The Great American Songbook

Just seconding this. I saw that Lost Musicals New Yorkers & found that song both the best number in the show at the time and the only number from it that I can still remember several years later.

Dawnstar: I have just dug out my review of 'The New Yorkers' and I see it was mainly a zany comedy and a showcase for Jimmy Durante although it did have a couple of strong Porter songs like 'I happen to like New York' and 'Take me back to Manhattan' as well as 'love for sale' but those two songs I already knew from other places like the Cole Porter revue called 'Cole' at the Mermaid and 'A Swell Party'. The other songs have mostly been forgotten although 'I'm getting myself ready for you' survives in the stage version of 'High Society'.

"Gangsters and bootleggers, society dames and broads, vaudeville entertainers, most of whom carry guns and shoot at the drop of an olive, seem like an unlikely mix for a musical, but they proved to be an irresistible cocktail in ‘The New Yorkers’, the show that Cole Porter wrote in 1930 between ‘Fifty Million Frenchmen’ and ‘Gay Divorce’. ‘An often surreally chaotic tale’ was how the critic in Time Out described the ‘fluffy’ plot, but with a script by Herbert Fields packed with brilliantly funny one-liners and put-downs, a score of ten songs by Cole Porter and three hilariously zany songs by Jimmy Durante -- magnificently recreated by Michael Roberts -- it all added up to a riotously enjoyable afternoon."

That pic from Stratford East didn't last long. My current avatar is from the Brick Lane Music Hall but no doubt it will be replaced by something else in the not too distant future.

Going a bit off thread, I love it when movies use theatrical conventions imaginatively and the encore of 'Well, did you evah?' by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the film of 'High Society' is a great example. Another favourite example is the last exchange in 'Some Like It Hot'

Jack Lemmon: We can't get married because I'm a man.
Joe E Brown: Well, nobody's perfect!

Blackout, just like the end of a comic sketch in a revue.

OK tmesis, that's an excellent overview of Irving Berlin as one of the five top contributors to the Great American Songbook. I am impressed at how well you analyse the structure of his finest songs, as you have done with the best songs of Kern and Porter. But my musical tastes are a bit less sophisticated and I also respond strongly to his early songs which are very much in the spirit of American vaudeville. Just off the top of my head I will cite a few:

When the midnight choo choo leaves for Alabam
The International Rag
Alexander's ragtime band
Down on the farm (I wanna go back)
Ragtime Violin
I love a piano
Everybody's doing it now
Oh how I hate to get up in the morning
This is the Army Mr Jones
I've got my captain working for me now
You'd be surprised
CUBA
Let me sing and I'm happy
(memorably featured behind the opening titles of 'The Jolson Story'
and many, many more

Ethel Merman left definitive performances of the first two in the films 'There's No Business Like Show Business' and interpolated into 'Call Me Madam' and I heard Ethel sing 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' live in a London TV studio and thought I had died and gone to heaven!

There was a time when I was going to see a number of one-woman shows of stars like Barbara Cook, Bernadette Peters, etc, and it seemed that every single one of them included 'I love a piano' – and why not?!

And I am also a sucker for Berlin's early romantic ballads, mostly waltzes:
When I lost you
Always
All alone
What'll I do?
A pretty girl is like a melody
How deep is the ocean?

And of course his 'copyright' on Christmas ('White Christmas'), Easter ('Easter Parade') and even the USA ('God bless America') are unique achievements!

I've just Googled Mr Berlin and spotted some wonderful songs that Marilyn Monroe sang in her own inimitable way:
Lazy
After you get what you want
Heat wave

As much as I am enjoying '42nd Street', I have to admit that it is all rather at a single pitch (nothing wrong with 40 people tap dancing to Warren/Dubin songs) I thought the stage version of 'Top Hat' with all those Berlin songs was a very superior example of a musical, not only with wonderful songs and dances, but some hilarious farce, especially in the second act. I didn't expect that the humour of the original film involving those splendid Hollywood character actors could be caught so perfectly, but it sure was.

So it seems to me that Berlin sits in something of a different category from Kern, Rodgers, Porter and Gershwin in that he wrote only a relatively small number of musical comedies but also contributed to vaudeville shows and revues and worked very much as a jobbing Tin Pan Alley songwriter. So for me, I will go along with Jerome Kern's famous remark: 'Irving Berlin has no place in American music – he IS American music!'

Where and when did you hear Michael Feinstein in London? I am familiar with his early recordings but for the life of me I cannot remember whether or not I ever saw him live. I used to go regularly to Pizza on the Park for a few years to see various singers but they were mostly elderly females as well of course as Richard Rodney Bennett.

I saw Michael Fienstein at the Hackney Empire in a concert for R2, 3 or 4 years ago. Full Orchestra and Joe Stilgoe as support.

His voice was a lot stronger than I previously realized and overall he was a good entertainer.


Pizza on the Park. Steve Ross and Andrea Marcovicci - might take this back to the other thread.

Ah! In November 2013 I was desperately house-hunting and totally oblivious to what was happening in the world of cabaret or theatre. And I have tended to be very inconsistent in how assiduously I have kept up with these things. For example, I attended the entire series of one-person shows at the Jermyn Street Theatre fairly recently (and had a great time) although it had been years since I had been to any others, apart from Eartha Kitt at the Shaw. The mention of Michael Feinstein at the Hackney Empire does ring a bell, the HE being one of my spiritual homes, so I probably knew about it but was in no mood to get out and see it. But I seem to be taking this discussion a bit off thread as we haven't discussed Gershwin or Rodgers yet.

Now come on Mr Snow. It's time we heard your comments on the Great American Songbook. As much as we will readily jump in to talk about Pizza on the Park, Steve Ross, Claire Martin et al (Jolson?) we must not get too diverted from the title of this thread!

Welcome Mr Snow to the discussion! I will be interested to see how tmesis responds to your comments but here are a few personal thoughts of mine:

Regarding playing an instrument, I was born with a God-given gift of being able to play popular songs on the piano right from when I was able to sit at a keyboard. It began with my being able to pick out tunes with one finger and then after a few lessons at the Shefte College of Music in Sydney when I was in my early teens, I learned all the basic chords and was able to play songs with both hands – and transpose easily! I did put in some effort to learn to sight read and actually played some Chopin Waltzes at a public concert in the Sydey Conservatorium! I also have a gift for accompanying, which has stood me in good stead with music hall and variety. I am boasting about all this because I have come to the conclusion that no amount of teaching or practice will turn a person into a good performer on any instrument if there is not already some kind of instinctive talent to start with.

I am not familiar with Alec Wilder's book but I have read some others in the past although I am not entirely convinced that one can actually analyse various songs to explain why they are as good as they are. Again, I think this is a God-given gift and composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin, Porter and Kern just had the gift! If I may digress a little, the song 'Daisy Bell' written in 1892 by Harry Dacre was a hit in both the UK and in the USA (with the difference being in 'a bicycle built for two' and 'a bicycle made for two') but it is hardly a sophisticated melody or a clever lyric. Yet it has endured down the years and I understand that children in schools today in Hackney know it and can sing along with it! So who knows what makes a song great?!

I agree with what you say about the best lyric writers, but all the others in that field were of course providing lyrics as required for the job in hand, at which they were all highly adept. Even the most natural and straightforward, Irving Berlin, sometimes reached the heights IMHO.

I think Bernstein is somewhat different from the others we are discussing. He was first and foremost a classical composer who also loved musical theatre. As we know, 'On the Town' developed from the score he wrote for the American Ballet Theatre for a ballet called 'Fancy Free' and then he continued along the road with other musicals, but not all of them were successful apart from 'West Side Story' which is of course one of the very greats. And I think Benny Green may well have a point in that none of Bernstein's 'songs' ever became estabished as popular hits, not even those from 'West Side Story', although a few of them are instantly recongised like 'New York, New York', 'Maria' and 'Tonight'.

Sorry to be a party pooper, but I will not be coming to Brasserie Zedel on 19 October although it might turn out to be a good night, but thanks for the suggestion.

TL

Mr Snow,  I've read the Alec Wilder book (every word!) and actually found it quite disappointing. He seems to dislike some pretty classic songs and to have a particular downer on Gershwin, mainly for using too many repeated notes.

Speaking of Gershwin....

I mentioned at the top of the thread some of my favourites but just a few (disconnected) thoughts...

- It really is a tragedy he died at 38, what could he have achieved?

- He was really fortunate to have, as a brother, such a talented lyricist.

- His musical style is so easy to recognise and yet hard to sum up, clever use of syncopation and stressing unexpected notes. One thing I've noticed, but not seen commented upon, is specifically ending phrases with the most distinctive notes of the blues scale.  A case in point is The man I love. Even though in E flat, nearly all of it's early, short phrases ends on a blues note. The lovely Somebody loves Me at the start, on the word 'who', in the phrase 'I wonder who?' has a delicious flattened third that really defines the song. Of course loads of other greats love a blue note here and there,  but it usually decorates the middle of a phrase.

- Love Feinstein's early Gershwin recordings - there's a brilliant duet with Rosemary Clooney on 'Isn't it a pity.'

- I've got all of the Nonesuch recordings of his musicals with the original orchestrations, Pardon my English, Lady be good etc. Highly recommended.

- Much as I enjoy Ella's singing in her Gershwin song series, I now find Riddle's orchestrations a bit overblown, and he buggers around too much with the great man's harmonies. (Generally I'm a massive Riddle fan.) Also many of the songs are too slow.

- Carol Kidd has a really good Gershwin CD in Nice Work.

- Although way over the top, I love Sarah Vaughan's CD with LA Phil and Tilson Thomas.

Yes, that youtube version is right OTT, although very impressive! Now here's a funny thing about that song. One of my music hall ladies wanted to do it but I didn't have a sheet copy with the verse, so I found a recording by somebody famous and took down the verse by ear and we performed it very successfully. Imagine my surprise when I later discovered that the verse I found was not Gershwin's original but something totally different. I can't remember the details but the recording may have been by Judy Garland, in which case the new verse might well have been by Roger Eden. Sorry this is such an incomplete anecdote but since my recent house move I no longer have access to much of my old reference material (CDs, LPs, music, etc) but the point of my telling it is that Gershwin's original verse is really rather tricky, or perhaps I should say clever, and the new one I found was a lot simpler!

And we mustn't forget that Gershwin's first big success was 'Swannee', written in 1919 which could hardly have been more different that the songs he was to write later. I guess we can see 'Swannee' in the vaudeville style of George M. Cohan or the early Irving Berlin, but what a smash hit to start his career!