The Great American Songbook

I have mixed memories of the 2005 G&D. Ewan McGregor was a bit lacklustre, whilst Jane Krakowski was mesmeric (to this day one of the very best I've seen). The production dragged a bit in Havana, but elated as it should for Rockin the Boat.  If memory serves, I got to see Cory English as Nathan for one performance.

Didn't stand up too well when it lost the West End cast and went on tour.

The score for "Paint Your Wagon" certainly isn't on a par with the other great Lerner and Loewe musicals, but it includes a sweet, perky song called "How can I wait", which deserves to be better known. I know the song from a recording by Julie Andrews called "Broadway's Fair", which I have had for over 50 years (the liner notes say "Julie is presently enchanting us as Guenevere, the beautiful Queen in Camelot"). The cover of the LP -- which, by some miracle, I still have -- features a Richard Avedon photograph of an impossibly young-looking Julie.

Yes, Dawnstar, I heard a similar story about why the 'West Side Story' section was omitted from one of the John Wilson BBC concert broadcasts, namely because they could not clear the rights. It was however included in a subsequent rebroadcast of the whole concert, so I don't know whether that was true or not.  Regarding your memory of seeing Roy Hudd playing Alfred Doolittle, I once played for Roy in a mini music hall tour with Hiss and Boo and if you look carefully at my current avatar you will see Roy with the rest of the company in Taunton.  The tour finished with two performances at the Fairfield Hall, Croydon, and when I saw the size of the venue I was sure we would never fill it, but what I didn't know was that Roy is a local Croydon lad.  The audience was hanging from the rafters both nights and it was a huge success. Roy was a pleasure to work with both as a performer and as a person: a very talented man.

Ok guys I’ve really enjoyed your observations, coming as they do from people who approach this with love rather than seeking to be be ‘critical’.

So your thoughts on Sondheim? For me I love the shows but struggle to love individual songs (pretty orthodox I know).

Thanks, tmesis for that great overview of Sondheim's songs. I have some big gaps in my knowledge of the shows, partly because I haven't seen some of them and partly because although I have seen them once I haven't had a cast album or needed to accompany anybody singing the songs. Oddly, there are some shows that my brain says I don't want to see (not just Sondheim) and into this category come 'A Little Night Music' and 'Merrily We Roll Along'. I know I am eccentric, but who isn't? But I have seen 'Pacific Overtures', 'Sunday in the Park with George', 'Assassins' and 'The Frogs' as well as the others in the canon like 'Sweeney Todd', 'A Funny Thing' and 'Follies'.

Of the Sondheim songs that I do know, some of them fall into the category of songs that have given me huge pleasure to perform. In the days when I played for the Aba Daba Music Hall Company at the old Pindar of Wakefield at King's Cross, we did a number of Sondheim songs and I always found them highly effective. I have said before that one of the songs that I got enormous pleasure out of performing was 'I'm still here'. We had a rather powerful Australian actress called Davilia David and she and I used to really tear up the boards doing 'I'm still here' which we performed in a number of bills and always with spectacular success. Also at the Pindar I did 'Broadway Baby' with another Aussie actress called Elaine Holland, and I loved playing the little fill-in bits between the vocal phrases. Each show at the Pindar always ended with a 'scena' being a medley of five or six songs on a particular topic, like the Farmyard Scene and the Train Scena, which were performed by all five or six members of the company. The Friendship Scena included 'Side by Side' and the 'Opening of Openings' Scena included 'Comedy Tonight', again both songs were a pleasure to perform for the actors and for me. I will change my avatar for a while to show me taking my bow at the end of the Farmyard Scena.

Elsewhere, one of the regular performers in other music hall companies was the brilliant Julia Sutton, who was in the ensemble in a number of West End musicals including 'Mary Poppins' at the Prince Edward in which she sang 'Feed the Birds'. Julia sometimes did 'Losing my mind' and it was always a rather intense experience for both of us, but she kept it as a deeply felt song rather than a melodrama as Imelda does it at the NT – to my disapproval.

I think I may have played for 'Send in the Clowns' once or twice at Stratford East but it has never impressed me, perhaps because I have never seen the show. And I think I also played 'Old Friends' at Stratford but I'm not sure. I should explain that for the Sunday Variety Shows we would have a band call from about 2 pm and people who would be on the bill that night would just come along for a quick rehearsal with me (unless they brought their own accompanist or band). Fortunately I was usually a good reader, sometimes even including transposing, so it was once or twice through at the band call and once through in the show, which is why I don't always remember what songs I have done in such shows that I did for quite a few years!

So I would definitely give Sondheim a high rating as a composer and particularly as a melodist, with my very happy experience of performing some of them to back me up!

Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn

Some of the songs were written individually by the two musicians or jointly or with other writers. If we are speaking of songs, rather than individual jazz compositions. it's a small but very, very classy output. A number of them started out as instrumentals but words were added later. In this case they still work marvellously as songs but are sometimes quite challenging to sing.

Some highlights:

Solitude
Mood Indigo
In a sentimental mood
Sophisticated Lady
It don't mean a thing
Don't get around much anymore
Do nothing 'til you hear from me
I'm beginning to see the light
Satin Doll
Take the 'A' train
Lush Life
Chelsea Bridge

I love listening to and playing all these. Ella provides some definitive versions of nearly all of them in here collaboration with Ellington himself. However, Strayhorn's remarkable Lush Life (most of it written at age 16!) is best heard with Ella in collaboration with Joe Pass, an amazingly intimate performance. I love how the verse is almost like the jazz equivalent of operatic recitative. Rosemary Clooney also collaborated with the Ellington band and provided excellent versions. Do nothing 'til you hear is one of my favourite things to play on piano (and accompany saxophonists in) - the tune has great space to fill with interesting jazz licks.

I've included Strayhorn's Chelsea Bridge which is instrumental only (however Cassandra Wilson does an excellent vocalise on it) because I love it so much. No other piece that I know has such anguished, bittersweet harmonies; it's an absolute delight to play and really does evoke, with Debussian chords, an impressionist painting.

I suppose the next time there is a revival of 'A Little Night Music' I ought to go and see it – assuming I am still able to go and see anything!

Yes, absolutely – definitely a small but very classy collection of songs. I heard the great Duke Ellington and his Orchestra live at what I think was then called the Hammersmith Odeon in the early 1960s. I know it sounds corny, but they started playing 'Take the "A" Train' just before the curtains opened to reveal the Duke and his Orchestra on stage performing their theme tune, with many of the original players still there, and it seemed like a truly historic moment. I wish I had my programme as the only name I can definitely remember was Paul Gonsalves and I am fairly sure Johnny Hodges was still there as well. Anyway, it was definitely a goosebumps occasion.

And of course I played a number of times for Adelaide Hall, who was a truly legendary figure in the history of jazz and the Great American Songbook and created 'Creole Love Call' when she was singing with Ellington. 'Satin Doll' was one of her songs and Wiki also lists 'Chelsea Bridge' in her entry but we never attempted either of those. She always sang 'I can't give you anything but love' (from 'Blackbirds of 1928') but I can't remember what else we did although I think she had an arrangement of 'Creole Love Call' that she could do with just a pianist. Oh yes, she also liked to do 'Streets of London' but she tended to get the words muddled up and then it would be a fine game of improvisation between her and me to see how we would manage to finish the song!

Of all the Ellington/Strayhorn songs you list, I think 'Don't get around much any more' was probably the only one I would ever play in my solo repertoire, unless I had the music in front of me when I might play 'Mood Indigo', 'Solitude' and 'I'm beginning to see the light'. Actually, I always found 'Don't get around much any more' rewarding to play as the melody falls easily under the fingers, and the song would almost always be recognised by my audience with a little acknowledgement of familiarity – a bit like 'Ain't Misbehavin'', but that of course is by the great Thomas 'Fats' Waller!

Oh, well if somebody had told me that before, I would certainly have gone to see it!

Now you are all making me feel guilty that I have never seen ALNM and you all love it! So how can I top that? Well, I did see Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sing the Marschallin in Paris in the Spring in either 1963 or 1966 (one or the other – I don't remember which). Will that do? I went to Paris in the Spring in 1964 and 1965 to hear Callas sing 'Norma' and the Rosenkavalier was either the year before or the year after.

I remember hearing him speak on the radio (I think it was with Michael Ball) about his commercial success and specifically about Send In The Clowns. He said it should definitely be included on his compilation album entitled “Sondheim’s Greatest Hit” [sic]...! 

It is an incredible song in isolation, I feel, but even more incredible within the context of the show. But it needs that instrumental break for Fredrik’s spoken words. Heart-breaking...

The song has a fascinating history too. Without Glynis Johns it might never have sounded as it does today.