The Last Post: No-the title is not about a last ditch frontier battle with John Wayne riding to the rescue of some settlers in the Arizona desert. It marks the end of one song related blog and the creation of a new, more highly focused venture which I will be describing. For the past ten months, it has been my constant joy to write about the composers and lyricists who created the substantial body of songs that are often referred to as The Great American Songbook tradition. It is America's cultural gift to the world along with jazz, the blues and Hollywood films. Since 1950, I have been collecting sheet music of the songs created by a considerable number of song writers whose innovations fashioned a uniquely American musical style that conquered the world. It involved innovations in both musical composition and lyric writing, a combination that shed itself of earlier song writing that was highly influenced by European traditions. A century earlier, Stephan Foster wrote in a new fashion that has been described as the false spring of American song but he died in the 1860's.
It was only in the 1920's that Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin began to create a more natural American style of song writing and soon were joined by Cole Porter, George Gershwin,Richard Rodgers and Harold Arlen whose collective body of works represented the major innovations in what has also been called Classic American Popular Song. Of course, there were also other fine composers and lyricists who contributed to the body of work which I have presented in the 80 plus posts ..I thought it was important to not only talk about the composers and lyricists , describe their most representative songs and listen to the finest performers and musicians adding their own unique talents to these songs . A song is just a bunch of notes on a page until someone actually performs it.
As I said, this is the " Last Post". I hope the blog it has been both informative and rewarding for those who have chosen to participate. I am heartened by the fact that many of the viewers come from all around the globe and , at one time, there were more Latvian viewers than US, Canadian and British viewers combined.
I have now started a blog called Harold Arlen-The American " Natural.' I will be making the case for recognition of Arlen as the most purely American of all the great song writers. The blog will be a chronological sequence of Arlen's life and creative output featuring his significant output in variety shows, musical theatre and film.
The blog address: haroldarlentheamericannatural@blogspot.com
I hope you will have a look at this highly partisan depiction of a great American song writer.
Max Weissengruber
