Showing posts with label Piano Playing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Piano Playing. Show all posts

Thursday, March 8, 2018

I Didn’t Know About You



The longer I live the more I’m astounded by the beautiful music of the Great American Songbook.  You think you’ve heard all those classic songs, ones which will endure and transcend what passes as popular music today, and suddenly you hear a “new” one (at least to me), either at a jazz jam or even on the old fashioned radio. 

One would think radio is a thing of the past, all the FM stations mostly devoted to contemporary “music” until Legends Radio 100.3 FM was founded in the Palm Beaches by professional broadcaster Dick Robinson, who is also the founder of the Society for the Preservation of the Great American Songbook.  Even though local, it’s available world-wide at LegendsRadio.com.

I remember pulling out of our driveway one day, listening to 100.3 and hearing I Didn’t Know About You.  I said to Ann that song sounds like one by Duke Ellington.  His In a Sentimental Mood is one of my favorites. I made a mental note of the song and looked it up in one of my Jazz fake books when we returned home and sure enough, it’s by Duke Ellington, with beautiful lyrics written by Bob Russell. 

The version we heard on the radio was performed by one of a jazz favorites, Jane Monheit who we saw a couple of years ago at the Colony on Palm Beach.


I’ve incorporated I Didn’t Know About You in my own piano repertoire, and since I haven’t posted anything on YouTube in some time, I offer it here, so there is some documentation of my love of this music.  It is with profound gratitude to the great musical artists who created this body of music, loosely referred to as The Great American Songbook.  It enriches our lives. May it endure!

Monday, July 3, 2017

I Could Have Told You



One of the great joys of music is meeting different musicians and then hearing them play or sing pieces I’m not familiar with.  Wikipedia says The Great American Songbook, also known as 'American Standards', is the canon of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century.  That’s enormous territory and although I’ve been playing songs from that genre for more than fifty years, I still come across new ones (to me).  Most are fun to play and some are very moving.  Such is the case with the song “I Could Have Told You” The haunting melody was written by the great James Van Heusen, a friend of Sinatra’s, and the melancholic lyrics were penned by the prolific lyricist Carl Sigman. 

The  recording became a Frank Sinatra “signature song.” The Nelson Riddle arrangement was recorded as a single on December 9, 1953 just days after Sinatra reportedly attempted suicide over his broken marriage to Ava Gardner.  No wonder it is so mournful and heartfelt and supposedly he never performed it in his endless appearances on stage. Obviously, the song conjured painful memories. It later appeared on his 1959 compilation album Look to Your Heart and another one that same year, made up of mostly sorrowful songs, No One Cares.   

It was also recorded by Bob Dylan (surprisingly to me) so if one likes his voice and style you can also find it on YouTube.  It can’t compare to Sinatra’s smooth tonality and phrasing. 

Although I probably heard the song in my years of listening to Sinatra, I didn’t have the sheet music or take note of it.  I was “introduced” to it by a singer we came across in our many visits to the Double Roads Tavern in Jupiter.  The Jupiter Jazz Society headed up by Rich and Cherie Moore has a Jazz Jam there on Sunday nights.  Rich is a very talented pianist and can play almost any style. We’re supporters of the Society and try not to miss a performance.  We learned about the Society and Double Roads from our good friend (and my bass accompanist from time to time) David Einhorn who occasionally plays there.   So one connection leads to another in the small music world and there we saw a performance by an upcoming interpreter of the Great American Songbook, Lisa Remick.

A prediction: we’ll hear a lot more from her in the future.  She’s a perfectionist, the kind of singer we really appreciate, trying to go to the heart of a song, and singing it while conveying the emotional foundation of the lyrics and the melody.  Such is her interpretation of “I Could Have Told You” on her CD, Close Enough for Love.   

Thus, I was captivated by that song on her CD. I found a lead sheet for the piano and after playing it over and over again for myself, decided to record it and upload it to YouTube trying to allow the melody to speak for itself, with my usual disclaimer that it was recorded under less than ideal conditions in my living room and using a digital camera.  I played it just one time through and one can follow the lyrics which are below. It’s a gem of a song.

 
I could have told you
She'd hurt you
She'd love you a while
Then desert you
If only you'd asked
I could have told you so
I could have saved you
Some crying
Yes, I could have told you she's lying
But you were in love
And didn't want to know
I hear her now
As I toss and turn and try to sleep
I hear her now
Making promises she'll never keep
And soon, it's over and done with
She'll find someone new to have fun with
Through all of my tears
I could have told you so

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Too Late Now



We think of Lerner and Lowe as a team, but lyricist Alan Jay Lerner worked with other composers such as Burton Lane on the film Royal Wedding in 1951.  It includes this gem of a song, a memorable contribution to the Great American Songbook, touching lyrics by Lerner and a suitable Burton Lane melancholic melody.  Supposedly, they wrote it over the telephone. 

Although it’s been recorded by many, it’s Judy Garland’s sad rendition I think of as the song was written for her but she dropped out before Royal Wedding was filmed and was replaced by Jane Powell.  This YouTube recording was from her TV show, performed some dozen years later.  It takes on a genuine sadness given the back-story.

Too Late Now
Too late now to forget your smile
The way we cling when we danced awhile
Too late now to forget and go on with someone new

Too late now to forget your voice
The way one word makes my heart rejoice
Too late now to imagine myself away from you

All the things we've dreamed together
I relive when we're apart
All the tender words together
Live on in my heart

How could I ever close the door
And be the same as I was before?
Darling, no, no I can't anymore
It's too late now

My rendition in the “recording studio” of my living room has its technical drawbacks, but I tried to capture the pure simplicity of this wonderful melody.


Friday, June 16, 2017

I Love My Wife



Cy Coleman’s I Love My Wife is the title song from his 1977 musical about wife swapping – a very popular “sport” in those days, the same year NYC’s Plato's Retreat opened for swingers.  After the fantasying by the husbands in the show, they come to the conclusion that they have the best in their own wives.  Thus this song.  If it were not for Frank Sinatra perhaps the song would be as forgotten as the musical but, thankfully, Sinatra saw the genius of this beautiful ballad, the repeated musical phrases resulting in such a haunting melody.  He recorded it as a single using a Nelson Riddle chart. The lyrics, by Michael Stewart, latch onto those musical phrases (these of course are not the entire lyrics):

But just in case, you didn't know
I love my wife

and later in the song….

But just in case, you hadn't heard
I love my wife

and later again…

But just in case, you couldn't guess
I love my wife

and the concluding

But just in case, you couldn't guess
Or hadn't heard
Or didn't know
I love my wife
I love my wife
I love my wife

mmm….
I love my wife

My piano rendering of this wonderful melody is dedicated to my wife of nearly 50 years, Ann.


Thursday, December 22, 2016

Christmas Lullaby



Talk about unknown Christmas songs.  Christmas Lullaby 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.  And the story of how it came to be written and recorded by Cary Grant is told by Jessica Pickens in her blog, Comet Over Hollywood. YouTube captures Grant’s recording for posterity

James Gavin, in his biography of Peggy Lee, Is That All There Is?: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee, said “Christmas Lullaby as Lee called it, wasn’t anything too special. ‘Angles bless you, little one…my little one, sleep well.’ But as Lee sat alongside Grant at a Hollywood studio and gazed at him while he talk sang her words, he could have been intoning Emily Dickinson.”

Although Christmas is not the same for me as it was when I was growing up and then for us as parents raising two sons (happily both visiting us this holiday), the spirit indelibly left its mark.  I posted YouTube piano versions of two of my favorite Christmas pieces, one two years ago --  a Bill Evans composition, It’s Love It’s Christmas, and, last year, Vince Guaraldi’s classic Christmas Time Is Here. 

So I offer one of Christmas Lullaby, a lovely one minute waltz.  Lyrics are below.  Happy and Healthy Holidays to all!

Angels bless you little one / while you’re fast asleep.
You’ll awake to dancing toys, candy canes, Christmas joys.
And I pray your whole life through, Angels will watch over you,
loving you the way I do my little one, sleep well.
Angels bless you little one / while you’re fast asleep.
You’ll awake to dancing toys, candy canes, Christmas joys.
And I pray your whole life through, Angels will watch over you,
loving you the way I do my little one, sleep well.

Copyright © 1967 by Notable Music Co. Inc. and Denslow Music Co. Inc.