

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. NY Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson said “Very Warm for May is not so hot for November”, and theater audiences apparently agreed; there were only 20 people in the audience by the second night. Ticket prices were reduced from $4.40 to $3.30, but it still closed shortly after New Year’s Day in 1940. Even as the show was dying on Broadway, the Tommy Dorsey Band’s 1939 recording of “All the Things You Are” was peaking at 1st place on the pop charts. In 1940 a recording by Artie Shaw and His Orchestra rose to 8th place and one by Frankie Masters rose to 14th place. The song appeared eleven times on “Your Hit Parade”, reaching first place twice. Based on a recent survey by JazzStandards.com of the songs most frequently included on currently issued CDs by the greatest number of jazz artists, “All the Things You Are” ranks second. Only “Body and Soul” appears on jazz CDs more frequently.
Why do jazz musicians like “All the Things You Are” so much? Kern and Hammerstein certainly did not expect the song to be so successful. The song has an unconventional ABCD structure with three key changes in the middle of the refrain, which was unusual and risky for a pop song at the time. But, as William Hyland states in his book, The Song is Ended, “What they (Kern and Hammerstein) could not anticipate was that musicians of all categories would be fascinated by Kern’s harmonic dexterity, including especially some clever musical devices in moving through different keys.” Its twelve-note range presents special challenges for vocalists; it even has attracted opera singers who performed it in aria fashion, including Placido Domingo, Mario Lanza, Jessye Norman and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
Although opera singers may like it, Kern believed that the melody was too complex to become a hit with the public. Even though the song’s refrain begins simply enough with an easily sung first line, it quickly becomes tricky. However, when Kern heard a passerby whistling it, he had to revise his opinion. Alec Wilder, in his book American Popular Song, has this to say about the song’s popularity with the general public: “I am surprised as Kern is alleged to have been that it became a hit. Perhaps one should hark back to that old theory that if the opening measures of a song are singable, it doesn’t matter how complex the rest of it is.”
While the melody may be challenging, Hammerstein’s lyrics were written to be easy on singers. He came out of the European operetta tradition of lush images and flowing rhetoric, and wrote lyrics with sonorous phrases rich in long vowels and liquid consonants. His lyrics presented forthright sentiments rather that the witty, understated light verse of the Gershwins, Rodgers & Hart and Cole Porter that was so popular in the late 1920s and 1930s. After his major hit in 1927, the musical Showboat, his career went into eclipse. Philip Furia, in his book The Poets of Tin Pan Alley, quotes Hammerstein describing his lyrical style as follows: “Aside from my shortcomings as a wit and rhymester – or perhaps, because of them – my inclinations lead me to a more primitive type of lyric.” The lyrics for “All the Things You Are” were in his preferred writing style, but he never was completely satisfied with them. Having to use the word “divine” in the second to last line displeased him because he thought it trite, but he searched fruitlessly to find another word to rhyme with “mine” in the last line. Since he liked the rest of the song and the last line in particular, he was stuck with keeping “divine”. It is fortunate that he didn’t find a replacement – “divine” fits the song perfectly.
The failure of Very Warm for May was discouraging to Kern and Hammerstein. It would prove to be Kern’s last Broadway show. In the early 1940s he wrote scores for Hollywood films and died in 1945 of a cerebral aneurysm. However, for Hammerstein, in the early 1940s the era of sophisticated, urbane lyrics was waning and musicals were returning to the older lyrical style he preferred. In 1943 he teamed with Richard Rodgers to write the ground-breaking musical Oklahoma and his Broadway career was back on track.