EARLY EXCELLENT SONGS

There have always have been excellent American songs.

This blog is devoted to the flowering of a unique musical art form that began with the advent of Jerome Kern and his contemporaries. But people have asked whether great American songs had preceded the innovators who are the main subject of the blog. The answer is a resounding YES!  In the Mid nineteenth century, Stephan Foster wrote wonderful formal melodies like  Beautiful Dreamer and Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair. He also wrote minstrel type,black oriented numbers like De Camptown Races, Oh Susanna and Old Black Joe.
Ragtime was a unique music form that made syncopation a major factor in subsequent songwriting. Unfortunately, Ragtime was a largely instrumental music form, generally performed without lyrics although Scott Joplin in particular was popular before the turn of the century. The movie The Sting
benefitted greatly from the Scott Joplin rags played throughout the film.
There is one early example of an outstanding song that bears examination and careful listening. Poor Butterfly was written in 1916 by Raymond Hubbell with lyrics by John Golden. Alec Wilder, a demanding musical critic as well as a composer himself thought that the song " Was one of the loveliest ballads I've ever heard. There is not a word of criticism I can conceive of for it." This is from a man who played through more than 17,000 individual sheet music pieces in the course of writing his book which has been identified in the introduction .

Hubbell was inspired by Puccini's opera  Madame Butterfly  which tells the story of an ill fated romance between a young Japanese girl and an American sailor who ultimately abandons the girl to her everlasting regret and longing. In the version by Tony Bennet, he sings a lengthy introduction or verse that establishes the situation subsequently developed in the main and concluding sections. It is a pognant tale accompanied by a sublime melody that compares well with any ballad writen in the rest of the century. Unfortunately Hubbell never wrote anything of equal merit although he did write many songs  for shows that were produced. The combination of the words that tell the sad tale and the melody that echoes those sentiments is a perfect marriage of words and music.
Tony Bennet demonstrates his sensitivity and compassion for the unhappy heroine in the version that is being featured.
Performance : Tony Bennet Poor  Butterfly
LINK http://youtu.be/mQh1_ZGzudQ