I was somehow amused by Denny Freeman quoting "Blue Moon" in a solo for "Spirit On The Water" at one of the shows in New Zealand. Some comments about this song's tangled history, from the liner notes to an old compilation of mine plus some more about Rodgers & Hart:
QUOTE:
"'Blue Moon' has one of the most convoluted creative histories in popular song. With the title 'Prayer', it was cut from the film it had been written for. 'Hollywood Party' (1933), which starred Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges, Jimmy Durante and Mickey Mouse. 'Prayer' was to have been sung by Jean Harlow, adressed to the Lord, and ending with Hart's tongue-in-cheek words: 'Be nice and make me a star'. Hart wrote new lyrics, and in 1934 the song re-emerged as 'The Bad In Ev'ry Man", and was sung by Shirley Ross in a film Manhattan Melodrama, (the very film that outlaw John Dillinger was watching just before he was gunned down in Chicago). Finally [1935] Hart wrote another set of lyrics..."
(from M.E. Paymer, Sentimental Journey, p. 271)
"The story goes, that one day Larry [Hart] bumped into MGM's music publisher, his old friend Jack Robbins [...]: 'You know, Larry, that's a really good tune you boys have got there. I'd be glad to get behind it, but it need a commercial lyric'. Stung by this remark Larry retorted: 'Oh yeah, I suppose what you'd like me to write is something corny like 'Blue Moon'". (from F. Nolan's Hart-bio)
The joke behind it is that Hart (one of the most sophisticated lyricists of that era, who had a deep aversion against sentimentality, Kitsch and tired formulas) then tried to write the most corny and sentimental lyrics he could imagine, more a parody than a serious work. But that didn't stop the song from becoming one of most often recorded and most beloved standards ever. Glen Gray, Benny Goodman (with the great singer Helen Ward) and Al Bowlly were the first to have a hit with "Blue Moon" in 1935, followed by countless by a lot of other artists. And after the war it found its way into Elvis Presley's Sun Sessions and of course onto Dylan's "Self Portrait".
This is a song that has survived until today and has been revived countless times, although the lyrics are very untypical for Hart. But is as much symbol of the music of the pre-Dylan era. When Bob recorded it for SP the critics weren't that impressed and I still think it was not only a tribute to Elvis as a ballad singer but also a provocative move by him at a time when he was really seen as the counter-model to the songwriters of the generation before.
mp3s:
an instrumental version from the Basement tapes but I don't know if Dylan took part in this performance
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e91inm
Helen Ward with Benny Goodman (1935)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/m4m9ic
Greta Keller (1935)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/rrdz3x
Elvis Presley from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akftGkC_1Kg
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About Rodgers & Hart:
Stefan Kanfer, Enigma Variations (excellent article, 2003)
Mr. Kanfer about the staying power of Rodgers' songs:
QUOTE:
Based on current performances and record sales, the world’s most popular songs aren’t those of Schubert or Schumann, John Lennon or the latest hip-hop artist. They come courtesy of a gentleman of formal manner and formidable talent who took Broadway by storm more than half a century ago. Since the stage is an arena that the young rarely visit these days, the songs of Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) should have become mere antiques long ago, appreciated by connoisseurs but remote from contemporary taste. And yet Rodgers’s works still find millions of listeners of every age and in almost every land
wikipedia
A Guide To Musical Theatre
pbs American Masters
The Boys From Columbia (Time Magaizine 1938)
Maurice-Abravanel.com
pbs Stars Over Broadway
and many more
Many performances of their songs are also available on YouTube
Rodgers & Hart are a fine example to show how absurd it is to say the pop song with "intelligent" lyrics started with Mr. Dylan (as it is still proclaimed in some mighty tomes of Bob research). In many ways the younger songwriters starting out in Musical theatre in the mid-20s had similar intentions as later the Folk & poetry influenced singer songwriters in the 60s. Lorenz Hart in 1925 criticized the "brutally cretin aspect" of most of the Pop music of that time and once he congratulated Ira Gershwin for proving with his lyrics that "songs can be both popular and intelligent", something that was later echoed in many remarks about Dylan bringing "intelligence" etc to Pop or Rock, like Bruce Springsteen famous dictum about Dylan "freeing the mind".
In fact both generations of songwriters wrote mostly for a college educated middle class audience that asked for more than simple "I love you & you love me" - songs. Hart et al. had grown up when writing verses and rhyming was still an everyday-art. That was the era of the so called "light" verse, the verse de societé "We were well-versed in all french forms", lyricist "Yip" Harburg once recalled, "[...] we were highly disciplined. We were never permitted to use an oricular (sic!) rhyme or a tonal rhyme like home and tone [...] If you want to write songs and you don't know A. E. Houseman, if you don't know Dorothy Parker, Frank Adams, [Bert L.] Taylor, Gilbert [W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan] you cannot begin to be a good lyric writer". W. S. Gilbert was extremely influential and served as a role model. Even Irving Berlin who had started out as a completely unschooled poor immigrant quickly assimilated these traditions. In the 20s he was part of the Algonquin Round Table, the hippest urban and urbane intellectual circle of that time, including Dorothy Parker, George Kaufman and Harpo Marx.
Writers like Harburg and Ira Gershwin "loved popular song, and they knew that song lyrics could be better" . Besides Irving Berlin's songs Lorenz Hart's lyrics to Richard Rodgers' music - the surprising commercial success of the Garrick Gaeities with songs like “Manhattan” in 1925 was groundbreaking - served as an important inspiration and - to paraphrase something that was once said about Dylan - freed the mind of Harburg and his friends: "The impact of [Rodgers & Hart's] songs was an explosion that shook the rhymes out of my psyche and changed my life [...]"
Michael Gray for example claims that Dylan in the 60s - similar to T. S. Eliot in the field of poetry in the 20s - "was answering the demands of the times for a new poetry [...] folk-rock broke the rules of song [...] what it's lyrics could deal with and the language it could use [...] Dylan used 'popular' [...] music, and married it with fresh language, including much slang, street patois and the double-meanings and double-imagery of cult terms [...] the result was a solid body of work, 'poetry that freely expresses a modern sensibility, the ... modes of experience of one fully alive in his own age' [Leavis about Eliot]". This is of course an excellent description of Dylan's achievements but it could be used as an equally valid description for what the Gershwins, Porter, Hart, Berlin, Ms. Fields et al. did in the 20s and early 30s in the context of Musical Theatre.
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Some of my favourites:
"Manhatten" (1925)
complex, ragged rhyming & an ironic portrait of NY & a song about being in love & extremly difficult to sing. Hart & friends were really surprised when this song became a hit in 1925:
QUOTE:
We'll have Manhattan,
The Bronx and Staten
Island too.
It's lovely going through the Zoo.
It's very fancy
On old Delancey
Street you know.
The subway charms us so,
When balmy breezes blow
To and fro.
And tell me what street
Compares with Mott Street
In July?
Sweet pushcarts gently gliding by.
The great big city's a wondrous toy
Just made for a girl and boy --
We'll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy.
Lee Wiley (1950)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qaes04
-------------------------------
"You Took Advantage Of Me" (1928)
QUOTE:
I'm a sentimental sap, that's all
What's the use of trying not to fall?
I have no will, you've made your kill
'Cause you took advantage of me!
I'm just like an apple on a bough
And you're gonna shake me down somehow
So, what's the use,
you've cooked my goose
'Cause you took advantage of me!
I'm so hot and bothered that I don't
know my elbow from my ear
I suffer something awful each time you go
And much worse when you're near
Here I am with all my bridges burned
Just a babe in arms where
you're concerned
So lock the doors and call me yours
'Cause you took advantage of me.
Bing Crosby with Paul Whiteman (1928)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/2p80t6
Lee Wiley (1940)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sto5h9
--------------------------------------------
"It's Easy To Remember" (1935)
A beautiful simple song. It touches partly the same ground as Dylan's "Sara": "every moment is clear before me", that's just what "Sara" is all about. "It's easy to remember and so hard to forget" (Hart) & "It's all so clear, I could never forget" (Dylan)
QUOTE:
Your sweet expression
The smile you gave me
The way you looked when we met
It's easy to remember
But so hard to forget
I hear you whisper
"I'll always love you"
I know it's over, and yet
It's easy to remember
But so hard to forget
So I must dream
To have your hand caress me
Fingers press me tight
I'd rather dream
Than have that lonely feeling
Stealing through the night
Each little moment
Is clear before me
And though it brings me regret
It's easy to remember
But so hard to forget
Billie Holiday on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Bg1W27s0o<br><br>Post edited by: lostchords, at: 2007/09/07 23:27
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