By 1950, the bebop movement had burned out as the current fad in jazz. Bebop, originally developed by black musicians on the East Coast, was giving way to cool jazz, a West Coast phenomenon overwhelmingly dominated by white musicians and white audiences. However, the cool jazz movement was virtually ignored by black music fans and most black musicians were not involved with it. In his jazz history book Hard Bop, David Rosenthal describes the problems bebop musicians were having with finding jobs: "Musicians," an ad in Down Beat [magazine] warned at the time, "remember today you not only must be able to play, you must be able to do some acting, singing, dancing and also speak lines." Rosenthal goes on to relate, "And indeed, at the beginning of the fifties Dizzy Gillespie led a combo that featured more "novelty tunes" than jazz and relied more on his sense of humor than his musicianship." Other beboppers resorted to jobs outside of music; for example, trombonist J.J. Johnson worked as a blueprint inspector and trumpeter Kenny Dorham was employed by a sugar refinery.

Rosenthal poses the question that jazz musicians in the early 1950s were asking themselves, " ...where do we go from here? Bebop, which had begun as a promise of freedom, had turned into something of a straitjacket, an increasingly codified form of expression. Many of its best practitioners were dead, and others, like Charlie Parker, were in decline. R & B might be a source of new ideas, but it was too limited to satisfy jazz musicians as a regular context." Their answer was to develop a style of jazz with roots in bebop and the black music traditions of R & B, blues and gospel. Pianist Horace Silver, the composer of "Song for My Father," is credited as the co-creator, along with Art Blakey, of the new movement that came to be called hard bop. Bill Dobbins in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz describes Silver’s contributions to modern jazz, "Silver's music was a major force in modern jazz on at least four counts. He was the first important pioneer of the style known as Hard Bop, which combined elements of rhythm-and-blues and gospel music with jazz, influencing such pianists as Bobby Timmons, Les McCann, and Ramsey Lewis. Second, the instrumentation of his quintet (trumpet, tenor sax, piano, double bass, and drums) served as a model for small jazz groups from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s. Further, Silver's ensembles provided an important training ground for young players, many of whom (such as Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, Blue Mitchell, Woody Shaw, Junior Cook, and Joe Henderson) later led similar groups of their own. Finally, Silver refined the art of composing and arranging for his chosen instrumentation to a level of craftsmanship as yet unsurpassed in jazz."

A prolific composer of jazz songs of which many have become standards, Silver said, "Basically my influences have been American influences. It’s been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music." As a child he was exposed to Cape Verdean folk music performed by his father, who was of Portuguese descent, but he had resisted incorporating those influences into his own compositions. Ironically, "Song for My Father," his most commercially successful song, was inspired by the Portuguese music that his father so loved. Rosenthal quotes Silver’s description of how he came to write it: "My dad through the years had always said to me, ‘Why don’t you take some of this Portuguese folk music and put it into jazz?’ I never could see it. To me it always seemed corny – because I was born here into American music, whether it be jazz or whatever. But there is a feeling there: there’s something there that’s valid. I didn’t really get in tune with that feeling until I was invited by Sergio Mendes to his house in Rio de Janeiro. I went to see Carnival and went around to different places he was playing and sat in, and I was fascinated by the musical capabilities of some of the young musicians down there. They were all into this bossa nova thing, which as you know was greatly inspired by our American jazz. I got turned onto that beat. So I got back to New York and I said, ‘I’ll try to write a tune using that rhythm.’ I started fooling around and I came up with the melody and I realized the melody I came up with was akin to Cape Verdean – like something my dad would play. That was ‘Song for My Father.’"

"Song for My Father" was introduced as the title track on Silver’s 1964 Blue Note Records album and the album cover featured a picture of Silver’s father. The album was a best seller for Blue Note and ranks as one of the greatest mainstream hard bop recordings. Its title song had a notable influence on pop music, with the jazz-rock group Steely Dan borrowing the opening piano notes for their greatest pop hit, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", and Stevie Wonder borrowing the opening horn riff for his song "Don't You Worry ‘Bout a Thing".

Silver had a knack for writing musically sophisticated jazz songs that also were commercially viable popular hits, something that many other jazz musicians have not been able to do. The secret to his songwriting success may lie in his "guide lines for musical composition" that he listed in the liner notes for his LP Serenade to a Soul Sister: A.) Melodic Beauty; B.) Meaningful Simplicity; C.) Harmonic Beauty; D.) Rhythm; and E.) Environmental, Hereditary, Regional and Spiritual Influences. "Song for My Father" and Silver’s many other hits, including "The Preacher," "Senor Blues," "Soulville," "Cookin’ at the Continental," "Peace," "Sister Sadie," "Nica’s Dream," "Doodlin’," and "Strollin,’" conform to these guide lines, but Silver also had a more visceral means for judging the success of his compositions. Up on the bandstand, when he could see the audience nodding their heads and tapping their feet to his music, then he knew he was getting his message across. Silver said, "Jazz music stimulates the minds and uplifts the souls of those who play it as well as of those who listen to immerse themselves in it. As the mind is stimulated and the soul uplifted, this is eventually reflected in the body." If his audience was moving and shaking, then he knew he had succeeded.

Click here to hear Horace Silver’s "Song for My Father": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZqtBmEDryk

"We'd like to have you all join in with us on this one and help us find the groove by patting your feet, or popping your fingers, or clapping your hands, or shaking your heads . . . or shaking whatever else you want to shake."
- Horace Silver

"SONG FOR MY FATHER"
By Horace Silver

If there was ever a man
Who was generous, gracious and good
That was my dad
The man
A human being so true
He could live like a king
'Cause he knew
The real pleasure in life

To be devoted to
And always stand by me
So I’d be unafraid and free

If there was ever a man
Who was generous, gracious and good
That was my dad
The man
A human being so true
He could live like a king
'Cause he knew
The real pleasure in life

To be devoted to
And always stand by me
So I’d be unafraid and free

If there was ever a man
Who was generous, gracious and good
That was my dad
The man, The man

Indiana native Hoagy Carmichael, the composer of "Star Dust," was supposed to become a lawyer, not a musician. He supported himself by playing piano with dance bands while studying law at Indiana University and did graduate with a law degree. However, he had little interest in practicing law, failing the bar exam and getting fired from a legal firm because he spent afternoons playing piano in clubs rather than doing his legal work. He wrote to a friend, "… the thing that interests me most is writing tunes." He sold his first song, "Riverboat Shuffle," in 1926 and when a second song, "Washboard Blues," was a hit and recorded by Paul Whiteman, whom the media had dubbed the "King of Jazz," Carmichael gave up law for music.

It seems almost churlish to dispute Carmichael’s legendary story of how he came to write "Star Dust," since it fits so well with the song. Will Friedwald, in his book Stardust Melodies, describes Carmichael’s version of the event: "Our hero, while paying a nostalgic visit to his alma mater [Indiana University], happens to pass the campus’s lover’s lane, or "spooning wall" as it was known, and begins thinking about all the girls he’d loved and lost in his college days. While pondering on one old school romance in particular, the kernel of a melody just pops into his head. A frantic Carmichael dashes in search of a piano and locates one in the campus coffee house – a cozy little joint called the "Book Nook" – where, oblivious to all else, our hero works the melody out and gets it down on paper. Shortly afterward, he plays it for a friend and former classmate named Stu Gorrell, who remarks that it reminds him "of the dust from the stars drifting down through a summer night." From there comes the title "Star Dust." "I had no idea what the title meant," Carmichael later said, "but I thought it was gorgeous."

In his biography of Hoagy Carmichael, Stardust Melody, Richard Sudhalter dispels that creation myth, noting that "Star Dust" started as a jam session piece in 1926 based on a fragmentary melody that fascinated Carmichael well before that date. Sudhalter quotes Charles "Bud" Dent, a cornetist and friend of Carmichael who played at that session: "So Hoagy says, ‘Bud, here’s another good tune we can jam with.’ I said, ‘What’s the title?’ and he says, ‘It doesn’t have a title. It’s just a jam tune.’ And he starts playing it at a medium tempo. ..He wasn’t playing much melody. All he had was the opening phrase, an arpeggiated thing, kind of attractive. We jammed it for about fifteen minutes, and got pretty good at it, though I didn’t think too much of it..." Very shortly after that, the melody came to be known as "Star Dust." Apparently, Carmichael worked out the melody for "Star Dust" on several pianos, including one at the family home of Ernie Pyle, who later was to become a celebrated World War II correspondent. Sudhalter reports, "In a 1936 reminiscence, he [Pyle] reports that Hoagy worked out "Star Dust" at the Pyle family’s Indianapolis home. "I’d like to tell you about the evening he wrote it," Pyle declares, "but he asked me not to, because he says that the public likes to think these sweet songs are conceived under moonlight, amid roses and soft breezes." Hoagy himself later told a columnist that he’d worked out part of the melody at the Book Nook "and finished it at home in Indianapolis."

In 1927 Carmichael, with friend Emil Seidel and his band, made the first recording of "Star Dust" as a medium tempo instrumental for Gennett Records, the leading label for jazz and blues in the Midwest. The players were credited as Hoagy Carmichael and His Pals and Carmichael’s piano solo was the high point of the recording. Jazz arranger and bandleader Don Redman with his Detroit-based band, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, made the second recording, and his arrangement, which tightened up Carmichael’s original composition, was influential in the evolution of the song. Mills Music, Carmichael’s publisher, issued four more recordings of "Star Dust" in 1928 and 1929. The song caught on as an instrumental with jazz musicians, and, even though it was not well known by the general public, in 1930 a recording by Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang reached #20 on the pop charts.

The lyrics to "Star Dust" by Mitchell Parish were put together much like a potluck supper with Parish as the chief cook. Carmichael himself wrote the first lyrics in 1928. He made another recording of "Star Dust" with his lyrics, but Gennett Records rejected the recording because the first one had not sold well enough. In 1929 Irving Mills asked Parish, one of his staff writers, to write lyrics for "Star Dust" to improve its sales with the public. Will Friedwald summarizes how Parish developed the lyrics: "The final lyric for "Star Dust" seems to be a crystallization of ideas by Parish, Stu Gorell, and Carmichael himself (who had used the phrase "Star Dust melody" in his original), and the story told in the lyric is consistent with Carmichael’s tale of how the tune happened to come to him. It can be summed up in a single sentence: a fellow alone at night gazes up at the stars and, reflecting on a past love, hums a song in his head." Although Friedwald describes how "Carmichael disavowed the notion of "Star Dust" serving as a love song with lyrics," and said of the final lyric "It didn’t seem a part of me," not only had Carmichael written his own lyrics, but also apparently had collaborated with Parish. Sudhalter reports Parish’s recollection of the writing process: "There was no one special approach," Parish said in 1985. "Sometimes we were both together at the piano. We sometimes met at random, just ran into each other." Sudhalter also reports an intriguing comment by saxophonist Wally Wilson, with whom Carmichael had swapped arrangements in 1926, which suggests that Parish may have borrowed the opening lines of the refrain from him. Wilson said he was unable to get the melody out his mind, and came up with his own lyrics, which included the following:
I sometimes wonder why I spend my time
Dreaming of a song.
A melody
That haunts my reverie...

"Star Dust" with its final lyrics was published in 1929. The first recording to reach #1 on the pop charts didn't include the lyrics; it was an instrumental "pop" version by Isham Jones and his Orchestra in 1931. Friedwald states that while Jones was not the first musician to come up with the innovation of playing "Star Dust" at a slower tempo and in a sentimental style, "There’s no doubt that the Jones record was the first to introduce "Star Dust" to the mass audience." He goes on to say, "However, for all intents and purposes the Mitchell Parish text became part of American musical history with two breakthrough recordings in 1931 by Bing Crosby (August) and by Louis Armstrong (November). These were the two performances that gave "Star Dust" pop and jazz immortality, respectively. Crosby and Armstrong further testify to the close connection between these two forms, in that "Star Dust" came be both things at once – sentimental love song and hot jazz stomp." Click on the following links to listen to these historic recordings:
Crosby - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16_d2-rvLSs
Armstrong - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r94-7nJt-WM

Since 1930 "Star Dust" has appeared in the pop charts over 15 times and is one of the most recorded popular songs; currently there are more than 1300 versions in at least 40 languages. What could account for its endurance as a jazz icon for the past 80 years? Friedwald suggests, "The song's melody and lyric are both uncommonly introspective for a popular song. The tune, especially intricate, but without being fussy, is almost delicate in the way it unfolds, yet at the same time, it's masculine enough to withstand extremely tough treatment at the hands of such macho, hell-for-leather improvisers as Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge. Mitchell Parish's words are, if not as urbane as some by Cole Porter or Lorenz Hart, sensitive in a way that few pop songs are. Yet what makes all this sensitivity unique is the long association of "Star Dust" with male performers, especially boy singers and jazz musicians. Although a number of women have sung it, the major records are predominantly by men... "Star Dust," it would seem, is a love song made for men to express the way they feel about women."

"STAR DUST"
By Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchel Parish

VERSE
And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we’re apart
You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust
Of yesterday
The music
Of the years
Gone by

REFRAIN
Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely nights
Dreaming of a song.
The melody haunts my reverie.
And I am once again with you
When our love was new.
And each kiss, an inspiration.

But that was long ago.
And now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song.

Beside a garden wall where stars are bright
You are in my arms.
A nightingale sings its fairy tale
Of paradise where roses bloom.

Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
That stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain.

It could be said that Boston Red Sox fans got "Tea for Two" in exchange for Babe Ruth. Harry Frazee, owner of the Boston Red Sox from 1916 to 1923, sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000 in December of 1919 and used the proceeds to finance his non-musical stage play called My Lady Friends that opened on Broadway in the same month. The musical No, No, Nanette, which introduced "Tea for Two," originated from that play. It has been disputed whether or not Frazee actually did sell Ruth to finance his theatrical productions, but sportswriter and author Leigh Montville’s research for his book, The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, indicated that the play was indeed financed directly from the sale of Ruth. Since Red Sox fans blamed the near demise of their franchise on this transaction, labeling it "the curse of the Bambino" and holding it responsible for what became an 86-year World Series drought, they probably wouldn’t feel better knowing that their slugger was sold for a song.

Frazee’s transaction may have cursed the Red Sox, but it brought him nothing but success with his production of No, No, Nanette. During its pre-Broadway run in Chicago, the show was so popular it played there for over a year. Consequently, when the show opened on Broadway in September of 1925, its songs already were well known, with "Tea for Two" entering the pop charts three times that year. In January a recording by The Benson Orchestra of Chicago entered the charts at #5. The same month, a recording by Marion Harris peaked at #1 and held that spot for three weeks. The song charted a third time with Ben Bernie and His Orchestra, reaching #10. It made four more trips to the charts: the Ipana Troubadours (1930, #15); Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra (1937, instrumental, #18); Art Tatum (1939, instrumental, #18); and Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, led by Warren Covington (1958, as "Tea for Two Cha Cha", instrumental, #7).

During the 1920s Vincent Youmans, composer of "Tea for Two," had achieved the same celebrity status as George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers. William Zinsser in his book Easy to Remember describes Youmans’ songwriting style: "What gives Youmans’ songs their tremendous energy is their small range. Unlike Jerome Kern and other composers whose melodies rise and fall over a long trajectory, Youmans generally uses only a few adjacent notes. Even in the bridge he feels no compulsion to seek variety. "Tea for Two" doesn’t have a bridge at all – it merely restates the theme in a higher key and then returns to the original key..." Zinsser goes on to say, "By all the laws of music these songs should be monotonous. But they’re full of life. Their very repetitiveness propels them forward, giving them a nervous momentum that’s as characteristic of the 1920s as Gershwin’s early numbers from the same period..." Youmans’ early death from tuberculosis and limited song legacy have caused his name to be less well recognized today.

In the Poets of Tin Pan Alley Philip Furia relates how the lyrics for "Tea for Two" came to be written: "One night in 1924, so the story goes, composer Vincent Youmans came up with a melody so enthralling he got his lyricist, Irving Caesar, out of bed and begged him to put words to it. To placate Youmans (and to get back to sleep) Caesar quickly tossed off a "dummy lyric," promising to write the real one in the morning. But the next morning Caesar and Youmans looked at the dummy lyric again and decided to keep it, even though the title phrase was never repeated – a clear violation of the Alley’s axiom that "a good lyric" was "one that states the title promptly and then keeps stating it so that the public will remember it when shopping for records and sheet music." Initially, Caesar wasn’t thrilled with his dummy lyric, telling Youmans "It stinks," but Youmans liked it so much that he refused to allow Caesar to change a word of it. "Tea for Two" did become one of the most popular songs of the 1920s, but Zinsser seems to agree with Caesar, suggesting that the song’s success occurred in spite of its lyrics. He writes, "‘Tea for Two’ is a triumph of music over words that are little short of hilarious. Irving Caesar, who claimed that the lyric took him only five minutes, died in 1996 at the age of 101 and was quoted in his obituary as saying, ‘Sometimes I write lousy, but always fast.’"

As other songwriters frequently have done, Caesar appropriated a common expression for the song's hook phrase; "tea for two" originated as an 18th century English street vendor’s cry. When vendors wished to attract business, they would lower the price of a pot of tea from three pence to two pence and call out "tea for two." By the 19th century, when a Victorian lady and gentleman would meet in the afternoon for tea, ordering "tea for two" often signaled an early stage of courtship, and the expression came to be associated with romance.

"Tea for Two" evolved from what writer Alec Wilder termed "a superior pop song" into a jazz standard mainly because of pianist Art Tatum. His famed association with the song began in 1931 when as a young musician he bested James P. Johnson, Willie "The Lion" Smith, and Fats Waller, the leading stride pianists of the time, in a cutting contest. (From the 1920s through the 1940s the term cutting contest signified a musical competition between stride piano players in which they would attempt to outplay each other.) Born in Toledo, Ohio, Tatum was a newcomer to the New York City jazz scene, and Fats Waller, deciding it was time for his baptism by fire, set up the cutting contest. James Lester’s biography of Art Tatum, Too Marvelous for Words, provides a description by Maurice Waller, the son of Fats Waller, of Tatum’s playing that night: "Art played the main theme of Vincent Youmans’ big hit, "Tea for Two," and introduced his inventive harmonies, slightly altering the melodic line. Good, but not very impressive. Then it happened. Tatum’s left hand worked a strong, regular beat while his right hand played dazzling arpeggios in chords loaded with flatted fifths and ninths. Both his hands raced toward each other in skips and runs that seemed impossible to master. Then they crossed each other. Tatum played the main theme again and then soared to an exciting climax." Lester describes how the other pianists were stunned by Tatum’s virtuosity; he was the undisputed winner of the contest. James P. Johnson said, "When Tatum played "Tea for Two" that night, I guess that was the first time I ever heard it really played." Fats Waller recalled the night with the following observation: "That Tatum, he was just too good. ...He had too much technique. When that man turns on the powerhouse, don’t no one play him down. He sounds like a brass band."

"Tea for Two" was Art Tatum’s first solo recording, made in 1933 for Brunswick Records. However, it was his 1939 recording on the Decca Records label that brought "Tea for Two" into the Jazz repertory; the record was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1986. On that legendary recording, Tatum’s use of substitute chords and his complete transformation of the third chorus would have a deep and lasting effect on the way jazz pianists improvise. Critic Scott Yanow at Allmusic.com writes, "...all pianists have to deal to a certain extent with Tatum's innovations in order to be taken seriously. ...Art Tatum's recordings still have the ability to scare modern pianists." One of those pianists was the great Oscar Peterson. Jazzstandards.com quotes jazz historian Joe Mosbrook, who tells how Peterson first met Tatum at Val’s in the Alley, a club in Cleveland, Ohio: [Peterson recounts,] "We had a beer or two and I said, `Hey, man, I’d like to hear you play!’ Tatum said, `You play first.’" Peterson said he was young and eager, so he did. "When I finished, Tatum told me, ‘Hey, I like your style very much.’" Tatum asked him what he wanted to hear. Peterson said, "Something like ‘Tea For Two.’" "I couldn’t believe what I was hearing," said Peterson, "I’m about six foot four and I was leaning against the piano and my legs just went to water. By the time he got through three more numbers, I couldn’t take it anymore..."

Click on this link to hear Art Tatum play "Tea for Two": http://www.rhapsody.com/art-tatum/art-tatum-solo-masterpieces-vol-2/tea-...

"TEA FOR TWO"
By Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar

VERSE
I’m discontented
With homes that are rented
So I have invented
My own.
Darling, this place is
A lover’s oasis, where life’s weary chase is
Unknown!

CHORUS
Picture you upon my knee,
Just tea for two and two for tea,
Just me for you
And you for me alone.

Nobody near us
To see us or hear us,
No friends or relations
On weekend vacations.
We won't have it known, dear,
That we own a telephone, dear.

Day will break and you'll awake
And start to bake a sugar cake,
For me to take
For all the boys to see.

We will raise a family,
A boy for you, a girl for me.
Oh, can't you see
How happy we would be?

"The Sidewinder" may have the distinction of being the only jazz standard that began its life written on toilet paper. Trumpeter Lee Morgan, typical of his tendency to procrastinate, composed the title tune for his best-selling album of the same name, The Sidewinder, at the album’s recording session. In late 1963 he signed a new recording contract with Blue Note Records after a hiatus of over three years, during which his severe heroin addiction caused him to stop playing music. In 1956, when he was only 18 years old, he began recording with Blue Note as a session leader and he showed such promise that he was deemed the successor to hard bop trumpeter Clifford Brown, who had died in a auto accident earlier that year. However, like so many talented young jazz musicians of that time, Morgan’s rising star was sunk by his escalating drug usage, and by 1961 he had pawned his trumpet for drug money. In the fall of 1963 he enrolled in a heroin detox program in an effort to get his life and career back on track, and Alfred Lion, co-founder of Blue Note, was willing to take a chance on Morgan and signed him for three albums as session leader. At the time Lion couldn’t have known the financial importance of that decision for Blue Note.

Blue Note permitted Morgan to choose his sidemen, and in late December 1963, he assembled tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Barry Harris, bassist Bob Cranshaw, and percussionist Billy Higgins for the first album's recording session. He planned to record original compositions and already had written four new tunes, "Totem Pole," "Boy, What a Night," "Hocus-Pocus," and "Gary’s Notebook," but knew they would not be sufficient to fill the LP. Consequently, "The Sidewinder" was conceived as padding. Jeffrey McMillan in his new definitive biography about Lee Morgan, Delightfulee, describes how the song came to be written: "The Sidewinder," the shuffling blues anthem that would be Morgan’s most memorable composition, was composed at the session and hastily written down, as Morgan liked to tell it later on, on a piece of toilet tissue. Cranshaw remembered Morgan excusing himself for a bathroom break at [recording engineer Rudy] Van Gelder’s home during the date. Things had been going well. They had already recorded three of the four tunes they had prepared, but it was clear that even with "Gary’s Notebook" the band would not have enough recorded material to make a record. When Morgan had been in the lavatory for twenty minutes, Cranshaw began to wonder if he was okay; perhaps he had gotten high and passed out. Shortly thereafter Morgan emerged from the bathroom brandishing a new composition scrawled on a few squares of toilet paper. The tune was a blues drawn out to a twenty-four-bar length, with a melody that was easy to learn. After adding an introduction, solos by Morgan, Henderson, Harris and Cranshaw, they could fill ten minutes, enough to fill the LP."

Originally, the word "sidewinder" was used to refer to a species of horned rattlesnake with a venomous bite, but apparently that was not what Morgan had in mind when he decided on the title for his song. McMillan said, "Despite the tune’s slithery movement, Morgan held that the inspiration for the title was not reptilian: "The tune kind of put me in mind of the sidewinder – you know, the ‘bad guy’ on television," he said. "There’s a snake called the sidewinder, but I was thinking of the bad guy." "Sidewinder" was a generic name sometimes given to the villains in television Westerns of the 1950s."

The Sidewinder album was released in July 1964. Even with only a modest advertising campaign, by October the record was selling faster than Blue Note could press it. The album steadily climbed the charts and by the final week of 1964 had reached #35 on Billboard’s LP charts, an unusual achievement for a jazz album, and it peaked at #25. Since the title track was the primary reason for the album’s success, Blue Note issued that track as a 45 rpm single in an effort to meet demand, and it entered the Billboard Hot 100 list for singles, reaching #81, another rare event for a jazz track. It also was unusual for a new jazz track to be taken up by the advertising agencies, but that happened to "The Sidewinder" when Chrysler used it as background music for high-profile television commercials during the 1965 World Series. The success of "The Sidewinder" revived the struggling finances of both Lee Morgan and Blue Note, and likely saved the record label from bankruptcy. Morgan became a cornerstone of the Blue Note label with 25 albums, many of which were financially successful, but none struck commercial gold like "The Sidewinder." Click on this link to hear Morgan’s original Blue Note recording of "The Sidewinder": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrp94IU3quI

"The Sidewinder" revived Morgan’s career and he went on to record and tour extensively. In an interview discussing his recent success, he said, "‘Sidewinder’ has made a big difference. It came at the right time for me, a time when I really needed something. I’d been off the scene for a time, and it was like a gift from God to have this happen." The song, drawing from soul-jazz, Latin boogaloo, blues, and R&B in addition to Morgan’s trademark hard bop, was unlike his prior recordings and signaled the evolution of Morgan’s style. Steve Huey at www.allmusic.com writes, "As his original compositions began to take in elements of blues and R&B, he made greater use of space and developed an infectiously funky rhythmic sense. He also found ways to mimic human vocal inflections by stuttering, slurring his articulations, and employing half-valved sound effects. Toward the end of his career, Morgan was increasingly moving into modal music and free bop, hinting at the avant-garde but remaining grounded in tradition."

After the success of "The Sidewinder," Morgan continued to struggle with drug addiction over the next few years, but by 1972 was proud that he had overcome his heroin habit. He was recording and performing steadily with his band and pursuing new ideas for musical compositions, including writing the score for a black opera. Tragically, he did not live to develop his ideas; he was murdered on February 19, 1972. David Rosenthal begins his jazz history book, Hard Bop, with that event, "...in a scene straight out of "Frankie and Johnny," trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot dead by his mistress at Slug’s, a jazz club on New York City’s Lower East Side. Morgan was thirty-three years old. His death – spectacular in jazz not so much because he was young as because it involved a woman instead of drugs..." The woman, Helen More, who was Morgan’s long-time girlfriend, shot him between sets at Slugs’ where he was performing that night. They had been arguing; Morgan was seeing another woman and he wanted to end his relationship with More. Jeffrey McMillan in Delightfulee relates an eyewitness account by drummer Billy Harper of the shooting, "It was eerie," recalled Harper, who was already on the bandstand and ready to play. "It was like one of those Wild West showdowns in the movies." Morgan turned to face her, probably ready to resume their argument, when Helen drew his .32 Harrington & Richardson revolver from her purse. Morgan taunted her, saying that she could try and shoot him – that she had the gun, but he had the bullets. Helen fired a single shot at Lee from close range. "We heard a little pop – not a big thing, just a pop, I didn’t even know if it was a gun," Harper said. The bullet pierced Morgan’s chest, lung, and aorta, before lodging in his spine. He stumbled and fell to the floor slowly as blood filled his chest cavity and spilled on to the ground. Though some witnesses claim to have heard the "pop, pop, pop" of multiple discharges, there was but a single bullet fired from the pistol, but it inflicted such severe damage that Morgan lost consciousness and was gone soon thereafter."

McMillan goes on to write, "A young, confident, African-American artist with a unique voice and persona, struggling against drugs, racism, and the difficulties of making a living playing jazz, Morgan’s story is as critical to the history of jazz as his sound – a blend of aggression, lyricism, humor, swagger, and playfulness. Morgan was one of jazz’s most important postbebop trumpeters and, according to Dizzy Gillespie, was, along with Freddie Hubbard, the last major stylist." McMillan ends his biography with Morgan’s own words, "If it wasn’t for music, this country would have blown up a long time ago, in fact, the whole world. Music is the only thing that spans across all ethnic groups and all languages. Music is the only thing that awakens the dead man and charms the savage beast. Without it, this would be a hell of a world!"

To learn more about Lee Morgan’s life and music, click on the following link to listen to an interview of biographer Jeffrey McMillan by Mark Lynch, host of WICN’s Inquiry: http://www.wicn.org/audio/inquiry-jeffery-s-mcmillan-delightfulee-the-li...

Before Cole Porter made "under my skin" the catch phrase for another one of his obsessional love songs, the expression commonly was used to describe an annoyance that was more than skin deep and couldn’t be easily brushed off. The obsessive persistence conveyed by the phrase may have been what inspired Porter to use it to describe a lover’s addiction to a love affair that "never will go so well" in one of his most popular songs, "I’ve Got You Under My Skin." The popularity of the song has caused the original meaning of the phrase to be pre-empted. In the Poets of Tin Pan Alley, Philip Furia noted how Porter lifted it from its "normal context of irritated exasperation" and gave it a "nonchalantly sensuous frame."

In 1935 Cole Porter moved to Hollywood to write his first complete film score for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Born to Dance, in which "I’ve Got You Under My Skin" was introduced. However, because of a disastrous first meeting with MGM co-founder Louis B. Mayer, it almost didn’t happen. In his Porter biography, The Life that Late He Led, George Eells described that first meeting between Porter and Mayer in 1934 at a party given by composer Irving Berlin for Porter when he was visiting Hollywood: "When Mrs. Berlin brought over the legendary Louis B. Mayer, who was purported to be terror personified to those working in films, Cole burst out laughing, thinking he looked exactly like a shark. Mayer took umbrage at the reaction and informed him that MGM had got along without Cole Porter for years and would continue to do so. Cole stood his ground, and a few days after leaving Hollywood, he received a cable from Mayer offering him a job. He ignored it. This was followed by another and another until at last the offer became too attractive to resist. Cole wired acceptance to work on an original film musical." That film musical was Born to Dance and Porter received $75,000 for his work on the score.

Although Porter had to be coaxed to Hollywood, he quickly became enthusiastic about living there. When asked by a reporter how he liked it, he replied, "Hollywood? It’s rather like living on the moon, isn’t it?" His songwriting for the film industry made it easy for him to adjust to Hollywood and the songs he wrote for Born to Dance were more playful and free-spirited than the sophisticated material he wrote for Broadway. Eells’ book quoted excerpts from a detailed diary Porter kept while working on the score for Born to Dance that provides fascinating insights into how he developed the songs and cooperated with other members of the production team. When Porter was shown the script for the love scene that was to directly proceed "I’ve Got You Under My Skin," he wrote that he realized the song was "entirely unfitting," being much too romantic for the character who was to sing it. He replaced it with a song that became another jazz standard, "Easy to Love," sung by the male lead, Jimmy Stewart. "I’ve Got You Under My Skin," sung by female lead Virginia Bruce, was moved to a later scene in the film. When the score was complete, Porter was asked to perform it for the film producers, writers, and directors. He was uncomfortable performing it by himself, and wrote in his diary on May 19, 1936, "They all came to the house. I plied them with whiskies and sodas, and then played the entire score. Even if the score had been awful, none of them would have known it, as they all felt so well, but they left saying it was the greatest thing they had heard in years."

Born to Dance was instantly popular with the public and critics and became a box office success. The New York Times reviewer praised the music, "No fewer than seven Cole Porter compositions, most of them destined to a good measure of the ephemeral fame of modern song hits, punctuate the proceedings. According to this reviewer's eagerly attuned ear, "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Easy to Love" and "Hey Babe Hey" are due for top billing on the subway song sheets, while "Rap-Tap-Tap on Wood" and "Swinging the Jinx Away" should be items of importance for the swing set. "Rolling Home" is something choice for roysterers [revelers], and the film will probably be permitted to keep "Love Me, Love My Pekinese" for itself." Designed as a showpiece for musical numbers that featured Eleanor Powell’s dancing and Virginia Bruce and Frances Langford's singing, the film had an inconsequential plot that caused the same New York Times reviewer to write, "There is a story, too—something about sailors and girls—which very properly doesn't amount to much."

Even before the film was released in November of 1936, Porter knew he had a hit with "I’ve Got You Under My Skin." He wrote in a diary entry dated May 11, 1936, "…it was what is called in Hollywood "colossal." In his book American Popular Song, composer and author Alec Wilder agreed, even though Porter took risks with its melody and lyrics, and, unlike most songs of the time, it had no verse to set up the chorus. Wilder said, "It’s in beguine tempo and is fifty-six measures long. Its range is wide and it’s replete with repeated notes and eight measures of triplets, in other works, many things which I tend to shy away from. In this instance, though, I must waive all my prejudices, including such rhymes as "mentality" and "reality." For the song is so well composed and it develops in intensity and strength so remarkably as to demand acceptance. …It is a very dramatic, theatrical, unique song. The form is hard to describe in letters. Perhaps the best way would be to break it down into eight-measure phrases. Then it would be (Look out!) A-B-A1-B1-C-D-E/A1 . No, it’s not simple."

"I’ve Got You Under My Skin" is one of the most recorded of all Cole Porter songs. It immediately became the second most played song on the radio and it was recorded eight times in 1936. It reached the charts twice that year, first with an October recording by Hal Kemp and His Orchestra with vocalist Skinnay Ennis (#8) and again in December with Ray Noble and His Orchestra and vocalist Al Bowlly (#3). It charted again in 1952 with vocalist Stan Freberg (#11). Frank Sinatra covered it numerous times, beginning in 1946, but the recording on his 1956 album for Capitol Records, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, is considered his definitive version. Riddle did a big-band arrangement that built to successive crescendos, claiming that Maurice Revel’s "Bolero" had inspired him. The excitement generated by the arrangement caused Sinatra to include the song in most concerts and it became one of his signature tunes. Click here to hear his rendition of "I’ve Got You Under My Skin": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHLC-EimdAc In 1966 it was a Top 10 Hit for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. More recently, Diana Krall, the WICN Artist of the Month for June, covered the song in her 1999 platinum-selling album, When I Look into Your Eyes, and included it on her 2007 album, The Very Best of Diana Krall.

"I’VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN"
By Cole Porter

I've got you under my skin,
I've got you deep in the heart of me,
So deep in my heart, you're really a part of me,
I've got you under my skin.

I've tried so not to give in,
I've said to myself, "This affair never will go so well."
But why should I try to resist when darling, I know so well
I've got you under my skin.

I'd sacrifice anything, come what might,
For the sake of having you near,
In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night,
And repeats, repeats in my ear,
"Don't you know, little fool, you never can win.
Use your mentality,
Wake up to reality."
But each time I do, just the thought of you
Makes me stop, before I begin,
'Cause I've got you under my skin.

When Harold Arlen composed the music for "Let’s Fall in Love" in 1933, he literally was falling in love. The prior year, while working on a song for Earl Carroll’s Vanities of 1932, he had met seventeen-year-old model and actress Anya Taranda, a member of the cast. Earl Carroll was a Ziegfield-like showman who produced Broadway revues noted for their salacious humor and for having the most scantily clad showgirls on Broadway. Carroll advertised that his shows had "The Most Beautiful Girls in the World," and Taranda fit that mold. A striking blonde ten years younger than Arlen, she was one of the original Breck Shampoo girls and her profile appeared in magazine advertisements and on bottles of Breck Shampoo. Arlen became infatuated with her, but his innate shyness, combined with her beauty and her renown as the Breck Girl with a face more recognizable than his own, caused him to need time to work up the courage to ask her for a date. Once he made the first move, their romance led to a marriage in 1937 that lasted until Taranda’s death in 1970.

Arlen and lyricist Ted Koehler were working as a songwriting team on Broadway in the early 1930s, writing for Cotton Club revues and other Broadway shows, when they received an offer from Columbia Pictures to write songs for a film musical tentatively titled Let’s Fall in Love. Arlen was at the William Morris booking agency when he first learned of Columbia’s offer, and there he jotted down a few bars of melody for a song that he gave the same title as the film, "Let’s Fall in Love." When he informed Koehler of the offer, they both agreed that it would make for a nice change and signed a contract that stipulated they were to spend five weeks in Hollywood and to arrive there by October 1, 1933.

Arlen and Koehler traveled to Hollywood by train, since neither was enamoured of air travel. In his biography entitled Harold Arlen, Edward Jablonski described their cross-country train trip: "…they took the classic route to Hollywood, boarding the celebrated Twentieth Century at Grand Central Station, then changing to the Chief in Chicago. …They virtually had the Chief to themselves. Only the conductor and porter, the latter to announce mealtimes with chimes, materialized from time to time. They also had the observation car to themselves, causing Arlen to fret. With all that privacy, they could do some work on the songs for Let’s Fall in Love en route during the eighteen hours it would take to get to California. "Could have brought a portable organ," Arlen complained to Koehler, who was quite happy viewing the scenery and saving his cells. One lunchtime, when the porter came to summon them with his chimes, Arlen commandeered the instrument to play around with the jot he had written at the Morris. At that moment, it was all they had, for without a script they had no idea of the musical content of the film, or even if Columbia would want a song entitled "Let’s Fall in Love." Nonetheless, when they arrived in California, on time, they had an almost finished title song." As soon as his job was complete in Hollywood, Arlen hurried back to New York to be reunited with Taranda. His cross-country phone bills had been staggering during the weeks he was away.

The film "Let’s Fall in Love" was released in December of 1933 and its title song was sung first by Arthur Jarrett with piano accompaniment and then by Ann Sothern with a full orchestra. Critics gave the film lukewarm reviews, but its songs fared better. Alec Wilder in his book American Popular Song said, "The title song, "Let’s Fall in Love," was one of Arlen’s loveliest. And so is the gossamer verse. ...There it was, one of those marvelous melodic lines that lived a life of its own." The New York Tribune critic deemed "Let’s Fall in Love" "particularly good." The public agreed, and the song appeared in the pop charts three times in 1934, with a recording by Eddy Duchin and His Orchestra peaking at first place, followed by recordings by Fred Rich (#8) and Harold Arlen himself (#19). The song’s last trip to the charts was in 1967 with a recording by the vocal duo Peaches and Herb, which peaked at #21. It may be surprising that a recording by Arlen would appear in the pop charts, but Arlen had begun his musical career as a pianist and singer. At the age of fifteen he led a band named The Snappy Trio that played the red-light-district cabarets (despite the whole band being underage!) in his native city of Buffalo, NY, and his dream was to be a performer rather than a composer. Even after his fame as a composer eclipsed that as a performer, he continued to make recordings, especially of his own compositions.

Lyricist Koehler was particularly well suited to working with Arlen. In his book The Poets of Tin Pan Alley, Philip Furia describes how Koehler was "...one of the few lyricists who could skillfully set music that used the extended, driving phrases of jazz and blues..." Furia goes on to describe how "Let’s Fall in Love," even though it was written for a film rather than a Cotton Club revue, "...has the same brassy pugnacity of their nightclub songs, as Koehler turns the cliches of romantic proposal into an aggressive sales pitch with rhetorical questions –
Why shouldn’t we fall in love?
Urgent deal-clinchers –
Let’s take a chance
And dangling bargains –
We might have been made for each other"

Arlen and Koehler may have seemed made for each other when it came to writing songs like "Let’s Fall in Love," but when they returned from Hollywood and went back to writing for the Cotton Club, their collaboration ended after the 1934 revue. Arlen began working with lyricist Yip Harburg and Koehler went back to Hollywood, where he worked with various composers.

"Let’s Fall in Love" has become a jazz standard covered by a wide range of artists. Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra made well known recordings, but one of the most notable recent versions is by the WICN Artist of the Month for June, Diana Krall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIrNnmuyDqc

"LET’S FALL IN LOVE"
By Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler

Let's fall in love
Why shouldn't we fall in love?
Our hearts are made of it
Let's take a chance
Why be afraid of it?

Let's close our eyes
And make our own paradise
Little we know of it
Still we can try
To make a go of it

We might have been meant for each other
To be or not to be, let our hearts discover

Let's fall in love
Why shouldn't we fall in love?
Now is the time for it
While we are young
Let's fall in love

"At Last," written nearly 70 years ago, recently has been in the news more than most contemporary songs. It received worldwide notoriety when it was selected as the song for the first dance of President and Mrs. Obama at the ten official inaugural balls in January 2009. A month earlier the Tri-Star Pictures film Cadillac Records had been released, and "At Last" featured prominently on its soundtrack. The film is a dramatization of the history of Chess Records, the legendary recording studio of the 1950s and 1960s that made Chicago the home of the blues, R&B and rock-n-roll. The film was so named because of the Chess penchant for giving its black musicians Cadillacs in lieu of paying them royalties for their hit songs. Beyoncé Knowles, who played the role of Chess recording star Etta James in the film, sang "At Last" on the soundtrack and for the first dance at the first inaugural ball. Various renditions of the song were used for the other nine balls.

Critics gave Cadillac Records favorable reviews, and even though the film wasn’t completely historically accurate, it received high praise for its depiction of the musicians and their music. In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote, "Cadillac Records" is an account of the Chess story that depends more on music than history, which is perhaps as it should be. The film is a fascinating record of the evolution of a black musical style, and the tangled motives of the white men who had an instinct for it. The Chess brothers, Leonard and Phil, walked into neighborhoods that were dicey for white men after midnight, packed firearms, found or were found by the most gifted musicians of the emerging urban music, and recorded them in a studio so small it forced the sound out into the world."

Chess was founded in 1950 by the Polish immigrant brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, who sought out and recorded artists who would become some of the greatest names in blues and R&B, among them Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Chuck Berry and, significantly for this week's song, Etta James. Leonard Chess signed Etta James to the Chess label in 1960 when he was searching for female singing stars to add balance to his male-dominated label. James, in her autobiography Rage to Survive, gives her impression of Leonard Chess: "Leonard was funny. He couldn’t keep a beat. Unlike Jerry Wexler or Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, he wasn’t a music scholar. Yet he had heart and soul. He related to emotions inside the music." She goes on to say, "Through his bar and liquor business, he’d been exposed to all these great Chicago bluesmen. He saw their popularity among the folks in the neighborhood. He also saw that the big labels were ignoring them. And because he really didn’t know much about music, when he recorded them, he left them alone. He let Memphis Slim and Howlin’ Wolf be their own bad selves. He cut their records without frills. He also hired people like Willie Dixon, who was organized and could write a song or rewrite someone else’s. There was so much raw talent floating around the Chicago ghetto, it was hard to make a musical mistake. And Leonard didn’t make many."

While Leonard Chess may have recorded artists like Howlin’ Wolf without frills, he didn’t follow that policy when he recorded James singing "At Last." He added a background of strings and lush orchestration, hoping for a crossover hit. The recording reached the #2 position on the Black Singles Charts in 1961 (the category has since been renamed the R&B/Hip Hop chart), but also entered the Billboard Top 100 peaking at position #47. When the record became a hit with white audiences, James recalled how Leonard Chess "…went up and down the halls of Chess announcing, "Etta’s crossed over! Etta’s crossed over!" I still didn’t know exactly what that meant, except that maybe more white people were listening to me." James became Chess Records’ first crossover star.

Before the James recording, "At Last" already had a long history, which began when it was introduced in the 1942 film Orchestra Wives and recorded on the RCA Records label by the Glenn Miller Orchestra with singer Ray Eberle. The recording was a big hit for the Miller orchestra, peaking at #14 on the Billboard pop charts in 1942. At the time of the film's release, critics praised the performance of great musical numbers by Miller’s band, but were critical of a plot they judged trivial and fatuous. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote, "Hep cats and other such fauna who are "sent" by Glenn Miller's honeyed swing will be the most likely recipients of Twentieth Century-Fox's "Orchestra Wives," which was wafted into the Roxy on wings of song and little else yesterday. For once more the Hollywood tailors have draped the shivering shoulders of a popular band with a trifling little story which is as ridiculous as a zoot suit and has no more shape or distinction than one of those forbidden garbs. Mr. Miller and his assorted virtuosos are killers when it comes to making jive, but it takes more than wind and willingness to support a ninety-seven-minute film." The film’s reputation with critics has improved since that initial harsh opinion. Paradoxically, it has come to be seen as one of the more realistic films in its genre and innovative in the way it incorporates the Miller band into the plot. It was to be the last of the two films in which the Glenn Miller Orchestra appeared. A third and fourth film were planned, but Miller’s plane disappeared in 1944 when he was flying across the English Channel from England to France to entertain the troops who just had liberated Paris. No trace of the plane or passengers was found. His loss gave the film a significance that couldn’t have been foretold at the time of its release, and made it a collector’s item. But even at the time of the film’s release, critics liked the film score, which had a few hit songs by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon. Their songs included "I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo" and "Serenade in Blue," but composer Warren particularly favored "At Last" and occasionally would draw the first two bars of the melody when signing his autograph.

However, "At Last" doesn’t need its newfound notoriety to ensure its popularity. It is a perennial top choice for the first dance at wedding receptions, and continues to be recorded frequently in a wide range of genres, including country, easy listening, pop, rock ‘n roll and electronic, in addition to numerous jazz, blues and R&B versions. In 1957 Nat King Cole sang it on his #1 album Love is the Thing. It made another trip to the pop charts in 2002 when Celine Dion’s cover peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 Adult Contemporary Tracks, and again in 2008 when Beyoncé Knowles’ recording peaked at #67 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at #79 on the Billboard Hot 100 R&B/Hip Hop Songs. But no matter how many recordings other artists make of it, Etta James’ 1961 version of "At Last" likely will remain the song’s definitive recording, and her rendition was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Therefore, it’s appropriate to give James the last word on "At Last." In a newspaper interview in 2005 when discussing her live performances of the song, she said, "I don't try to keep it fresh. I never really try to find the newness in it. I just remember the beginning of it, how powerful it is and how it’s lasted."
Hear and see Etta James performing "At Last": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADDigK8LwyE

"AT LAST"
By Harry Warren and Mack Gordon

At last,
My love has come along,
My lonely days are over,
And life is like a song.

Ohhh at last,
The stars above are blue,
My heart was wrapped up in clover,
The night I looked at you.

I found a dream that I could speak to,
A dream that I can call my own,
I found a thrill to press my cheek to,
A thrill that I have never known.

Ohhh you smile, you smile,
And then the spell was cast,
And here we are in heaven,
For you are mine, at last!

When Irving Berlin wrote "How Deep is the Ocean?" he was in a creative depression that must have seemed to him as deep as the ocean. From 1927 to 1932 he composed few songs that met with public success. The loss of most of his fortune in the 1929 stock market crash added to his professional anxiety, but before that he had suffered a much worse personal blow. His only son, Irving Berlin, Jr., died of sudden infant death syndrome on Christmas Day in 1928. Philip Furia and William Lasser in America’s Songs relate how Berlin feared he had lost his songwriting talent: "I had gotten rusty as a songwriter. I developed an inferiority complex. No song I wrote seemed right. I struggled to pull off a hit." He lost the ability to judge whether or not a song he was writing had hit potential. "There were times between 1930 and 1932," he said, when he "…got so I called in anybody to listen to my songs – stock room boys, secretaries. One blink of the eye and I was stuck."

During that low period of his life, Berlin composed two future jazz standards, "Say It Isn’t So" and "How Deep is the Ocean?" But, he discarded both songs because he thought they weren’t good enough. Max Winslow, one of his music publishing associates, took "Say It Isn’t So" to radio crooner Rudy Vallee and asked him to sing it. He said to Vallee, "Irving’s all washed up, or at least he feels like it. He thinks he’s written out as a songwriter. But there’s a song of his I’d like you to look at and please, sing it for him." Vallee was personally moved by the song, agreed to sing it and it became a number one hit. It was one of the few Berlin songs introduced on the radio. In his biography Irving Berlin: A Life In Song, Philip Furia writes, "Radio was an ironic salvation for Berlin, who had been suspicious of the new medium that offered "free music" to the public since its inception in the early 1920s; by the 1930s, he was openly critical of the threat radio posed to his business – and his art:

We have become a world of listeners, rather than singers. Our songs don’t live anymore. They fail to become part of us. Radio has mechanized them all. In the old days Al Jolson sang the same song for years until it meant something – when records were played until they cracked. Today, Paul Whiteman plays a song hit once or twice or a Hollywood hero sings them once in the films and radio runs them ragged for a couple of weeks – then they’re dead. - Irving Berlin

Winslow knew, however, that radio was the kind of tonic Berlin now needed for his latest song."

The success of "Say It Isn’t So" gave Berlin the confidence to revisit "How Deep is the Ocean?" The song is a series of questions posed by the lover to the beloved. The only non-question line in the whole song is "I’ll tell you no lie." Philip Furia, in The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America’s Great Lyricists, describes the lyrics: "Another slang formula—the Yiddish penchant for answering a question with another question—redeems the near-monotony of "How Deep is the Ocean?" (1932) by "answering" such inquiries as "how much do I love you?" with such exasperated replies as "how high is the sky?" Berlin took the title question out of an early lyric, "To My Mammy," then followed Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s lead in "How Do I Love Thee" by spinning a series of questions into the teasing symmetry of a children’s riddle…"

Berlin wrote "To My Mammy," for the 1930 Al Jolson film Mammy. He considered that song to be one of his weaker efforts, but he liked some of the lyrics he wrote for it and recycled them in "How Deep is the Ocean?" He also derived some of the opening verse from his 1930 song "How Much I Love You." When constructing new songs, Berlin frequently scavenged lines from his older songs he judged to be inferior. Even with the borrowings, manuscripts from early August 1932 show how he struggled to write lyrics that struck the right balance between solemnity and flippancy. After settling on the device of using a series of questions, he then wrote and rejected many that didn’t project the right tone. The music for "How Deep is the Ocean?" was completely original and inspired. Critics have labeled it one of his most lovely melodies, and in his book In American Popular Song, Alec Wilder offers his assessment: "It is a superb example of what can be done within the confines of popular music form. No range, no extension, no great demands for the ear, and still a total statement, or, in this instance, question."

When "How Deep is the Ocean?" was published in 1932, it was introduced directly into the marketplace without the advantage of previous exposure in a play or film. The song immediately distinguished itself as a hit and charted four times that year. A recording by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra was the first to reach the pop charts, peaking at #5, followed by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians (#4), Rudy Vallee and His Connecticut Yankees (#7) and Ethel Merman with Nat Shillret and His Orchestra (#14). Although it didn’t reach the charts, Coleman Hawkins’ 1943 recording probably is most responsible for bringing the song to the attention of jazz musicians. In 1945 the song entered the charts again, reaching #19, when the growing popularity of Peggy Lee caused Columbia Records to release a 1941 recording she had made with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. www.jazzstandards.com labeled the recording " an all-time classic" and " historically significant for documenting the early days of his [Goodman’s] partnership with vocalist Peggy Lee." A link to alternate takes of Peggy Lee singing the song with the Benny Goodman Orchestra is attached: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy3DSjglIq0

Berlin credited the success of "Say It Isn’t so" and "How Deep is the Ocean?" with helping him overcome his creative depression. He said, "Those two songs came at a critical time and broke the ice." In 1933 he wrote a masterful score for the Broadway revue When Thousands Cheered, and went on to set the standard for all future Astaire musicals with his scores for Top Hat and Follow the Fleet. From "How deep is the ocean?" to "How high is the sky?" could describe the trajectory of Berlin’s career from 1932 onward. As fellow songwriter Jerome Kern famously remarked, "Irving Berlin has no place in American music... He IS American Music."

"HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN?"
By Irving Berlin

How can I tell you what is in my heart?
How can I measure each and every part?
How can I tell you how much I love you?
How can I measure just how much I do?

How much do I love you?
I’ll tell you no lie
How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?

How many times a day do I think of you?
How many roses are sprinkled with dew?

How far would I travel
To be where you are?
How far is the journey
From here to a star?

And if I ever lost you
How much would I cry?
How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?

"How High the Moon" holds a special place in popular music recording history. In 1951 jazz guitarist Les Paul and vocalist Mary Ford recorded the song on the Capitol Records label using a new technique, multitrack recording. The record sold a million copies and stayed at the top of the pop charts for nine weeks. Paul, an inventor and electronic genius as well as an accomplished musician, developed multitrack recording, overdubbing and the electronic reverb effect that have become mainstays of today’s recording industry. Critic and essayist Clive James at www.clivejames.com describes the impact of Paul and Ford’s landmark recording of "How High the Moon": "Some of the techniques used in the arrangement and production had never been heard before and would never be topped again for their integrated effect, even when there were whole studios available to extend the multitrack concept that Les Paul did so much to invent... The future had not yet arrived, but it started here. All these historical considerations will be left aside, however, when the new listener first lays ears on what is made to happen in just over two minutes. It’s a sonic universe, the ideal blend of melody and impetus." In 1953 on his CBS television program Omnibus, Alistair Cooke interviewed Paul and Ford about their multitrack recording process. In the following video clip the duo performs "How High the Moon" and describes how they built up the sound layer by layer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YA_RINQySU

"How High the Moon" was an established standard by the time that Paul and Ford recorded it. Alfred Drake and Frances Compton had introduced it eleven years earlier in the Broadway musical revue, Two for the Show, the second revue in a popular series that included One for the Money and Three to Get Ready. The songwriting team of composer Morgan Lewis and lyricist Nancy Hamilton wrote the songs for the revues. Philip Furia and William Lasser in their book America’s Songs describe Lewis and Hamilton as specializing in "...witty patter songs for sophisticated Broadway revues. When their songs were criticized for lacking "social significance," Hamilton quipped, "I seen my ditty and I done it." When the revue Two for the Show needed a romantic ballad, however, Lewis created an unusual and enchanting tune. Hamilton put aside her witty patter and wrote a straightforward, soaring lyric that shifts its long vowels as intricately as Lewis’ music changes chords..."

The 1951 Les Paul and Mary Ford record was the best known version of "How High the Moon," but the song already had appeared on the pop charts three times in the 1940s. Just weeks after the Broadway revue opened, Benny Goodman and His Orchestra made the first hit recording to enter the pop charts, where it peaked at sixth place. The song reached the charts a second time in 1940 with a recording by Mitchell Ayres and His Fashions in Music featuring Mary Ann Mercer on vocals (#18) and again in 1948 with an instrumental by Stan Kenton and His Orchestra (#20).

Although popular with swing musicians and balladeers, but it wasn’t until the bebop musicians laid claim to "How High the Moon" that it became one of the most recorded jazz standards. Alec Wilder in his book American Popular Song said, "...it became virtually the "bop" hymn. For years it was the most played tune in jazz, its chord progressions supplying the harmonic basis for a number of "new" bop tunes. Upon examination of the song’s harmonic sequences, one can see why. They were highly unusual, and they changed just often enough to please an improvising player…the sequence is quite logical: G major, G minor, C-dominant seventh, E-flat major, C minor, D-dominant seventh, G minor, C-minor sixth, and, at long last, G major. It’s quite a routine and meat to an improviser." Most notably, the song’s chord changes served as the basis for Charlie Parker’s "Ornithology," John Coltrane’s "Satellite," and Miles Davis’ "Solar."

Ella Fitzgerald, whose career was lagging in the early 1940s after the death of her bandleader, Chick Webb, rejuvenated herself when she embraced the fundamentals of bebop and began scat singing. Her December 1947 recording of "How High the Moon," in which she sang the first chorus and then scatted the remainder, created a sensation and caused the song forever after to be closely associated with her. Alan Kurtz at www.jazz.com writes, "Yet even after Les Paul & Mary Ford's 1951 #1 pop hit, "How High the Moon" was for jazz fans from 1948 onward most closely identified with Fitzgerald. Effortlessly adopting bebop's musical vocabulary to her Swing Era sweetness, Ella interpolates Charlie Parker's 1946 "Ornithology" (based on the same chord changes) and Ella-vates scat singing from novelty to high art." "How High the Moon" became one of her signature tunes and her 1960 recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002.

"How High the Moon" has undergone an interesting metamorphosis over its long life as a jazz standard. Even though originally conceived as a slow and dreamy ballad to be sung in a romantic fashion, now it is almost universally performed up-tempo and instrumental versions outnumber vocals. In 1997 "How High the Moon" received the Towering Song Award from the National Academy of Popular Music. This award honors outstanding songs by writers who don’t have an extensive catalog of hits and who have not been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. While Lewis and Hamilton may not have a string of hits to their credit, "How High the Moon," whether performed as a slow ballad or as a bop hymn, unquestionably is a towering song.

"HOW HIGH THE MOON"
By Morgan Lewis and Nancy Hamilton

Somewhere there's music
How faint the tune
Somewhere there's heaven
How high the moon
There is no moon above
When love is far away too
Till it comes true
That you love me as I love you

Somewhere there's music
How near, how far
Somewhere there's heaven
It's where you are
The darkest night would shine
If you would come to me soon
Until you will, how still my heart
How high the moon

Somewhere there's music
How faint the tune
Somewhere there's heaven
How high the moon
The darkest night would shine
If you would come to me soon
Until you will, how still my heart
How high the moon

The ballad "Spring Is Here" inadvertently became a swan song duet for Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, the legendary musical film team of the 1930s and early 1940s. If their film would have been the song's first outing, the song might have met the same fate. However, four years before its film debut,"Spring Is Here" was introduced by Dennis King and Vivienne Segal in the musical comedy I Married an Angel. It was the second song with that title by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The first song, an upbeat tune that was quickly forgotten, was written for a 1928 Broadway show of the same name that primarily is remembered for having introduced the standard "With a Song in My Heart." In May of 1938 I Married an Angel opened at the Schubert Theater on Broadway and ran for 338 performances. Critics liked the play, and the New York Times pronounced it, "One of the best musical comedies for many seasons...it perches on the top shelf of the Rodgers & Hart music cabinet."

The play wasn't supposed to come first. In 1933 Rodgers and Hart had planned to collaborate with playwright Moss Hart to produce a film version of I Married an Angel starring Jeanette MacDonald, but that was shelved when MGM decided the story of an angel losing her wings and her virginity simultaneously was too risqué. Five years later, MGM released the film rights to the songwriters, provided that the studio retain the right to film the stage production. Deciding not to use the Moss Hart scenario, Rodgers and Hart adapted their play from a play that had been a hit in Budapest, Angyalt Vettem Feleségül (I Married an Angel) by Hungarian János Vaszary. In the play an angel comes to earth and marries a Count, a playboy banker with a debauched lifestyle who has became disillusioned with women and vows to marry only an angel. Jazzstandards.com provides the following description from Richard Rodgers regarding the plot, "The theme of the play was that it’s possible for someone to be too good. Our angel nearly ruins her husband’s life by her truthful but undiplomatic remarks. It is only when, under the expert tutelage of Vivienne Segal [who plays the sister of the Count], she becomes devilish instead of angelic that the marriage is saved." Dennis King as the Count and Segal sang "Spring Is Here" as a duet. The angel, played by ballerina Vera Zorina, didn’t sing, but instead danced in two George Ballanchine choreographed ballets.

In 1942 MGM finally did make a film version of I Married an Angel starring Nelson Eddy as the Count and Jeanette MacDonald as the angel. With MacDonald cast as the angel, it became a singing role and she and Eddy sang the "Spring Is Here" duet instead of the Count and his sister. That was just one of the milder changes made to the play as it moved from Broadway to Hollywood. Censorship was more rigorous in films than on the stage, and the script underwent substantial revisions at the hands of the censors. The result was an incoherent shamble of a film that bore little resemblance to the original play.

After the success of the Broadway musical comedy, reviewers were expecting an equally enchanting film. When the film didn’t deliver, reviews were harsh. Even the Rodgers and Hart songs couldn’t save the film from reviewer wrath. The New York Post critic began with: "Fortunately this reviewer did not see the stage production of I Married an Angel, so you will be spared odious comparisons..." The New York Times, which had praised the Broadway play, wrote, "A more painful and clumsy desecration of a lovely fiction has not been perpetrated in years." Variety said, "The slick Broadway musical emerges on the screen as a slow moving, poorly acted, expensive production." Time magazine added to the critical chorus saying that it "vigorously rubs the bloom from the wings of the brisk, fresh, imaginative musical that ran on Broadway." Probably unfairly, Eddy and MacDonald bore the brunt of the criticism and it became the last film they made together.

Unlike Eddy and MacDonald, "Spring Is Here" emerged unscathed from the film debacle, having already become a hit song. Rodgers and Hart had been writing songs together since 1919, and "Spring Is Here" was one of their later songs, written just five years before Hart’s death in 1943. William Zinsser in his book Easy to Remember says, "The late Rodgers & Hart songs that linger in our emotional memory tend to be the losers’ laments. ...In "Spring Is Here" the phrase "maybe it’s because nobody loves me" is a cry of pain set to ten consecutive rising notes, followed by an abrupt drop to the wistful "spring is here," followed by the final drop – almost a whisper – to the ironic "I hear." I think of these late Rogers & Hart ballads as women’s songs. No other American songwriters have given women cabaret artists such a sensitive literature."

Although Zinsser may have categorized the song as a favorite of female singers, male singers were the first to take it to the pop charts. It charted twice in 1938: a recording by Leo Reisman and His Orchestra with vocalist Felix Knight peaked at number fourteen, and a recording by vocalist Buddy Clark reached number nineteen. Since then, numerous female jazz vocalists, including Chris Connor, Ella Fitzgerald, Maxine Sullivan and Tierney Sutton, have covered the song. Instrumentalists covering the song include Bob Brookmeyer, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Tino Derado, and Dave Pell.

In his book American Popular Song, composer and author Alec Wilder described "Spring Is Here" as "another shattering ballad." He was awed by Rodgers and Hart’s songwriting genius and wrote, "Truly, these men are fantastically talented! Each time I reach for another song I think, "Well, along about now there has to be a drop-off. They simply can’t maintain this level of excellence." And what happens? "Spring Is Here! ...The lyric is Hart at his best, including the closing line: "Spring is here, I hear." Considering the loneliness of the character, this line wryly sums up his point of view." Hart struggled with alcoholism and depression for much of his life and his lyrics often reflect a mordant, world-weary view. Rodgers said of his songwriting partner, "His lyrics knew...that love was not especially devised for boy and girl idiots of fourteen and he expressed himself to that extent."

"SPRING IS HERE"
by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart

VERSE
Once there was a thing called spring
When the world was writing verses
Like yours and mine.
All the lads and girls would sing
When we set at little tables
And drank May wine.
Now April, May and June
Are sadly out of tune
Life has stuck the pin in the balloon.

CHORUS
Spring is here!
Why doesn’t my heart go dancing?
Spring is here!
Why isn’t the waltz entrancing?
No desire, no ambition leads me,
Maybe it’s because nobody needs me.

Spring is here!
Why doesn’t the breeze delight me?
Stars appear,
Why doesn’t the night invite me?
Maybe it’s because nobody loves me.
Spring is here I hear.