Tony often tells me that he thinks Sometimes a Song is the highlight of each week at Word & Song, but I think I just have the weekend advantage! As our regular subscribers know, the music that we share each Saturday ranges from the silly to the sublime. I’ll leave it to you to determine where today’s song falls.

If you like bluegrass music, this one is for you. I’ve written before about the team of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs here, if you wish to learn a bit more about their beginnings with the Gand Old Man of Bluegrass music, their former boss, Bill Monroe — the fellow who, with his band, The Blue Grass Boys, gave this style of music the name it has been known by ever after. I wish I had my good friend Monty, my favorite bluegrass master of everything with strings, here with me to write about what a great innovator Earl Scruggs was on the banjo. Earl grew up as the youngest child in a musical family, and evidently began to play the banjo when he was still too small to hold it. So he would set it on the floor and lean over it to play. It goes without saying that Earl had no formal lessons, but he DID have a great influence in the person of one DeWitt "Snuffy" Jenkins, who introduced him to a three-finger banjo method which made the instrument more than a percussion-style instrument and gave Earl him the inspiration to develop his own three-finger picking style that elevated Bluegrass music further, and established a banjo standard that is still inspiring musicians today.

In 1950, shortly after Earl and Lester shucked off the endless and exhausting touring schedule of Bill Monroe, the two formed their own band and recorded Earl’s masterpiece, “The Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” featuring that novel picking style I just mentioned. This recording “had legs,” as they say. Not only did it establish the duo’s new band and give them a name (“The Foggy Mountain Boys”), but it became an instant classic which put Flatt and Scruggs in the spotlight, out of the shadow of Monroe. That early song was chosen for the theme of the film, “Bonnie and Clyde,” and enjoyed a great revival of popularity 20 years later, when Flatt and Scruggs were awarded the 1969 Grammy Award for Best Country Performance, Duo. In 1999 that same 1950’s recording was inducted into The Grammy Hall of Fame. Lester Flatt died at age 64, but Earl Scruggs lived a long life and re-recorded “Foggy Mountian Breakdown” in 2001 with an amazing cast of muscians, including Steve Martin (yes, SNL’s “King Tut” Steve Martin) on second banjo. That recording earned Scruggs another well-deserved Grammy in 2002.

There’s a lot more to say about Earl Scruggs, who was no one-trick pony. But today I needed a song featuring our or Word of the Week, doubt, right? And without further ado, I give you Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, with the Foggy Mountain Boys, doing a very cute (yes, cute!) song called, “No Doubt About It.” I dare you not to smile when you hear that one.

And I’m adding the delightful, Grammy-winning 2001 version of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” too. See how many celebrities you can identify in this recording. There’s no doubt about the genius of this song or of Earl Scruggs, either.

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After our week of glory at Word & Song, I feared that my Sometimes a Song might be something of a letdown today. But then, I thought, there is also glory in lesser things. Like the grain of mustard seed, some small things have their power, too.

Today’s song is not a Grammy winner. It’s not in any Hall of Fame. But its writer, Billy Hill, was well known on Tin Pan Alley, from his arrival there in 1930 until his untimely death about ten years later.

Life was different in 1899 when Bill Hill was born in Jamaica Plain, in Boston. By age 17 he had already moved on from being a student at the Boston Conservatory of music to playing violin with The Boston Symphony Orchestra. Was Bill Hill a prodigy? It sure sounds like he was, but his early musical success seems to have given him confidence to take on what likely to him seemed a more exciting world. He left the conservatory and the symphony behind, and headed out west to try his hand a being a cowboy. For the next decade or so Hill appears to have lived hand-to-mouth, working odd jobs as he traveled. Eventually, he found himself drawn back to music, and he formed a jazz band in Salt Lake City. From there, he decided to head back east to New York’s then-famous Tin Pan Alley, where he quickly made a name for himself as a writer of popular songs, finally fighting his way out of devastating poverty through his music. Many of his early songs were picked up for Hollywood westerns, and thus his first and most enduring reputation came from hit songs with such names as “The Last Roundup” and “Empty Saddles.” And his songs were becoming big hits for stars such as Bing Crosby, Roy Rogers, “The Sons of the Pioneers,” and big bands led by Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo, and Harry James (yes, even the young Sinatra recorded a Billy Hill song). One of Billy Hill’s songs, “The Old Man in the Mountain,” was made into a “Betty Boop” animated short of the same name. Did I mention that times were different back then?

As for today’s song, Bill Hill wrote it in 1936, and within a few months of his publication of the tune, Benny Goodman recorded it. The song became a big hit for Goodman, and went right to the top of the Billboard charts. It also became an immediate jazz standard and, I believe, the most recorded of all his songs, with some 250 commercial recordings and versions produced in other languages. “The Glory of Love” was most recently covered in 2025. It was the recurring theme of the 1967 film, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” And Bette Midler sang it in the 1988 film, “Beaches.” Most of Billy Hill’s 100 or so published songs are not well known today as they once were. But Billy’s fascination with the old west made him a cross-over favorite, and earned for his song “Wagon Wheels” (theme of a 1934 film of the same name) inclusion in the Western Writers’ Association’s list of The 100 Best Western Songs of All Time. If you like C&W music, you may recognize Hill’s really great hit song, recorded by Jim Reeves (and many others, a cross-over hit with the C&W and Easy Listening fans), “Have You Ever Been Lonely?” So we can say that Billy Hill’s artistic glory outlived him, and that he left behind a considerable legacy in American music.

Billy Hill was among the original 92 inductees into the first class of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, organized and founded by the great Johnny Mercer in 1970. Most of those inductees from that innaugural class, like Billy Hill, were deceased at that time, with only a few of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters still remaining — notably Irving Berlin. That class included, among the 92, Stephen Foster, George Gershwin, and Rodgers & Hammerstein. So the writer of today’s song holds a place among some glorious company.

Without further ado, let me give you the great Benny Goodman, with vocals by Helen Ward, in their 1936 hit recording, “The Glory of Love.” It’s a sweet song with a message that still rings true. I’m including below a charming recording, the last one made by a famous singer who was not exactly known for his great voice … well, not exactly!

Wishing all of you a glorious day.

Jackie Barnett Presents Hello Young Lovers is a 1964 album by Jimmy Durante, with arrangements by Roy Bargy.^[2][3] Hello Young Lovers' was the last recording that Durante and Bargy would make together; Bargy had served as Durante's musical director since 1943.^[4]

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As we sometimes do, on the Saturday before Easter we are revisiting a wonderful song by a fine singer, with an unusual choir.

Sometimes a Song is actually a folk song, or as as seems appropriate to the Saturday before Easter, a hymn. My introduction this week’s song, “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone? will be brief, but pointed. Like many of you here at Word & Song, I have known hymns like this from childhood. And in my childhood, it was very common for famous popular entertainers and singers to release albums of sacred music, most usually hymns. I feel pretty confident when I say that such recordings were not made because the companies in control of what music was produced then were particularly religious. Some individual producers were, and others without question were not. But what they all knew was that such albums as the one our hymn today was recorded for would SELL, and not just to niche audiences. And it wasn’t by far only country and western singers who recorded albums of sacred music.

Still, even though it was pretty common before the 1970’s for mainstream entertainers to do sacred music, today’s recording is not typical of the albums they made. Why? Because Tennessee Ernie Ford decided to record his album, named after the very fitting title hymn, “We Gather Together,” at San Quintin Prison, accompanied by the 40-member prison choir. In all, the men recorded twelve hymns, each specially scored for the album by Mr. Ford’s arranger, Jack Fascinato, who had a full career composing quality children’s music. (Among other things, he was the music director for the television puppet show, “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.”) Quite a number of popular singers and bands entertained at prisons in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but I believe that Ernie Ford was the first name entertainer to record an actual album in a prison, and the only artist to employ inmates in the production, rather than just recording a concert on site. Later in the decade, Johnny Cash made a series of prison-recorded concert albums, and a number of other entertainers and bands released some prison-concert recordings. But I know of nothing else in the genre of popular music like the album, “We Gather Together.”

So here, as we contemplate the great gift of Easter, is Tennessee Ernie Ford, singing “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?” with the all-male San Quentin Prison Choir (1963). I’ve included a little bit about the history of the hymn below for those who might like to learn more. I hope that this recording will be a blessing to you all at this holy season.

Must Jesus bear the cross alone
And all the world go free?
No, there's a cross for ev'ry one,
And there's a cross for me.

The consecrated cross I'll bear
Till death shall set me free,
And then go home my crown to wear,
For there's a crown for me.

Upon the crystal pavement, down
At Jesus' pierced feet,
Joyful, I'll cast my golden crown
And His dear name repeat.

O precious cross! O glorious crown!
O resurrection day!
Ye angels, from the stars come down
And bear my soul away.

The hymn text as originally written by Thomas Shepherd (see below) appears in a collection of hymns known as Penitential Cries (1735). But it was heavily adapted and altered over the next one hundred years. The version most used now was first published in a collection compiled by Henry Ward Beecher, who seems to have added a the final two verses (1835). The hymn appears in The Oberlin Social and Sabbath School Hymn Book (1849) by George N. Allen, composer of the tune that we associate with “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone,” Maitland.

Must Simon* bear the cross alone, 
And other saints be free? 
Each saint of thine shall find his own 
And there is one for me. 
Whene'er it falls unto my lot, 
Let it not drive me from 
My God, let me ne'er be forgot 
‘Till thou hast lov'd me home.  

*Simon of Cyrene

But today we are listening to his 1946 version for his album, The Voice. The war had ended in 1945, but the recording industry had been struggling through a long battle between radio broadcasters and ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) over licensing fees for the first war years, and that was barely over, when a musicians’ strike began and persisted through most of the remaining war years. These three events, the World War and the two strikes, resulted to great changes in the recording industry. One big change was the rise of solo singers over the domination of the Big Band leaders who dominated and controlled popular music in the 1930’s. Frank Sinatra’s departure from the Dorsey Orchestra reflected the shift to solo singers and musicians which gave them more control over their music. At the same time many young musicians were drafted into military service, and this led to the rise of small singing groups recording in tight harmonies with little or no instrumental backup. Former big band musicians formed small jazz ensembles. And folk singers and country and Western music began to reach mainstream radio audiences.

And what does all of this have to do with today’s song? Well, the war shortages reduced new song production as well. All of the songs in The Voice — were written before the war. There was not one new song in Sinatra’s first album. And his first album was essentially the first album produced by an American recording company. As with all of his albums, Sinatra’s hand was significant on the song selection. The Voice, like all of the albums Sinatra would record, was a “concept” collection, with tunes chosen for compatibility of mood and content. This approach to recording an album was new, and set the standard high. The original release of The Voice came out in the form of four 78’s each with one song per side. Not long afterward, the studio released The Voice as the first-ever Long Playing album, on vinyl, the innovation Columbia Records had invested in of necessity to address the shellac shortage of the war years. At the same time, Columbia released the first-ever 12-inch vinyl record, launching their Classical Composers series. The release of these albums was a staggering event in 1948 and was announced to the world in a radio broadcast from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.

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I’m betting that some of you know at least a few other numbers by Songwriter’s Hall of Fame inductee, Harry Woods, the composer of “Try a Little Tenderness.” One of my childhood favorites was his “I’m Looking over a Four-Leaf Clover,” which I think I danced to in tap class. And how about “Side by Side,” or "When the Red, Red Robin (Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along)?” These songs from the Roaring Twenties had some staying power in their day.

But Sometimes a Song takes us back to .. the Great Depression .. to a time of hardship around the world, and to one writer’s suggestion of a way to make life a lot less dreary. I hope you will enjoy today's song, which includes the intro verse to set the tone.

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Do you recall the first time you ever heard the “Londonderry Air” (or as it is more frequently called, “Danny Boy”)? I can’t recall a time when I did not know that song. But if I had to guess, I’d bet that my first experience of it came from watching old TV reruns of “Make Room for Daddy” as a kid. The star of that show, Danny Thomas, was a beloved entertainer, singer, actor, and later television producer. And for obvious reasons, his producers adapted (and jazzed up!) “Danny Boy” to become his theme song, though Thomas was a Lebanese American. In 1953, when Thomas premiered his show, there couldn’t have been a person in the world who was not familiar with that song. But (other than from Ireland!), just where did the song come from?

Well, I wasn’t just spinning my wheels when I began this post talking about collectors. I’ve covered many folk songs over the past few years at Word & Song. However, in the case of the “Londonderry Air,” the song might easily have fallen into oblivion but for a few dedicated collectors of songs, and particularly of folk songs, back in the 19th century. Some people guess that the tune is linked to a couple of other folk songs even older than that. But we know that the tune itself first appeared in print, unnamed, in "The Ancient Music of Ireland” ( published by The Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland, 1855). The editor of that book, George Petrie, had been about the business of literally collecting old Irish folk tunes which had never been notated, much less published. The unnamed air — along with a good number of other genuine old Irish tunes — had been notated and sent to Mr. Petrie by yet another song collector, Miss Jane Ross of Limavady in County Derry, in Northern Ireland.

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According to Mr. Petrie, Miss Ross’s collection was a tremendous help to his project because it included musical notation for songs which had never been published and which were “very old” (even then) and otherwise liable to have been lost altogether to the world. Some experts believe that the tune later called the “Londonderry Air” could date back as far as the 17th century. The story goes that in about 1850 Miss Ross heard the air played by a street fiddler in her home county, and pointedly wrote it down more or less in the form that we still know it today, 170 years later. Mr. Petrie’s book preserved the tune; and certainly it was still played until the end of the century, but only as an instrumental. The “Danny Boy” lyrics did not appear until 1914, when a poet and librettist, Frederic Weatherly, was sent the song by his Irish sister-in-law, with a request that he set words to it. As it happened, Weatherly already had a poem which he had composed for a different tune a few years earlier and which fit the “Londonderry Air,” with only minor modifications. He in turn gave the song to English opera singer, Elsie Griffin, who sang it when she went to entertain the British troops in the First World War. And from there the song traveled the world and became one of the most popular songs of the 20th century.

Since the era of recording. “Danny Boy/Londonderry Air” has been commercially released nearly 1000 times, with the earliest recordings appearing in 1914. But for today I have selected for you an old-time and understated but very dear rendition of the song, circa 1940, with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. I’m also providing a link to a fine orchestral performance, with George Weldon conducting the London Philharmonia Orchestra, with arrangement by Percy Grainger. I’m sure that very many of you have your own favorite versions of the song. They say that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. And may everyone with a heart enjoy this dear old Irish song!

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I will frankly confess that the back-stories for The Sound of Music are too numerous for me to do them justice here. But let me throw in one or two things which pertain to how Julie Andrews “became” Maria von Trapp in the 1965 film from which our Sometimes a Song is taken. Julie Andrews was born to music hall entertainers (think Vaudeville), and she was a child actor and singer who worked hard all of her life, both before and after World War II. She was already well-known in England as “the prima donna in pigtails,” and her star was already rising, when at age 18, she was offered the lead in a Broadway Musical called “The Boyfriend” (an American version of a hit musical in London’s West End). The show ran a little over a year, but it introduced Julie Andrews to all of Broadway and put her in a position to be chosen for the lead in Lerner and Loewe’s “loverly” musical, My Fair Lady.

Oscar Hammerstein saw her in that role and predicted that she would become a sensation. He and Richard Rodgers were always interested in trying experiments with their work, and the new venue, television, was becoming a source of real art in those days. The composers wrote their only television musical, Cinderella, specifically for Julie Andrews. Evidently, they made Julie an offer she couldn’t refuse, because Cinderella was rehearsed and broadcast live on a Sunday night, while Julie was still performing in My Fair Lady eight shows each week. Such a schedule requires youth, training, and sheer stamina, all of which Julie Andrews had in abundance. But that teleplay was a huge hit and gave Julie an audience of 100 million viewers in the United States, far beyond the reach of Broadway. In those days, that number of viewers meant that three quarters of American televisions were tuned in to the broadcast.

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Oscar Hammerstein did not live to see his prediction fulfilled in the splendid success of Julie Andrews’ career, as he died in 1960 while Julie was in rehearsals for her third Broadway play, Camelot. However, word has it that Julie was always on his very short list of singers/actresses to play Maria in any film adaptation of The Sound of Music. She had been a bit too young for the part in the original Broadway release, but had matured enough to do it to perfection by the time the film was cast. By then, also, “Mary Poppins” (for which she earned the Academy Award for Best Actress) had established her reputation among film producers as a box-office winner. And wouldn’t Oscar Hammerstein have been delighted with her performance?

One last back story: Maria von Trapp — who was known to be a bit of a pest during the filming of the movie version of The Sound of Music and who openly complained about historical inaccuracies in the original Broadway story line — nevertheless loved working with Oscar and Dick. She paid Oscar a public tribute while he was still alive, calling him a saint and adding that “he probably didn’t know it.” That’s some praise from her or from anyone.

So here I give you a wonderful song, even if not my favorite from the entire show, from one of my two favorite musicals of all time!

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About this time, at a failed auditon for Brunswick Records, Robinson met a songwriter named Berry Gordon, who was impressed by Robinson’s case full of songs he’d been writing in high school. Gordon shortly founded his own recording company, which was subsequently reincorporated into a new label, called Motown. And the rest, as they say, is recording history. And thus it happened that a combination of talent, hard work, and being at the right place at the right time produced “The Miracles.” And to make things even better, Smokey Robinson became a producer and vice-president of Motown, for which he was also one of the most prolific songwriters for many years, serving the company until 1999. Robinson was no one-hit wonder. After awhile he re-invented himself as a single recording artist and performer. He was inducted into the Rock ’N Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and received the Gershwin Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Congress in 2016.

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On its first release (in 1965), “The Tracks of My Tears” made it to Number 2 on the Rhythm & Blues Charts, but did not reach The Top Ten on Billboard until a few months later. And if you can’t exactly call “The Track of My Tears” an overnight success, it did become a huge success in short order, selling over a million copies in under two years. And the song was a continuing success for the second half of the 20th century and beyond. One of the very first million-sellers for Motown Records, the song was chosen by the comany for re-release in 1969, when it surpassed its initial release. “The Tracks of My Tears” is the most-covered song of The Miracles, by far, and has consistently been awarded many of the recording industry’s highest honors. Rolling Stone ranks the song as “The Greatest Motown Song of All Time,” placing it 50th in their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song was inducted into Grammy Hall of Fame, and is included in The Library of Congress list for artistic preservation.

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I can’t begin to do justice to the contribution of the Motown recording artists and songwriters here, but I hope to cover more such stories in time. Meanwhile, I’ve included below one version of our Sometimes a Song which became a big hit in 1975 for Linda Ronstadt, who eventually showed herself to be a great admirer and performer of all musical genres of the 20th century, from R&B to Rock, to Country, to the Great American Songbook. See if you don’t like her version of Smokey Robinson’s song as much as I do. And for a slightly different take on the song, I’ve also included Rod Stewart’s version from his 2009 album, Soulbook. If any of you have other favorite versions, send ‘em my way in the comments.

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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true

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I wish I had thought to ask my father when he was still with us if he saw “Snow White” in its original run. He’d have been eight years old, and with two younger sisters, even my very “near” grandfather might have parted with 30 cents for such a treat .. maybe. I do know that my father took me to see “Snow White” when I was a child, and I’ve looked up that date — which would have been in its 1967 re-release. What a treasure it was to see Disney films in those days, animated or not. But I am digressing here, because, after all, our song for this week is not one of the greats from “Snow White.”

Today I have for you a very different kind of animated Disney movie, one which Walt was certainly thinking about for awhile before production began. And this film was another “first” in American film — the first film to present real actors and animated characters interacting with each other as full characters. That film, “The Three Caballeros,” released in 1944, was conceived as Walt Disney’s contribution to the Good Neighbor Policy, via the arts. Any one here recall reading about that in school? Actually, the original idea for that policy came from Herbert Hoover, but was only formally adopted during Roosevelt’s first term, with the idea, first, of combatting the economic crisis of Great Depression by fostering trade with Latin America, and later also of pushing back against a growing Nazi presence to the south of us leading up to WWII. And so “The Three Caballeros” were goodwill embassadors, in a film which honored Donald Duck’s tenth “birthday” with a fanciful story involving birthday gifts which the famous duck received from Latin America —particularly from Brazil and Mexico — all set to popular tunes featuring great entertainers who were well known south of our border.

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Walt Disney was a perfectionist in many ways. If he was going to feature Latin America, he was going to use the best talent he could get to do our neighbors justice, all in a package that would entertain all ages. Evidently, he had contacts in both Brazin and Mexico keeping an ear on the newest popular songs .. and managed to secure the rights to some excellent music, such as our Sometimes a Song, for this film. “The Three Caballeros” was written by a master of Mexican popular song, Manuel Esperón, who was well know in the film industry and in his career had contributed to dozens of Mexican movies. In fact, the Spanish original of our tune of the week had already been featured in a Mexican film of the same name, “Ay, Jalisco, no te rajes!” (1941). Of course the Disney lyrics in English were added later by the American lyricist, Ray Gilbert, who would go on to win an Oscar a few years later for his "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from another Disney film, “Song of the South.” If you get a chance to watch full version of “The Three Caballeros,” be sure to keep an eye out for Carmen Miranda’s younger sister, Auroro, dancing with Donald Duck! As I said, a lot of talent went into the making of this film. And all the music for it is delightful.

Phew! I could go on and on, but for now I will leave you where I began, with the charming recording by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. And I’ll also attach the animated version of our song from the film. ¡Arriba!

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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true

The origin of this week’s Sometimes a Song — as is the case of works by that prolific songster, Anonymous — can’t be tied to a specific date. We do know, however, that the first time the tune appeared in print was in 1802, set down by a Welsh harpist, Edward Jones. The first English lyircs appeared in volume one of Welsh Melodies, with Welsh and English Poetry, with translations by a Scots poet and musician, Thomas Oliphant. Our readers already know another of Oliphant’s lyrics, “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly.” His translation of “The Ash Grove” is true to the original Welsh song of sadness of the singer for loss of his beloved young lady. But I have to say that Oliphant’s lyric seems (to me, at least) a wee bit indebted to another of my favorite folk songs, “Loch Lomond,” which is similar in tone, subject, and imagery; I wrote about that lovely song here. Those of you who know that song, tell me if you don’t agree.

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Tony mentioned in the essay I highlighted above that “The Ash Grove” can be sung in a wistful and even somber way or in the bright way that we are accustomed to who first heard the tune as a hymn with lyrics by Katherine Davis. This is not true of ALL tunes and all lyrics, so fair warning! Anyone who goes about setting old hymns to new tunes — or new hymns to old ones — needs to consider the literal tenor of the music and the content of the lyrics to determine the suitabily of one to the other.

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For today I am providing a couple of renditions of “The Ash Grove” for you to consider. The solo singer I’ve chosen for today is Thomas Thomas, a well-known and award-winning Concert singer, who came to the United States in 1923 and settled with him family in Scranton, PA — at the same time as Tony’s Italian grandfathers were working in the mines nearby. Think of Thomas Thomas as the Bryn Terfel of the early mid-century. Yes, he was THAT good.

In the case of all of the videos below, you can listen to the first song and then let the video roll into a beautiful assortment of songs. The last video may take a few folks by surprise — I hope!

Such beauty from one little song.

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Very wistfully to sorrowfully … Thomas L. Thomas

Cor Meibion Treorci Choir

Tregedar Orpheus Male Voice Choir

Brightly .. Harpo Marx

Thomas Oliphant's Translation

Down yonder green valley, where streamlets meander,
When twilight is fading I pensively rove,
Or at the bright noontide in solitude wander
Amid the dark shades of the lonely ash grove.
'Twas there, while the blackbird was cheerfully singing,
I first met my dear one, the joy of my heart!
Around us for gladness the bluebells were ringing,
Ah! then little thought I how soon we should part.

Still glows the bright sunshine o'er valley and mountain,
Still warbles the blackbird its note from the tree;
Still trembles the moonbeam on streamlet and fountain,
But what are the beauties of nature to me?
With sorrow, deep sorrow, my bosom is laden,
All day I go mourning in search of my love;
Ye echoes, oh, tell me, where is the sweet maiden?
"She sleeps, 'neath the green turf down by the ash grove."

Welsh Lyrics

Yn Nyffryn Llwyn Onn draw mi welais hardd feinwen
A minnau'n hamddena 'rol byw ar y don;
Gwyn ewyn y lli oedd ei gwisg, a disgleirwen
A'r glasfor oedd llygaid Gwen harddaf Llwyn Onn.
A ninnau'n rhodiana drwy'r lonydd i'r banna,
Sibrydem i'n gilydd gyfrinach byd serch;
A phan ddaeth hi'n adeg farwelio  a'r wiwdeg,
Roedd tannau fy nghalon yng ngofal y ferch.

Cyn dychwel i borthladd wynebwn y tonnau,
Ond hyfryd yw'r hafan 'rol dicter y don;
Bydd melys anghofio her greulon y creigiau--
Un felly o'wn innau 'rol cyrraedd Llwyn Onn.
A thawel mordwyo wnaf mwyach a Gwenno
Yn llong fach ein bwthyn a hi wrth y llyw;
A hon fydd yr hafan ddiogel a chryno
I'r morwr a'i Wenno tra byddwn ni byw.

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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true

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Hart was a voracious reader in school, and was fluent in German and Yiddish. His earliest experience of the theater came from the German and Yiddish plays his parents took him and his brother to see as children in New York. Hart began writing his own poetry in Columbia Grammar School, after which he took a degree at Columbia College, where he studied theater. Likely with an idea of improving his writing skill, Hart then studied at the Columbia School of Jouralism. But at the same time he found work as a translator of songs from German plays into English. His love was never journalism, to the benefit of the world at large. It was the theater, and specifically the musical theater.

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Those who knew Lorenz Hart understood him to be a genius in a theatrical way, a superb wit and an entertaining conversationalist. The theater and the poetry were in his blood. Those who knew him best, and this includes Richard Rodgers, understood Larry to be the deeply lonely man that he was, brilliant, errudite, witty, and a grand party host who often drowned his sorrows in a bottle. But it’s precisely this sadness that gave his lyrics their greatest appeal. His was the perspective of the outsider looking in on a world with no Valentines for him. When you understand that, you see that a song such as “My Funny Valentine” was autobiographical, from a man who saw himself as unloveable and who wished only that he could be the funny Valentine that the song describes, humble in stature and in features, but loved not despite of but because of his defects. The song, written for the 1937 play, “Babes in Arms,” was intended to be sung by a teenage girl to her boyfriend, and the lyrics work best that way. After all, what woman would like to be described in the comic way that the Valentine of this song is described? That notwithstanding, certainly as many if not more male singers than female covered this song, which like all the best popular work of their day became a jazz standard.

And of course you know that my personal favorite version of this song is the one by Frank Sinatra. With music by Rodgers and Hart, and orchestration by Nelson Riddle, how could the recording be anything but wonderful? The only thing missing — and this is a big part of the song — is the “verse” lead in. And for that, I give you a recording of the entire song by the ever-perfect Ella Fitzgerald.

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My Funny Valentine

Verse: Behold the way our fine-feathered friend
His virtue doth parade.
Thou knowest not, my dim-witted friend,
The picture thou hast made.
Thy vacant brow and thy tousled hair
Conceal thy good intent.
Thou noble, upright, truthful, sincere
And slightly dopey gent –
You’re…

My funny valentine,
Sweet comic valentine,
You make me smile with my heart.

Your looks are laughable,
Unphotographable,
Yet you're my favorite work of art.

Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?

But don't change your hair for me,
Not if you care for me.
Stay, little valentine, stay.
Each day is Valentine's Day.

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But why is it, exactly, that “Put on a Happy Face” so reminds me of those older depression-era songs? I really expected to find, when I looked into the song for this week, that it WAS one such older song, revived for the 1960’s musical. I was wrong about that. But about the influence of that era on the songwriters, I was not wrong. The music for “Bye Bye, Birdie” was the first Broadway collaboration by a songwriting team who had worked together before on individual songs and reviews, but never on a full play. Those composers were Charles Strouse (music) and Lee Adams (lyrics).

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I want to note here, once again, that great songs, like great art, most often do not just happen. Even in popular art forms, there are background forces at play, without which greatness in whatever field of endeavor simply can’t be produced. Charles Strouse began piano lessons at age 10, and went on to the Eastman School of Music, where he studied under Aaron Copland, among others. Strouse had hoped to make a career in classical music, but when he studied briefly with famed teacher and conductor Nadia Boulanger, she helped him to take seriously the gift of writing good “light” music that could “make someone forget [about] illness and suffering.” This advice resonated with Strouse, who had grown up in a family troubled by physical and mental health issues, and whose happiest childhood memories were of singing around the piano while his mother played. After completing his studies at the Eastman School, Strouse returned to his native New York City and, needing to support himself, entertained as a jazz pianist wherever he could get work.

At about that time same Lee Adams had arrived in New York to take a Master’s degree at Columbia University. During college and afterward, Adams supported himself as a journalist for newspapers and magazines. Strouse met Adams in 1949, and the two were soon composing together for a series of summer-time revues. Eventually, they were asked to work on the quirky musical, “Bye Bye, Birdie,” about a rock idol (think Elvis Presley) who is drafted and whose teen-aged fans fall to pieces over his send-off celebration.

Strouse and Adams won Tony Awards in 1961 for Bye Bye Birdie, and in 1970 for “Applause.” While the two wrote a couple more Broadway plays and off-Broadway revues together, they also had separate careers and stayed active in musical theater and film for their lifetimes. Adams continued to write lyrics for a few Broadway plays each decade until his last in the early 1990’s. Strouse wrote the music for 14 Broadway musicals in all (20 if you add in Broadway revivals of his older work), and overall toted up 30 musicals in his career. Strouse’s score for the feature film Bonnie and Clyde was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1969. But the biggest success of his career by far was the 1977 musical, Annie, which Strouse scored with lyricist Martin Charnin. As with “Put on a Happy Face,” the music that Strouse created for “Annie” — while contemporary in style — created the right tone for the depression-era story. “Annie” was a hit that kept on giving, and is still widely performed to our present day.

You might like to know that Charles Strouse didn’t give up classical music altogether, to write for musical theater. His early work includes several sonatas and a number of jazz-influenced “American” piano pieces. After the turn of the current century, Strouse composed his Concerto America in commemoration of the 9/11 tragedy (2002). His composition, Spirit of New York City, was premiered by The Boston Pops (2004). Strouse counted Stravinsky, Bernstein, and Poulenc — and jazz music — as his greatest creative influences.

It seems fitting here to note that for their last collaboration, the team of Strouse and Adams composed one other song that I am sure just about all of our Word & Song readers know. It’s the theme for “All in the Family,” the deliberately nostalgic, if a bit more wistful than happy, “Those Were the Days.”

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So it happens that our song today, from the off-Broadway hit show, Godspell, was written during this era of the Jesus People, by John-Michael Tebelak, as a Master’s thesis project, when Tebelak was a student of drama at Carnegie Mellon University. Tebelak’s religious background was Anglican, and his work on Godspell was certainly influenced in part by hymns from the 1940 Hymnal as well as by the Gospels. In particular, Tebelak based his story on the parables of Jesus as related by Matthew’s Gospel, around which he created a structure for the play. The musical’s composer and primary lyricist, then Carnegie drama student, Stephen Schwartz, later produced the show for its off-Broadway opening in 1972. Schwartz wrote all of the music for Godspell; some of the his lyrics are original to the show, while others are adapted from either the Bible or the 1940 Hymnal. And, in fact, our song for today is Schwartz’s resetting of a hymn of the same name, “Day by Day,” already set to a traditional hymn tune (Chichester) from the original prayer by the 13th-century Benedictine Bishop, Richard of Chichester, England. Here is the Bishop’s prayer:

Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ,
for all the benefits thou hast given me,
for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother,
may I know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly, day by day.
Amen.

The original production of Godspell won a Stephen Schwartz a Grammy Award in 1972 for Best Original Score for a Cast Album. Some of our readers will know him from his musical, Pippin, which took four Tony awards in 1973. Godspell, Pippin, and another of his plays, The Magic Show, earned Schwartz the distinction of being the only producer to have three concurrently-running plays — when he was only 26 years old. His career continued well into the 21st century.

As for our song, “Day by Day” hit the charts running in 1972, appearing on the Billboard Top 10, the Top 100, and Easy Listening, and it also charted high in the UK and Australia that year. It’s been recorded commercially over 90 times since 1972, as recently as 2020, and is now considered a gospel classic. It finally did win a Grammy for “Best Gospel Song” — in 2005 — and it’s still a singable folktune today.

I hope you enjoy this original cast recording from 1972, featuring lead singer Robin Lamont.

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On the eve of what is building to be a lollapaloosa of a winter storm on the east coast of the USA — let’s glide (and try not to slide) into a winter waltz.

Anyone — everyone — who grew up in the 20th century — took for granted a musical form called the waltz. Sadly for people of my age and younger, some experience with waltz music remained, but with the dance? Not so much.

So what happened? In one short decade, dancing went from an art form passed along from generation to generation to a formless shimmy and swaying, sometimes next to a partner, sometimes not, but either way following no particular order, requiring no particular skill. In gymn class, we were still taught to do the Virginia Reel, but there was no place to use that skill. The new “dances” were neither appealling to watch nor fun to do. By contrast — and this was not lost on my childhood self — our parents and grandparents ALL knew how to dance, ballroom style. From my generation on, dancing began to be relegated to formal lessons, mostly ballet and mostly for girls. There’s nothing wrong with formal lessons. My own daughter loved her dance experience, culminating in her performing “en pointe” at her last recital. But most people, even those who study ballet for a long time, don’t do but only observe classical dance. Before my generation, most people not only observed but did ballroom or other forms of dancing, with partners, each of whom had learned at least the fundamental steps. I call that loss a sadness.

Now, from the distance of over a hundred years, it’s nearly impossible even for those of us who have experience of the waltz music to imagine a time when that dancing style was not only new, but was wildly popular. The waltz did not spring from nothing, one day, on a whim. It began as a folk dance in Bavaria and developed over generations into the lovely dance that everyone loved, in Germany, in France, in Europe and eventually in the world. Beautiful waltzes began to appear in classical compositions of the late 18th century and reached the level of highest art during the 19th century. Not surprisingly, this era is when our Sometimes a Song was written.

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The composer of “The Skater’s Waltz” does not now have the name recognition that his contemporary, Johann Strauss, has. But in his day, Emile Waldteufel was the toast of Paris. Waldteufel was born in Alsace, on the west side of the Rhine, into a family of musicians. Hiss father was the leader of a popular dance orchestra, and his grandfather and his father’s two brothers were likewise orchestral musicans. Emile’s mother was an accomplished singer who had studied formally under Johann Hummel, himself a student of Mozart and Haydn. Emile was the fourth and youngest child, and his three elder brothers were all musicians. In fact, it was his eldest brother Leon’s invitation to study violin at the Paris Conservatory which prompted the whole family to move there. During his brother’s time at the conservatory, Emile had the chance to study under two exceptional teachers there as well, and his father’s orchestra became one of the most popular in Paris.

Emile Waldteufel’s instrument was piano, and he knew the instrument intimately, having had to spend some years of his youth working in a piano factory to support himself. As did many of the composers of his day, Emil wrote his musical compositions for piano, but with an ear toward appending fuller orchestration as opportunities might arise. Through his father’s connections, Waldteufel was introduced to the Empress Eugenie and became her court pianist, after which Napoleon III named him musical director of balls at all the royal residences. Not surprisingly, his music soon became known and loved among the French elite. But it was only after the Franco-Prussian War that Waldteufel’s music reached a worldwide audience.

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After the war, Waldteufel resumed his place as a music director and orchestra leader, not at court but at the president’s residence, the Elisee Palace. One of his performances was attended by Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, who soon introduced Waldteufel’s music in Britain, and arranged for his mother, Queen Victoria, to hear it. This patronage launched Emile Waldteufel into broad popularity in over Europe, and marked the beginning of the composer’s most productive period — at 40 years of age. Thanks to Edward VII, Waldteufel’s music was published in London, and became available to the world. His compositions were featured at royal balls at Buckingham Palace for decades and remained popular well into the 20th century.

Emile Waldteufel composed over 200 pieces of music, most of them dances: waltzes, polkas, and mazurkas. Of these, “The Skaters’s Waltz” is his most famous, Opus 183. I’d venture to call “The Skaters’ Waltz” one of the most famous waltzes of all time. If you can spare five minutes today, I urge you to listen, uninterrupted if you can. Maybe listen to it twice. If you are brave (or snowbound), listen to the second link with a one-hour loop!

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Harry Warren, born to poor Italian immigrant parents in Brooklyn, had absolutely no formal education of any kind, not even basic piano lessons. He taught himself to play his father’s accordion as a child, picked up the drums and piano as a teen, and ran away to play in the band with his uncle’s traveling carnival at age 16. While serving in the navy during WWI, Warren started writing songs.

After the war, Harry returned home to Brooklyn and took a jack-of-all-trades job at the Vitagraph Motion Pictures Studios. The stars aligned for Harry Warren when Vitagraph was bought out by the Warner Brothers in 1925. So instead of peddling his songs on Broadway as so many of his contemporaries did, Warren became the first American composer to write primarily for films — over 300 of them. Fittingly, his songs were nominated for eleven Academy Awards, and won for three: “The Lullaby of Broadway” (1935), “You’ll Never Know” (1943) — our song this week — and “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” (1946). In 1933, the Academy had not begun awarding a prize for best song in a motion picture. If they had, Warren might easily have won for the major musical named after his song, “42nd Street,” the first of many musicals he worked on with choreographer Busby Berkeley. If you’ve seen the the 1957 film, “An Affair to Remember,” you’ve heard one of his Academy Award nominated songs. If you’ve watched the 1955 film, “Marty,” which we featured on Word & Song for Valentine’s Day, you’ve heard his lilting and charming theme song, “Hey, Marty,” nominations for Best Song. And if none of these rings a bell with you, you’ve certainly heard compositions of Warren’s which were featured in over a hundred Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons!

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So what about our song for this week, “You’ll Never Know”? How much of a hit was this little number? Well, it was big. Alice Faye premiered the song in the movie, “Hello, Frisco, Hello,” and sang it again in “Four Jills and a Jeep.” These films were released in the last two war years, 1943 and 1944, and the story goes that the song was inspired by a poem written by a war bride to her husband. Gee, you might think that romance was popular, even! “You’ll Never Know” became Alice Faye’s signature song, but due to contract restrictions with the studio, she was not able to record it until twenty years later. But in 1943, the song as recorded by Dick Haymes, hit the top of the Billboard Charts and held that spot for four weeks. In that same year, it was recorded by Frank Sinatra, whose version reached number two and stayed on the charts for sixteen weeks.

The song retained its popularity and became a hit again and again in the 1950’s and 1960’s, with recordings by a host of orchestras and singers, including Harry James (with Rosemary Clooney), Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day, Jo Stafford, Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, The Platters, Bobby Darin, and the list goes on. It’s widely considered a standard, and was revived by Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, and was comercially recorded as recently as 2025, with about 280 covers of the song since its release in 1943.

I could spin the wheel and let fate decide which version to share with you, but today I want to go to the song’s authentic number one version, in 1943, during the long and sadly-timed American Federation of Musicians’ strike during the Second World War. So here is Dick Haymes, with “You’ll Never Know,” accompanied by “The Song Spinners” in an a capella version necessitated by the strike. (You will hear singers performing harmonic accompaniements designed to fill in for the missing instruments.) And then listen to the excellent rendition of the song by the Harry James Ochestra in 1952, with Rosemary Clooney at the height of her voice and her career. The stars shone bright in those days.

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It would likely take a book to describe all the bits and pieces — stories from Greek and Roman mythology, the tradition of playwriting dating to the Greeks, as well, the very concepts of comedy and tragedy as defining features of human experience, the revival of English play-writing in the early 20th-century in Britain and the United States, the emergence of film and recording technology by which plays and music could be available to mass audiences around the world — and how all of these contributed to Frederick Loewe’s and Alan Lerner’s success in writing and producing a Tony-Award-sweeping play in 1956 and to an Oscar-sweeping film less than a decade later. Ironically, the only Academy award that “My Fair Lady” did not win in 1965 was for Best Actress. That award went not to Audrey Hepburn, but to Julie Andrews for “Mary Poppins,” the film she starred in after being passed over for “My Fair Lady.”

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As I have mentioned before, early 20th century musical plays followed the loosely-connected form of the vaudeville revue, centering on a slight story whose main purpose was to string together a bunch of entertaining songs. But by mid-century, musical plays had risen to the level of a new art form, in which the “book” and the music work seamelessly together to tell a story, whether tragic or comic or somehwere in between. And by the 1950’s, musical plays had risen to high art indeed. Credit for “My Fair Lady” ultimately goes to the determination of Lerner and Loewe, who tried and failed (as did Rodgers and Hammerstein and others) to secure the rights to use “Pygmalion” from Shaw, who wanted no such adaptations of his play. The difference was that while other big writing teams gave up on the idea of making a musical version of Shaw’s play, Lerner and Loewe pressed on, composing a “book” and the songs for the show before any rights were given to anyone. After Shaw’s death in 1950, the lawyers for his estate were so impressed with the completed work of Lerner and Loewe that they awarded the two all rights to the play — and a musical classic was born! And wasn’t that just loverly?

And so we come to our song for this week. The version I have selected for today is from a 1956 Broadway cast appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, taped shortly after the musical’s opening night. The cast recording of the entire musical, produced at about the same time, became the most popular recording of the year, rising to the top of the Billboard Charts, where it stayed on top for fifteen weeks, and remained on the charts for an unheard of 470 weeks total. The recording was the best-selling album of all time in the US, and the best-selling album of the year for both 1957 and 1958. It sold over 5 million copies worldwide. The show was, to use the word of the time, sensational.

To watch this clip is to be a time traveler to another world and to see exactly — well, in black and white — what patrons of the Mark Hellinger Theatre saw in person almost seventy years ago.

I hope you enjoy this remarkable song and performance from one of the best-loved Broadway musicals of all time.

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Well, when Tony mentioned to me last Sunday that he had “evergreen” in mind for our Word of the Week, I had to face this particular music. “Evergreen,” the theme from the 1976 remake of A Star is Born, didn’t just win an Oscar for Best Song, it also won a Golden Globe award and two Grammy’s that year (one for Best Popular Performance, Female and another for Song of the Year). All this, and Barbra Streisand was by no means a songwriter. But she was a connoisseur of 20th century popular song and in particular of Broadway tunes. The kind of musical understanding necessary to compose our song this week did not come about through formal training, for Streisand had very little of that, but through constant and thoroughgoing ear training. How often have I mentioned the music “in the air” in the mid-century? It also helped that Barbra’s family were musically gifted. Her mother was by all accounts a fine soprano who could have become a professional singer; her maternal grandfather was a cantor. How many of our great popular composers of the early-to-mid 20th century were descended from cantors? My opinion of Barbra Streisand’s musical gift is that if she could compose such a song as “Evergreen” with no particular training — and clearly, she had learned the “trade” of emoting a song! — she could have written others. But she had a different career in her sights.

In fact, Barbra Streisand seems to have been born with the voice we all recognize as hers. Yet her great goal in life, from her early teens on, was to become not a singer, but an actress. A friendly fellow who knew how well she could sing had to tell her to list “singing” as one of her talents whenever she sought auditions for acting roles. Can we imagine, now, Barbra Streisand not singing? As an actress who had to be dubbed in films? The simple answer to that question is “no.” And that is because singing was her primary gift, and acting became a way of advancing the singing career she was destined to have. My favorite roles of hers are as the star of “Funny Girl” (Broadway and film version of a 1964 play about singer/comedienne, Fanny Brice) and “Hello, Dolly” (a film version of the 1964 Broadway play, which starred Carol Channing). And why is that? Because this is the sort of acting which Streisand had always aspired to — Broadway style — and to which she was most definitely suited. Her translation to the silver screen in these roles was inevitable, but it was the Broadway musical which led her to her longed-for rise as an actress, and not the other way around.

I could say so much more about Barbra Streisand’s long and much-lauded musical career, but for the 10th day of Christmas I will give you an absolutely beautiful melody, “Evergreen,” sung by the composer herself, Barbra Streisand, with lyrics written to order by Paul Williams for the second remake (in 1976) of the 1937 David O. Selznick musical film. I hope you enjoy it.

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Tony and I are celebrating our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary today. And as always, the “jolly season” is upon us. It’s time to deck the halls!

Christmas is coming, and like most of you I am busy with preparations for the feast, and of course the wrapping and — still! — with the decorating that we like to do here at our house for Christmas. In fact, I am about to literally deck the halls with boughs of holly from our bushes in the front yard, so this week’s Sometimes a Song will be a simple but jolly, a tune I hope you will have a chance to sing over this joyous season.

”Deck the Halls with Bough of Holly” is a traditional carol set to an ancient Welsh tune (Nôs Galan), first transcribed in about the middle of the 18th century by the blind harpist, John Parry (Bardd Alaw), a member of the Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain, a charitable foundation which supports to this day the work and careers of worthy artists. Parry and his associate produced a work called British Harmony: Being a Collection of Antient Welsh Airs, the Traditional Remains of those Originally Sung By the Bards of Wales.

The first lyrics in English were composed by a famed Welsh musician and composter of his own day, Thomas Oliphant, and first appeared in 1862 in a four-volume collection called Welsh Melodies. Oliphant’s lyrics underwent a number of changes over the years, from the original Welsh tune traditionally sung at New Year’s to the light-hearted English carol which has been sung at Christmas for over two centuries.

Not to beat any longer about the holly bush, here — sung by the grand Welsh Treorchy Male Voice Choir — is “Deck the Halls,” sent to you along with best wishes from the Esolens for a very Merry Christmastide!

Click the image below to hear this lovely carol.

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Most of us likely have childhood memories of waiting for Christmas and of it always seeming so far off. Even a few days before Christmas can seem endless for at kid. Someone once suggested a reason for this: that for a child of five, a year is 20% of his lifetime. I’ll buy that, especially since I’ve reached the age where the years, an ever-shrinking portion of my lifetime, seem to just fly by. Poof!

And here we are all of a sudden about to celebrate the third Sunday in Advent. I know that we have readers around the world some of whom live in warmer climes, but here in the New Hampshire hill country, we’ve got a good foot of snow on the ground that likely won’t melt until April. I’m counting down the days until Christmas in a different way now than the kids do, thinking how little time remains to get done all the shopping and wrapping and decorating and baking that somehow gets done, but always leaves me wishing that Christmas would hold off just a few days longer. And it never does!

But when I am involved in the seasonal traditions, I can’t help counting my own many Christmas days with gratitude and wonderful memories, too many memories to list here. I will mention one, however, because it has to do with our .Sometimes a Song, “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” the second movement in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. I’ve known this music since childhood, and that was despite never having seen a ballet in person until I was grown and raising my own children, one of whom was a little girl who loved ballet. So, of course, every year we went to see The Nutcracker, where we lived, in Rhode Island, performed annually by The Heritage Ballet Company. Over the years, I became very very familiar with this piece of music.

Tchaikovsky was commissioned to write the music for a two-part performance of The Nutcracker with an opera and a ballet version on the same bill. Marius Petipa, the most famed dance master and choreographer of his era, had worked with Tchaikovsky on his second ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, a great success. Petipa gave the composer very strict instructions about the tone and tempo by for each of the ten pieces in The Nutcracker Suite, designed to meld perfectly with the choreography he had in mind for the ballet, which he had developed from and short story by Alexandre Dumas published in 1844, a rewriting of an older story from 1816. Working within these strict limits imposed upon him by the choreographer and the story itself, Tchaikovsky produced, in 1892, what would become arguably the most popular ballet ever — at least that is true in North America, where most ballet companies earn in the neighborhood of 40% of their annual proceeds from this one seasonal production. It's hard now to believe that the premier of the ballet, in St. Petersburg, in 1982, met with mixed reviews, with raves for the opera and serious criticism of the ballet. Yet a century later, the ballet had become a perennial favorite around the world.

And it’s hard to imagine now that what we all consider an annual Christmas tradition, a work from the late 19th century, was not actually produced in the United States until Christmas season in 1944, when it was performed by The San Francisco Ballet and got little notice beyond the local area. The Nutcracker was not performed again in the US until the late 1950’s, and in 1958 was first televised, with a narration by actress June Lockhart, of Lassie fame. But still the ballet did not really begin to catch on until the 1960’s, when ABC showed a production of the original choreography from the first US performance in San Francisco. And from there, the ballet took on a life of its own, entrenching itself firmly into the North American Christmas tradition.

These days, of course, you can find numberless versions of The Nutcracker Ballet to view on television or in person across the land. And if you are in an elevator or in a store shopping during the Christmas season, you will likely hear Tchaikovsky’s memorable and charming music “in the air” — even now, when so much great music has disappeared from the public square. But at Christmas, nostalgia is good for sales .. so the old music finds a place, at least for a month or so.

To illustrate just how much of the American music scene this piece of classical music became, I decided today to give you a couple of pieces of popular variations of The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the mid-century. Below, I’ve provided a relatively recent production of the music only, performed to perfection by the Berliner Philharmonika. Get the full tune in your head, and then have some fun with a couple of jazz riffs on the song, one by Duke Ellington and the other, called “The Bounce of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” by the tremendously talented John Kirby and his orchestra.

Enjoy!

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It’s been Tony’s and my habit for over thirty years to spend our wedding anniversary at a favorite antique store, and then enjoy an early dinner on the 20th of December. For one thing, antique shops are usually not crowded even right before Christmas, so we can browse and enjoy all of the old treasures that remind us of our families, our grandparents, our childhood. And we inevitably do some of our Christmas shopping at such places, where I never feel rushed or flustered or harried.

One of the nice things about antiquing is the habit many shops have of playing Christmas “mood music” for their patrons. These songs can be a little kitschy, but they are also sweet reminders of the times and the people who produced them, and what it was like to be child awaiting Christmas in those days.

Sometimes a Song is one that I loved as a child, a song that appealed to me because it described my own hometown and so many other towns where my aunts and uncles and cousins lived, and exactly what my parents and I, as well as most folks we knew, experienced during the last week or two between Thanksgiving and December 25th. “Silver bells,” were “ring-a-linging,” streets “were dressed in holiday style,” and the cold air did have “a feeling of Christmas” about it. It says a lot about the culture of the era that an entire genre of American popular music developed over the early to mid-20th century, of Christmas-themed songs — and films — which many of us still treasure.

So today I give you a dose of sugarplum sweetness in the holiday classic song, “Silver Bells, written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. These songwriters met in college and, while not as wildly prolific as some of the greats whose works we have been reading about and listening to here at Word & Song, they did win three Academy Awards from the many songs they composed for films. Some of our readers will remember a few of Evans’ and Livingston’s hits, songs such as “Buttons and Bows,” “Mona Lisa,” and even the theme songs for Bonanza and Mr. Ed. Yep, that’s Jay Livingston himself singing the “Mr. Ed Theme Song,” “A Horse is a Horse (of Course, of Course).”

I hope you will enjoy the two clips of “Silver Bells” below. The first is a duet by Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, in a version of the song which includes some sweet polyphony. And the second is from the grand finale of “The Lemon Drop Kid,” where you hear Bob Hope (who was a pretty good singer, after all, despite being eclipsed musically by his one-time comedy partner, Bing) singing the song — ad-libs aplenty! — accompanied by the talented Marilyn Maxwell, with whom Hope did many of his famous USO tours. Look for a cameo by William Frawley as the grumpy Santa who sings a very handsome harmony part at the beginning of the clip.

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Dietz and Schwartz were multi-talented fellows, and smart. While Dietz scrabbled his way up in the world, eventually earning a scholarship to study journalism at Columbia, Schwartz had been steadily adding letters after his name — B.A., M.A., and J.D. — mainly to please his father, who insisted that he take a law degree. But the practice of law? Arthur not only passed the bar, but he left it behind him. As a child he had bought a harmonica, at which he soon became proficient and then advanced to teaching himself to play the piano. In his teens, he worked as a piano player at the silent movie house near his home in Brooklyn. And as a teen, he also worked as a camp counselor, where he met and became a lifelong friend of fellow-counselor and future lyricist, Lorenz Hart, his first musical collaborator. How’s that for being in the right place at the right time? Schwartz recalled that no matter what he did, “tunes just kept coming” to him, and it’s to our benefit that they did.

Although the the two were not an exclusive song-writing team, Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz were quite a powerhouse when they worked together. Like Schwartz, Dietz took a circuitous route to his career in popular music. A student of journalism at Columbia, Dietz was always ready with the right words. So it’s no surprise that he won a cigarette slogan contest. And encouraged by the proceeds ($500 for a few minutes’ work) and by a flurry of job offers, he left college in his junior year to join the Goodman advertising agency. In a fortunate turn for him, one of the agency’s clients was a fellow named Samuel Goldwyn — yes THAT Samuel Goldwyn, who was then running a film company out of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Dietz was the ad man who created the famous lion that roared at the beginning of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movies — aka, MGM. And coincidentally, at about the same time, Arthur Schwartz began working as a producer and music composer for another rising motion picture company, Columbia. Did I mention that Schwartz and Dietz — or Dietz and Schwartz, depending upon “whoever got to the publishing house first” — were go-getters?

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Although, as I have noted, Dietz and Schwartz worked together over many decades, it’s notable that the greatest song they ever wrote together is widely acknowledged to be one their first works, our choice for today, “Dancing in the Dark.” This song they wrote for a 1931 revue called “The Bandwagon,” which two decades later was revived as a major film for MGM (1953), produced by Arthur Freed and directed by Vincente Minnelli. “The Bandwagon” was not a box-office hit on its initial release, but it is now considered one of the greatest film musicals of all time, ranked alongside of “An American in Paris” (1951) and “Singing in the Rain” (1952) as best of the best, and it features a song written by Arthur and Howard just for the film — a little tune called “That’s Entertainment.” And if any two men knew what entertainment IS, those fellows did.

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My greatest difficulty in writing about “Dancing in the Dark” was choosing which of the hundreds of recorded versions to use. The song was an immediate hit for Bing Crosby in 1951. And it was a huge hit as an instrumental for Artie Shaw in 1941. Of course the film brought the song back in 1953 and resulted in many dozens of covers for the following decade and beyond. See if you like my selections — a beautifully orchestrated version sung by the great Jo Stafford, with choral backup; the ballet-inspired dance featuring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse from the film; and a spoof of Fred’s and Cyd’s masterful dance routine, from the 1970’s. Cheers!