‘If Only In My Dreams’ Redux

 

A few years ago I wrote one of my most heartfelt entries about Christmas.  I am not a religious person, but one does not experience a lifetime of Christmases and not be moved by its mere secular presence.  My feelings about the holiday have not changed and therefore I am copying that piece without the photographs it contained, and but embedding the performances of all four songs mentioned, my favorites of the holiday season. 

 

 If Only In My Dreams

 

And so the classic song "I'll Be Home For Christmas" ends with that memorable line “if only in my dreams.”

 

And that is sort of the way I feel at this stage of my life.  Christmases are now dreams of the past, anticipating the holiday as a child and then the pleasures Ann and I had in creating memorable holiday moments for our children as they grew up.  The classic song itself is particularly evocative of the distant past popularized by Bing Crosby and so many others, first recorded at the peak of WW II.

 

Undoubtedly it was played frequently by my mother and my grandparents with whom we lived while my father was in Germany at the conclusion of the War, wanting to get home, but he was part of the occupying force and didn’t make it home until right after Christmas 1945.  "I'll Be Home For Christmas" is probably implanted in the recesses in my mind as every time I hear it I feel a sudden melancholy.

 

When my father came home he brought a wooden replica of the Jeep he drove in Germany for me.  I don’t remember his return, or getting the Jeep, but somehow that 70 year old Jeep has accompanied me wherever I lived.  Sometimes when I look at it, I can hear "I'll Be Home For Christmas."

 

In some past blog entries I’ve posted videos of other Christmas songs I like to play, in particular the following:  “It's Love -- It's Christmas,”  a seldom performed Christmas song, written by none other than the great jazz pianist Bill Evans. And, then, “Christmas Time Is Here” is by Vince Guaraldi, a great jazz musician too but his music will always be associated with the Peanuts Christmas specials.

 

Finally, there is “Christmas Lullaby,” probably the most unknown Christmas song. It was written for Cary Grant by none other than Peggy Lee (Lyrics) and Cy Coleman (Music). It is the simplest of tunes and lyrics but therein is its beauty.

 

So, on the eve of this Christmas I post my piano rendition of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” with fond memories of my Dad and Christmases past .

 

 

I’ll Be Home For Christmas

 

 

It's Love -- It's Christmas

 

 

 

Christmas Time Is Here

 

 

 

Christmas Lullaby

 

 

Golden Years

It’s the literal translation of Anos Dourados by the great Brazilian composer, father of the bossa nova, Antônio Carlos Jobim (also known as “Tom”), whose music was widely adopted by jazz musicians throughout the world.  To me, it’s also those years when the Great American Songbook came into being and flourished.  It still does in the world of jazz and regularly at my piano.

In my piece on Bill Mays I went into some detail about what distinguishes an amateur’s playing from a professional’s.  Someone wrote asking for clarification about my statement “I long ago lost the ability to sight read other than the melody line and the chords and improvise the rest.”  Doesn’t that mean you play by ear, I was asked?  I wish I did, having lost that ability long ago as well.  It is a contradiction I suppose, improvising harmony and the bass from the chords, playing the melody from the treble clef which I read.

With apologies to any professional musician reading this the best way I can explain it is by revealing a bit of serendipity as Covid-19 took control of our lives.  A friend sent me a link to a recording of Anos Dourados I had never heard it before and was spellbound by the melody.  I was compelled to find the sheet music which I managed to do – with chords, no harmonic arrangement and no clef bass.  So I sat down with it at the piano and after a few passes at it, I casually recorded it on my cell phone to mail drop to my friend.  I recently I had to upgrade phones and found that forgotten recording and was surprised by that first take at the song. 

Unfortunately Google and Microsoft do not play well together and there was no way to transfer this to my Windows based computer, so I improvised a transfer having to record the recording and since it is not up to par technically, just saved it in my personal cloud.  Imperfections and all I embed it here and include a photograph of the sheet music. Perhaps this explains better what I was trying to say.

Here’s the melody line and the chords.

 

Here is a link to the recording of the iPhone recording! Although amateurish, having the ability of sit down with a piece of music and just play it has been and continues to be a source of joy. If I first hear it I can capture some of the nuances, but even if I’ve never heard the music, give me the melody line and the chords, and I can play it. Anything up to five flats (D flat major) or three sharps (A major).  That in itself is an interesting anomaly.  I struggle with 4 sharps but not 4 flats, probably because it is less likely to find songs from the Great American songbook written in 4 or more sharps.   

The lyrics remind me of the romantic, lost love ones that might have been penned by Paul Simon, and while the title, “Golden Years” refers to the years when the singer was happy with his now lost love, ironically these are my “golden years” in another sense of the words. 

Pandemic “Blues”

In addition to its deadly physical health consequences, there is a certain kind of sadness which COVID19 transmits unlike other tragedies.  One never gets over 9/11 except that murderous shock, once absorbed, we frail human beings went through Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, arriving at some form of acceptance.  Not so with this virus as it a slow-motion tragedy, one of our own making, and now failing to manage, with no real end in sight, other than civil discord which just exacerbates the issue.  Thus we are stuck at the grief stage, almost like an LP record reaching the end and then skipping in a loop, skipping, skipping …skipping.

 

Nothing has prepared us emotionally for these times, its dangers and its disruption.  Although we can escape to streaming forms of the arts, for many of us it is difficult to bear for long periods of time.  It’s even hard to read and write as this stage of grief is a barrier to thinking.  I find my piano to be an escape at times but the programs I usually play were for other, better times, so increasingly I’ve been turning to uncharted territory, playing pieces I’ve rarely played before.  In the process, I’ve learned some about Broadway history outside my zone of familiarity.  These pieces are not the well-worn ones I’ve played throughout my life by Rodgers and Hart, or Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, George Gershwin, etc. 

 

I recorded a couple on YouTube but, now, with some unease as a few view the platform as a form of competition.  I don’t pretend to be a pianist of any consequence, other than playing for myself, those who have enjoyed my work in retirement homes, and a few fund-raising luncheons I’ve played at.  My work in the theatre has been as a lobby pianist on opening night where background music was desired, not a performance.

 

So, although I know what I’m posting for this particular entry is not at the level that everyone has come to expect with current streamed performances, and we’ve seen some remarkable ones, YouTube is the only platform I can use for playing on all devices. 

 

First on my “COVID19 discovery quest” is a little known, but Tony nominated 1974 musical Over Here.  It derives its title from a plot involving WW II but was happening “over here.”  It played for a year on Broadway and was still playing to full audiences when it shut down over a salary dispute between the stars, the two remaining members of the Andrews Sisters, and the producers.

 

The song writers were the enormously successful team of the Sherman Brothers (Robert and Richard) who, previously unknown to me, may be the most prolific songwriting team of all time as they wrote mostly movie musical scores and in particular, when they were under contract with Disney for all of their hit musicals.  Over Here was their lone Broadway hit, and it included a number of good, solid Broadway melodies and one in particular hit me during these times, its title almost defining our unreal era as well, "Where Did the Good Times Go?"  Indeed, where did they go and will they ever come back in my lifetime?

 

It’s considered the musical’s “big number” sung near the end of the second act.  It’s plaintive melody and lyrics are perfectly married…

 

What fun we had, then laughter turned sad.

Oh, Where Did The Good Times Go?

Our hopes and plans slipped right through our hands.

Oh, where, Where Did The Good Times Go?

 

Some place some-where, instead of despair is the love we used to know:

Why can’t we return?

Won’t we ever return?

Oh, Where Did The Good Times Go?

 

Those are the simple lyrics but with a poignant message for our times as well.

 

 

From there I move back in time (1959), to a much less successful musical, The Nervous Set, which was written by an unknown team, Jay Landesman and Theodore J. Flicker, with lyrics by Fran Landesman, who was a poet of the beat generation, with music by Tommy Wolf who Fran Landesman met when he was a pianist on a gig.  The musical closed after only 23 performances.

 

Landesman had a fascinating, unconventional life which the New York Times’ perfectly captured in her obituary when she died almost ten years ago. 

 

Wolf began to transcribe some of her poetry to music after they met, culminating in this musical about a publisher (Fran’s husband, Jay) and his wife who leave their Connecticut suburb to visit Greenwich Village during the peak of its beat popularity.  Although the best-known song is undoubtedly “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” which is a jazz standard, I turn to the lesser known "Ballad of the Sad Young Men." 

 

These are the partial lyrics…

 

Sing a song of sad young men, glasses full of rye

All the news is bad again, kiss your dreams goodbye

All the sad young men, sitting in the bars

Knowing neon nights, and missing all the stars

All the sad young men, drifting through the town

Drinking up the night, trying not to drown

All the sad young men, singing in the cold

Trying to forget, that they're growing old….

 

This song, which has also been adopted by the jazz circuit, became a mainstay of gay bars.  It is mournful, and what can be sadder than the current time we are living through – pandemically, politically, and racially?

Jerry Herman, A Great Broadway Composer / Lyricist

Jerry Herman passed away yesterday.  I think of him as being among the pantheon of great contemporary composers / lyricists, excelling as both song writer and wordsmith.  While Hello Dolly! and Mame might immediately spring to mind when talking about Jerry Herman, to me, La Cage aux Folles, the first Broadway musical to deal openly with the gay community, is the perfect Jerry Herman creation of musical numbers, ranging from the big Broadway tunes one would expect such as ''I Am What I Am'' and ''The Best of Times'' to more subtle, sweet ballads such as ''Song on the Sand'' and ''Look Over There.''  This musical is chock full of memorable pieces.  

However, I truly love two musical pieces from his earlier, short-lived musical Mack and Mabel.  Serendipity led me to them.  When we first moved to Florida, Hershey Felder (an actor, pianist, playwright and arranger), was staging one of his first one-man shows, George Gershwin Alone at The Cuillo Centre for the Arts in West Palm Beach (which later coincidentally became the home of Dramaworks).  That was sometime around 2005 before I began writing this blog so I never reviewed it, but it was a unique work which only a great pianist such as Felder could have created and performed.  It ultimately made its way to Broadway.  But getting back to the connection to Jerry Herman, Felder, after the performance, said a friend of his was in the audience, a well-known upcoming Broadway singer, a young man about Felder’s age, who he invited up to the stage to sing, Felder acting as an accompanist.  Here’s the problem about not writing this blog at the time: I have no recollection of who this singer was.  He said he would sing two of his favorite Broadway pieces, "I Won't Send Roses" and "Time Heals Everything" were from a relatively unknown Jerry Herman musical, Mack and Mabel, and oh did he sing!  The audience was totally moved, captivated, and I immediately made them staples of my own piano work. 

When learning Jerry Herman had died, I listened to my own recording of "I Won't Send Roses" and said to myself, yes, this is how I would like to remember this great artist.  In the original production, it is sung by a movie director “Mack” (played by Robert Preston) to his upcoming star “Mabel” warning her that she shouldn’t expect any of the niceties of romance from him.  It is a brutally honest yet tender song, the words in perfect symmetry with the melody.  It is later reprised in the show by Mabel (played by none other than Bernadette Peters) where she accepts Mack without the roses.

And so, I’ll think of Jerry Herman any time I play this piece, this recording from about ten years ago .

RIP Jerry Herman

Getting Tall

My rendition of “Getting Tall” was recorded more than five years ago, but at the time, as its digital size was within the parameters of BlogSpot’s own video capabilities, I embedded it in the blog entry with their software.  This rendered it unplayable on mobile devices which are now the primary way my blog and therefore posted videos are accessed.  Thus, I’ve put it on YouTube and this can now be seen and heard in this entry.

Originally I posted it at the same time as “One Song Glory” from the musical Rent and both videos were a departure for me for reasons I explained in the former entry:

“Unlike the other videos I’ve done its close up.  This is not because I’m wild about my hands.  After all, they are, together, 142 years old! : - ).  But the sound was better with my little digital camera nearer to the piano. ‘One Song Glory’ is a genre outside my traditional classic Broadway comfort zone.  In other words, it doesn’t come naturally to me, but sometimes we have to forge into new territory.”

I continued with “the musical structure of ‘Getting Tall,’ from the musical Nine, on the other hand (no pun intended), is closer to the traditional Broadway musical, so I’m more relaxed playing this piece….’Getting Tall” is a very evocative conceit, the younger self counseling the mature version of the same person.”

Learning more, knowing less,

Simple words, tenderness part of getting tall.

Hopefully, that tenderness comes across….”

On a related matter, I received a comment on my recording of “This Funny World” which I’ll share here. I don’t get many comments as my videos are not heavily trafficked as are so many of the professional ones, but it’s always pleasing to learn that the tree is not falling in a silent forest and there are some people who come forth to express their feelings.  This one is particularly appreciated for the reasons I expressed in my reply:

From “Tom”

I was looking around for the song “This Funny World” by Rodgers and Hart; I had remembered the song from the past and thought how poignant and in many ways also how true the words seem to be.  These words as well as the music begins a chain of events causing a sharp sense of sadness, pity, and regret, and still a realization that life’s journey for everyone,-- to one degree or the other,--  have to say that this funny world has been making fun of them. But I wanted to learn the song and of course put into you-to-bee “How to play (This funny World) and this wonderful looking keyboard came up with a pair of hands on it, I thought to myself --  ok let’s see how bad this guy messes up the song, but to my surprise and delight I could sit through the entire song and drink in every beautiful note and expression, nothing added nothing subtracted it actually was what I was looking for, you have an extraordinary ear and the ability to present the song just as the writers intended.   Thank you.

My Reply:

Thank you, Tom, for your kind comments.  You touched upon both my strength and weakness as a pianist.  I do try to focus on a literal interpretation and play the song as I feel it.  I lack the musical education to render these songs with the kind of voicing and interpretation of some of my favorite pianists such as Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson.  But over the years I tried to commit some of my favorites to YouTube.  I laughed when you said that you found a pair of hands and a keyboard in your search for the song.  My recording device is a digital camera which I’ve learned that when I record a distance from the piano to get my body and all into the video, my living room becomes an echo chamber.  Better be close, very close to the piano for the best sound and, even then, it has noticeable limitations. I’ve recorded 4 CDs in a studio and these sound better, but they are not available commercially.  Also, when I do a YouTube recording, I usually write it up in my blog, and my entry on “This Funny World” is at this link: https://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2015/12/this-funny-world.html