As Time Goes By- Casablanca Movie Song Sung By Sinatra
Originally written in 1931 by Herman Hupfeld for a Broadway musical , the song became an all-time favorite when it was sung By Dooley Wilson in Casablanca, the the memorable 1942 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The melody was used as part of the underscore during critical scenes between the two former lovers.
Although the song itself is not especially notable on its own, it has achieved legendary status because it so intimately connected with a movie many millions claim as their favorite movie of all time. Because of its connection with the movie, it was voted # 2 song of the 20th century. Oddly enough, Over The Rainbow, from The Wizard of Oz was voted the best song of the 2th century. It is a more substantial song than the Casablanca favorite and it also is so inextricably intertwined with people's memory of that iconic film that hearing it inevitably triggers memories of that favorite movie.
This version is sung by Frank Sinatra against a backdrop of scenes from the movie.
Sinatra sings with a tender restraint that perfectly matches the scenes with the two lovers recalling happier moments in their lives.
https://youtu.be/gfwz90Rq2Ds
Sunday, 28 June 2015
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
RODGERS & HART'S " IT NEVER ENTERED MY MIND" OSCAR PETERSON AND THE SINGERS UNLIMITED
Rodgers & Hart's " It Never Entered My Mind" Oscar Peterson and The Singers Unlimited.
Rodgers & Hart wrote a number of reflective and heart-felt ballads. It Never Entered My Mind is just one of their many superb creations. The Singers Unlimted was a newly formed vocal group comprised of the members of the Hi Lo's and 2 members from another vocal group The J's With Jamey. When they combined forces, they made a demo record and over dubbed more vocal lines until it sounded like a full choir. Enter Oscar Peterson, legendary Canadian jazz pianist. He was so impressed with this new sound that he talked his own German proucer.engineering genius to sign the new group. He did and 15 albums were recorded with different arrangements and backup personnel. Their first release featured the solo imagination and harmonic wizardry of Oscar Peterson and the stunning feature voice of Bonn Herman. It Never Entered my Mind is a vocal showcase of what can happen when a great song is put into the hands of a great vocal arranger like Gene Puerling, the piano accompaniment of a wonderful pianist and multiple over-dubbed vocal lines of 4 brilliant singers.
NOTE: 2015 is the 90th birthday anniversary of Oscar Peterson who was as great an accompanist as he was a jazz soloist and leader of so many great small groups.
https://youtu.be/PMhxIN3VSeU
Rodgers & Hart wrote a number of reflective and heart-felt ballads. It Never Entered My Mind is just one of their many superb creations. The Singers Unlimted was a newly formed vocal group comprised of the members of the Hi Lo's and 2 members from another vocal group The J's With Jamey. When they combined forces, they made a demo record and over dubbed more vocal lines until it sounded like a full choir. Enter Oscar Peterson, legendary Canadian jazz pianist. He was so impressed with this new sound that he talked his own German proucer.engineering genius to sign the new group. He did and 15 albums were recorded with different arrangements and backup personnel. Their first release featured the solo imagination and harmonic wizardry of Oscar Peterson and the stunning feature voice of Bonn Herman. It Never Entered my Mind is a vocal showcase of what can happen when a great song is put into the hands of a great vocal arranger like Gene Puerling, the piano accompaniment of a wonderful pianist and multiple over-dubbed vocal lines of 4 brilliant singers.
NOTE: 2015 is the 90th birthday anniversary of Oscar Peterson who was as great an accompanist as he was a jazz soloist and leader of so many great small groups.
https://youtu.be/PMhxIN3VSeU
Monday, 22 June 2015
TONY BENNETT & LENA HORNE TRIBUTE TO HAROLD ARLEN
Tony Bennet & Lena Horne Tribute to Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen is the composer of classic blues songs like Blues In The Night, I \Gotta Right To Sing The Blues as well as soaring ballads like Over The Rainbow and torch songs like One For My Baby, Come Rain or Come Shine and Ill Wind, a Cotton Club song written with lyricist Ted Koehler.
Tony Bennett, after working with Arlen on a television tribute to the Buffalo born composer stated that
" Besides him being the greatest professional man I ever met, he was the most beautiful human being I ever met," Strong praise indeed.
Legendary singer Lena Horne also met Arlen while they worked together in Harlem's Cotton Club where Arlen was particularly suited to write material for black performers like Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, the Nicholas Brothers as well as Lena Horne.
This is a 12 minute medley of well known Arlen songs with Tony Bennett and Lena on a live Judy Garland TV Show. ( Arlen also wrote Over The Rainbow and The Man That Got Away for Garland films.)
https://youtu.be/lYPpW8Puj8I
Bonus track Frank Sinatra & Lene Horne with a different Harold Arlen medley.
https://youtu.be/FeiprgKDR3A
Harold Arlen is the composer of classic blues songs like Blues In The Night, I \Gotta Right To Sing The Blues as well as soaring ballads like Over The Rainbow and torch songs like One For My Baby, Come Rain or Come Shine and Ill Wind, a Cotton Club song written with lyricist Ted Koehler.
Tony Bennett, after working with Arlen on a television tribute to the Buffalo born composer stated that
" Besides him being the greatest professional man I ever met, he was the most beautiful human being I ever met," Strong praise indeed.
Legendary singer Lena Horne also met Arlen while they worked together in Harlem's Cotton Club where Arlen was particularly suited to write material for black performers like Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, the Nicholas Brothers as well as Lena Horne.
This is a 12 minute medley of well known Arlen songs with Tony Bennett and Lena on a live Judy Garland TV Show. ( Arlen also wrote Over The Rainbow and The Man That Got Away for Garland films.)
https://youtu.be/lYPpW8Puj8I
Bonus track Frank Sinatra & Lene Horne with a different Harold Arlen medley.
https://youtu.be/FeiprgKDR3A
Tuesday, 2 June 2015
Classic American Popular Song: ST. LOUIS WOMAN & ST.LOUIS GAL-GREAT BLUES SONGS
Classic American Popular Song: ST. LOUIS WOMAN & ST.LOUIS GAL-GREAT BLUES SONGS: ST. Louis Woman & St. Louis Gal-Great Blues Songs: In 1914, W.C. Handy was the first to publish ablues song which once were played and...
ST. LOUIS WOMAN & ST.LOUIS GAL-GREAT BLUES SONGS
ST. Louis Woman & St. Louis Gal-Great Blues Songs: In 1914, W.C. Handy was the first to publish ablues song which once were played and sung but not documented in conventional song publishing format. It was, and still remains, as an anthem to the heartbreak and sadness of the black experience with the blues and jazz becoming the most distinctive and purely American musical expression and a gift to the world at large.Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, recorded the song as have hundreds of others over the years. The song laments the fact that the St. Louis Woman in the song "Pulls that man around by her apron strings."
In 1923, J. Russell Robinson wrote a similar song called St. Louis Gal. In this blues song, a woman sadly recounts the story of a St. Louis gal who " Stole the heart of my big boy" who goes on to swear that " Down in Missouri, there'll come a time when your life won't be worth a dime." Pretty dramatic and earthy sentiments. Bessie Smith also recorded this song but please listen to Cecile McLorin Salvant, a young and talented American singer who has absorbed the essence of the blues tradition a hundred years after Handy wrote St. Louis Woman.
Listen to both Bessie Smith and Cecile McLorin Salvant to experience the power of a unique American musical contribution that has influencd so many different musical genres.
The Blues-The Musical Gift That Keeps on Giving.
Bessie Smith-St. Louis Woman
https://youtu.be/jNWs0LsimFs
Cecile McLorin Salvant
https://youtu.be/H3dFTyJK0NQ
In 1923, J. Russell Robinson wrote a similar song called St. Louis Gal. In this blues song, a woman sadly recounts the story of a St. Louis gal who " Stole the heart of my big boy" who goes on to swear that " Down in Missouri, there'll come a time when your life won't be worth a dime." Pretty dramatic and earthy sentiments. Bessie Smith also recorded this song but please listen to Cecile McLorin Salvant, a young and talented American singer who has absorbed the essence of the blues tradition a hundred years after Handy wrote St. Louis Woman.
Listen to both Bessie Smith and Cecile McLorin Salvant to experience the power of a unique American musical contribution that has influencd so many different musical genres.
The Blues-The Musical Gift That Keeps on Giving.
Bessie Smith-St. Louis Woman
https://youtu.be/jNWs0LsimFs
Cecile McLorin Salvant
https://youtu.be/H3dFTyJK0NQ
Friday, 22 May 2015
I'LL REMEMBER APRIL- 55 YEARS LATER I STILL REMEMBER THAT APRIL
" I'll Remember April"--55 years later I still remember that April.
In April of 1960, I first met Ann when she was in Nursing . Fifty-Five years later, I am glad that I can still see her every day. Early on, we decided that " I'll Remember April" would be our song. not only because of the month in question but because it is a lovely song with an unusual and haunting melody with sensitive and insightful lyrics.
Written in 1941 by Gene DePaul with words by Don Raye, the song recounts the strength of the initial April encounter, the gradual the cooling of initial passion but the singer concludes that despite the sadness of a parting of the ways with these words "I won't forget but I won't be lonely, I'll remember April and be glad.. Bittersweet but honest sentiments.
This performance is by Frank Sinatra and an arrangement by Axel Stordahl who accompanied Sinatra early in his career. As always, Sinatra invests all of his dramatic powers in the song making it so believable both in the evocation of initial passion and the recognition of the love that disappeared. The love still remembered with fondness of what was once true that long ago April.
https://youtu.be/9lj_kBFixjU
In April of 1960, I first met Ann when she was in Nursing . Fifty-Five years later, I am glad that I can still see her every day. Early on, we decided that " I'll Remember April" would be our song. not only because of the month in question but because it is a lovely song with an unusual and haunting melody with sensitive and insightful lyrics.
Written in 1941 by Gene DePaul with words by Don Raye, the song recounts the strength of the initial April encounter, the gradual the cooling of initial passion but the singer concludes that despite the sadness of a parting of the ways with these words "I won't forget but I won't be lonely, I'll remember April and be glad.. Bittersweet but honest sentiments.
This performance is by Frank Sinatra and an arrangement by Axel Stordahl who accompanied Sinatra early in his career. As always, Sinatra invests all of his dramatic powers in the song making it so believable both in the evocation of initial passion and the recognition of the love that disappeared. The love still remembered with fondness of what was once true that long ago April.
https://youtu.be/9lj_kBFixjU
Thursday, 23 April 2015
FRANK SINATRA & DAWN UPSHAW SING 2 DISTINCTIVE VERSIONS OF RODGERS& HART'S " IT NEVER ENTERED MY MIND:
Frank Sinatra & Dawn Upshaw sing 2 distinctive versions of Rodger's & Hart's " It Never Entered My Mind."
For the 1940 show " Higher & Higher", Richard Rodgers provided a very lovely melodic line to which Lorenz Hart evoked such tender reflections like " You have what I Lack myself" immediately followed by the more colloquial verse " And now I have to scratch my back myself !" Such wordplay highlights Hart's unique ability to juxtapose the sentimental with the sardonic and yet strangely make them work with Rodgers melodic instincts. Alec Wilder, the inveterate archivist and avatar of The Great American Songbook stated that Hart's more energetic and unpredictable writing style eclipsed Oscar Hammerstein's more prosaic " And comfortable armchair philosophy" as found in " Climb Every Mountain" or You'll Never Walk Alone." As for Rodgers. Wilder said that " Rodgers songs have revealed a higher degree of consistent excellence, inventiveness and sophistication than those of any other writers I have studied" including Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Cole Porter. Fine praise indeed.
Dawn Upshaw, a classically trained singer has mastered the nuances and naturalness inherent in the American popular song idiom and accompanied only by a piano, she delivers all of the plangent qualities of the song.
Frank Sinatra, accompanied by an orchestra arranged and led by Nelson Riddle, gives an equally somber and expressive performance proving that good song material is capable of a myriad of interpretations while still retaining the essential elements embedded in the song itself.
Upshaw version;
https://youtu.be/tE9qF9MBzs8?list=PLCvqEw1Hw0l1b5fCl73jbua4PsETpGiyg
Sinatra version
https://youtu.be/1fleh1LBFGA
For the 1940 show " Higher & Higher", Richard Rodgers provided a very lovely melodic line to which Lorenz Hart evoked such tender reflections like " You have what I Lack myself" immediately followed by the more colloquial verse " And now I have to scratch my back myself !" Such wordplay highlights Hart's unique ability to juxtapose the sentimental with the sardonic and yet strangely make them work with Rodgers melodic instincts. Alec Wilder, the inveterate archivist and avatar of The Great American Songbook stated that Hart's more energetic and unpredictable writing style eclipsed Oscar Hammerstein's more prosaic " And comfortable armchair philosophy" as found in " Climb Every Mountain" or You'll Never Walk Alone." As for Rodgers. Wilder said that " Rodgers songs have revealed a higher degree of consistent excellence, inventiveness and sophistication than those of any other writers I have studied" including Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Cole Porter. Fine praise indeed.
Dawn Upshaw, a classically trained singer has mastered the nuances and naturalness inherent in the American popular song idiom and accompanied only by a piano, she delivers all of the plangent qualities of the song.
Frank Sinatra, accompanied by an orchestra arranged and led by Nelson Riddle, gives an equally somber and expressive performance proving that good song material is capable of a myriad of interpretations while still retaining the essential elements embedded in the song itself.
Upshaw version;
https://youtu.be/tE9qF9MBzs8?list=PLCvqEw1Hw0l1b5fCl73jbua4PsETpGiyg
Sinatra version
https://youtu.be/1fleh1LBFGA
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