"I’VE GOT THE WORLD ON A STRING" (1932)

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." From 1930 to 1934 Arlen and Koehler wrote songs for four revues at the Cotton Club, and each show had outstanding songs that went on to become hits, a remarkable achievement. "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", "I Love a Parade," and "Stormy Weather" were among the several stellar songs they wrote for Cotton Club shows.

The Cotton Club was located in the heart of Harlem at the corner of Lenox Avenue and 142nd Street and in the 1920s and 1930s it was the most famous nightclub in New York City, if not the world. Arlen and Koehler's employer and the club owner was mobster Owen "Oweny" Madden. While serving a 9-year sentence in Sing Sing for manslaughter, he acquired the club in 1923 to use as a distribution center for his bootleg beer and other alcoholic beverages. George "Big Frenchy" DeMange managed the club and was expected to be present and visible because the gangsters were part of the attraction. Madden spared no expense to create an exclusive, uptown destination for wealthy white clientele who wished to be titillated by racy shows with black performers. The interior of the club has been described as "a brazen riot of African jungle motifs, Southern stereotypology, and lurid eroticism." Patrons in evening dress, whom Arlen dubbed "The Mink Set", arrived in limousines and taxis. The club’s high tone was rigorously enforced; a mink or top hat didn’t prevent a customer from being escorted from the club for boisterous behavior or loud conversation.

Madden was a shrewd businessman whose seemingly paradoxical introduction of a strict color line into the heart of Harlem with his whites-only admission policy was key in creating the Cotton Club's exclusive atmosphere. The color line extended to the club’s employees also; white gangsters ran the club, whites from Broadway produced, wrote, and choreographed its shows, and blacks cooked, waited, bussed tables, and entertained. Steven Watson, in his book Harlem Renaissance, describes how this strict segregationist policy contributed to the success of the club. "...it was precisely the club's racist policy which made it the most comfortable stop for a first-timer to Harlem; one could view the black-white maelstrom without actually descending into it. From the touristic vantage point of a table filled with white customers, the prefabricated exoticism neatly choreographed on a proscenium stage a few yards away was anything but threatening. The Cotton Club was not the only Harlem club that catered to white audiences, but it was the largest, featured the most extravagant shows, charged the highest prices, and had most strictly enforced the color line. ...Black performers did not mix with the club's clientele... "It isn't necessary to mix with colored people if you don't feel like it," Jimmy Durante comforted the squeamish. The Cotton Club allowed the timid and well-heeled to cautiously dip their stylishly shod feet into the roiling waters of primitive Uptown."

The Cotton Club did indeed seem to have "the world on a string" during the early years of the depression, but the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 and the increasingly visible poverty of Harlem eventually created insurmountable problems for it and other mob-run uptown clubs. The club moved to midtown Manhattan in 1936, but high midtown rents, the rising cost of elaborate floor shows, changing tastes in jazz, and renewed federal attention to income tax evasion among New York's nightclubs caused the Cotton Club to close permanently in 1940.

The Cotton Club boosted the careers of many black entertainers, including Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and the bands of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Jimmie Lunceford. Calloway’s band was featured in the 1932 revue, and he was the first to record "I’ve Got the World on a String." It rose to eighteenth on the pop charts that year. In 1933 a recording by Bing Crosby with the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra peaked at nineteenth place on the charts. Louis Armstrong made a notable cover of the song that year as well. Later on, the song became associated with Frank Sinatra, and his 1953 recording with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra reached fourteenth place on the pop charts. "I’ve Got the World on a String" continues to be recorded by a new generation of jazz musicians, including Michael Bublé, Diana Krall and Robin McKell.

I’ve Got the World on a String
by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler

Verse
Merry month of May,
Sunny skies are blue,
Clouds have rolled away
And the sun peeps through,
May express happiness,
Joy you may define
In a thousand ways,
But a case like mine
Needs a "special phrase"
To reveal how I feel.

Refrain
I've got the world on a string,
Sittin’ on a rainbow,
Got the string around my finger,
What a world, what a life,
I'm in love!

I've got a song that I sing,
I can make the rain go,
Any time I move my finger,
Lucky me, can't you see,
I'm in love.

Life's a beautiful thing,
As long as I hold the string,
I'd be a silly so-and-so,
If I should ever let go.

I've got the world on a string,
Sittin’ on a rainbow,
Got the string around my finger,
What a world, what a life,
I'm in love!