The Great American Songbook

No, sadly, not nearly as many pictures as I might have had. If only I had one of me with Fenella Fielding, or Deryck Guyler, or Wayne Sleep, or Adelaide Hall or ...or....! I thought I would give Ruth Madoc a look-in after her recent appearance in 'The Wedding Singer'. Ruth was a great pleasure to work with in music hall, mainly at the Pindar of Wakefield, before she became famous in 'Hi De Hi'. I also took her to a Sunday Variety Show at Stratford East one night where she sang 'Lida Rose' from 'The Music Man' with The Gay Blades, a wonderful a capella barber shop quartet consisting of Martin Duncan, Brian Protheroe, Sam Kelly and another actor called Keith.

Good idea, cmonfeet. You start us off!

Oh, how I envy you, cmonfeet, to be discovering Judy Garland almost from scratch. For me she is a bit like the definition of God I learned as a small child: 'She always was and she always will be!' She was part of my very first awareness of popular song from her records and her films and I don't try to analyse her performances, I just love them for being there to enjoy.

Back in Sydney in the 1940s my mother loved popular music and she always took me as a small child to see all the musical films (and many others besides) and Judy Garland always seemed to be the epitome of the talented, glamorous singer who could act and dance but ultimately she just delivered wonderful performances of whatever songs she sang. I guess it sounds corny, but she always seemed to have total sincerity in the way she meant everything she sang, whether it was Dorothy longing to be somewhere over the rainbow or a member of a close-knit family dreaming about the boy next door or doing a classic song and dance number exhorting us all to get happy!

I love her studio recordings but it is of course in the films where we get a more complete pleasure as we can see her performing. I have to admit that some of her later albums are just a little bit disappointing but she more than makes up for that by 'Judy at Carnegie Hall' and 'Judy and Liza at the Palladium' where she is feeding off the live audiences. I was lucky enough to go to one of the Palladium performances and it was totally memorable. Apparently she had not done too well in some earlier cabaret shows in London, but at the Palladium she was on her best behaviour and gave us everything we wanted to see and hear, and the competition with the young Liza just sparked her to greater heights.

Not long before she died in London, I attended a showing at the National Film Theatre of Judy's film 'A Star is Born' preceded by the 1937 Janet Gaynor version and although it had not been advertised, at the end of the showing Judy herself was introduced on the stage and of course the audience went crazy. I suppose there must have been some kind of brief question and answer session but I remember nothing except that several hundred very excited people were thrilled to be in the same room as Judy and wanted to let her know how much they loved her. She looked very frail and rather scared but there was no doubt how much she was adored.

That's a nice piece on Garland, vdcni. Gay or straight, everybody should love Judy because she is just one of the great singers of the American songbook. I forgot to mention the TV series where, as you say, she performs with a number of other iconic singers and manages to match them in even their most characteristic songs.

I like your reference to Hollywood creating those stars like Eleanor Powell and Deanna Durbin but there were quite a few more, such as Jeanette McDonald, Jane Powell, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Ann Miller and Katheryn Grayson. But you didn't even have to be able to sing, so long as you looked good and could dance then a voice was provided as with Rita Hayworth! But the tragedy was that one of the greatest natural talents was Garland but she was the one that crumbled most spectacularly under the pressure exerted by the studios and what should have been a long and fruitful performing life ended up being tragically cut short.

Judy was also lucky to have a brilliant musical association with Roger Edens who created for her the revised version of 'You Made Me Love You' that she sang to a picture of Clark Gable in 'Broadway Melody of 1938' then he went on to write songs for her throughout her career and arrange special material including 'Born in a Trunk' and the unique versions of things like 'San Francisco' and 'After you've gone' that she sang in her live shows at Carnegie Hall and the Palladium.

I don't know why I am speaking so authoritatively about Garland, but she has just always been there in my musical consciousness for my entire life of eighty years and for me she is right up there in the pantheon of the entertainment legends of the 20th century.

Miss Marcovecci was at the Pizza on the Park one winter and included the song. She said she’d sing a little of the original lyric.





Have yourself a merry little Christmas

It may be your last

Next year we may all be living in the past

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Pop that champagne cork

Next year we may all be living in New York

No good times like the olden days

Happy golden days of yore

Faithful friends who were dear to us

Will be near to us no more

But at least we all will be together

If the Lord allows

From now on, we'll have to muddle through somehow

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now




As wiki has it.



“When presented with the original draft lyric, Garland, her co-star Tom Drake and director Vincente Minnelli criticized the song as depressing, and asked Martin to change the lyrics. Though he initially resisted, Martin made several changes to make the song more upbeat.”



Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Let your heart be light

From now on your troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Make the Yuletide gay

From now on your troubles will be miles away

I’m just browsing, tonyloco and reading your post here makes me think I would love that list at my party!

I was just about to chip in about Judy but have we already moved on?

No, we haven't moved on. Like vdcni I too am always ready to talk more about Judy and I suspect our other regular participants will be as well. Feel free indeed!

Tmesis, we are really on the same wavelength: Romberg's 'The Desert Song' is also one of my favourite songs to play. I do it in the key of D major, which is one in which I rarely find myself but it seems to add a richness to Romberg's gorgeous melody, and to Hammerstein's luscious lyrics as well.

I just had a quick look at some lists of Gershwin songs, and waltzes are indeed conspicuous by their absence. But as for Kern, you have missed 'Can't help singing' from the Deanna Durbin film and of course the glorious 'You are Love' from 'Show Boat' but that has such a broad sweep that it seems to have no bar lines at all.

I agree with your selected list of classical composers who left us some stonking waltzes, but don't forget the operatic composers like Gounod – the biggest hits from 'Faust' and 'Roméo et Juliette' are waltzes; Offenbach – 'The Tales of Hoffmann' and 'La Belle Hélène' both float along on some fine waltzes and of course Richard Strauss's 'Rosenkavalier' is one great big waltz from start to finish, well, that's an exaggeration but you get my meaning! And the Italian operas of the 19th century have a few strong waltzes, although generally not for dancing, like 'Spargi d'amaro pianto' from 'Lucia di Lammermoor', 'Va pensiero' from 'Nabucco' and even 'La donna è mobile' from 'Rigoletto' although I think that is in 3/8 but it still feels like a waltz. And of course Violetta is effectively waltzing around at the end of Act I of 'La traviata' with 'Sempre libera' although it is written in 6/8!

And, as you say, all the Austrian and Hungarian operettas are full of wonderful waltzes, as are most of the German and French ones as well if not quite so many. I think I am getting a bit far from the Great American Songbook, but it's fun to discuss these things just the same.

But coming back to the GAS, I have thought of a couple of classic waltzes although it seems as if they are not all American:

Destiny (1912)
by the English conductor and composer Sydney Baynes. Now that's a waltz with a very pronounced accent at the start of each bar, a bit like 'Tales from the Vienna Woods'.

Fascination (1932)
by the Italian composer Fermo Dante Marchetti, based on his 'Valse Tzigane' (1904) with French lyrics by Maurice de Féraudy (1905) and English lyrics by Dick Manning (1932)

Diane (1927)
by Ernö Rapée and Lew Pollack, written as the theme music for the 1927 silent film 'Seventh Heaven' with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. This was always a nice flowery showpiece for me to play as a child when I first studied at the Shefte College with lots of upward arpeggios in the right hand and some crossing of the the left hand into the treble for good measure. The melody rather disappeared but it looked impressive!

The Tennessee Waltz (1947)
music by Pee Wee King, recorded by Patti King and others including Les Paul & Mary Ford and Jo Stafford

Oh, going back to waltzes by famous classical composers, I have just thought of that rather daffy Waltz No.2 from Jazz Suite No.2 by Shostakovich and of course the glorious waltz from 'Masquerade' by Khachaturian.

tonyloco three more exquisite waltzes from the light music end I'd forgotten are

Robert Farnon - Westminster Waltz

Armstrong Gibbs - Dusk

Leroy Anderson - Belle of the Ball*

Of the ones you mention I love Destiny, so fabulously 'poised', Masquerade and the Shostakovich Jazz Suite one, the Jazz Suites are excellent all round, in fact his lighter stuff is high quality, particularly his music for The Gadfly.


* I'm a big Leroy fan!

Ah, bravo, karloscar for finding that Kern waltz. I was not aware of it before and I can't find a copy of the music in my collection nor a recording although my LPs and CDs are seriously depleted from what they were. In my CfP series of studio cast recordings of old musicals, the songs from 'Roberta' are 'Yesterdays', 'You're devastating', 'Smoke gets in your eyes', 'Lovely to look at' and 'I'll be hard to handle' but no sign of 'The touch of your hand'. I can see from YouTube that tenors like Jan Peerce and Mario Lanza enjoyed singing it in an overblown manner, but I did find a more authentic duet version that lets the song speak for itself. It is quite a generous, wide-ranging melody.

And while searching unsuccessfully for the music of 'The touch of your hand' I did find four very obscure waltzes by George Gershwin:

'Just to know you are mine' (words by Ira as Arthur Francis) (A Dangerous Maid, 1921)
'Across the sea' (words by B.G DeSylva & Ray Goetz) (George White's Scandals, 1922)
'Sunday in London Town' (words by Clifford Grey) (The Rainbow Revue, 1923)
'The Signal' (words by Otto Harbach & Oscar Hammerstein) (Song of the Flame, 1925)

I'm not aware that any of these had any life subsequent to the shows they were in.