"Body and Soul"
This week at Sometimes a Song we will be listening to an American jazz standard. In fact, “Body and Soul” may be the most-recorded jazz tune of all time. It has been performed by singers and musicians as various as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Billie Holliday, Perry Como, Guy Lombardo, Sarah Vaughn, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, and over 1,600 others.
Just how does a song become a standard? Well, it helps if the stars align as they did when our major players for today were born — Johnny Green (the composer), in New York City (1908), Bobby Hackett (the trumpeter), in Providence, Rhode Island (1915), and Frank Sinatra (The Voice), in Hoboken, New Jersey (also 1915). So when you have your stars in alignment, what do you do next? You make the music. Easy, right? Here is a little tune written by Ed Farley and Mike Riley, two of Benny Goodman’s band musicians, which describes the music-making process:
This little novelty song from 1935 became an overnight sensation, hitting the top of the charts within a week of its release. But that was three years after 22-year-old Johnny Green wrote the music for “Body and Soul.”
Johnny Green was the son of immigrant parents, and was by all accounts a natural talent and something of a child prodigy. He was admitted to Harvard in 1924, at age 15, and studied music there, much to the dismay of his father, who wanted him to become a stock broker. After a brief and unhappy stint in the world of high finance, Johnny accepted a job as a pianist and arranger with Guy Lombardo, whose band was gaining in popularity at the time. While working for Lombardo, Johnny Green was asked to contribute a song for a now nearly forgotten Broadway musical review called “Three’s a Crowd.” As I have often commented, Broadway musicals in the 20’s and 30’s were loosely constructed stories designed around entertaining songs. And according to the critics of the day, Johnny Green’s “Body and Soul,” was the best thing to come out of that production. But the year was 1930, and although the song was immediately recorded by Louis Armstrong, Paul Whitman and eleven bands in total, it didn’t become a major hit until 17 years later, when Frank Sinatra, who was about to begin his stint with Columbia Records, hired the best trumpet player he could get to play what amounted to a duet with him featuring his wistful vocal, accompanied by the Hackett trumpet solo. The resulting recording was held back for two years and released in a Columbia collection of Sinatra hits called “Frankly Sentimental.” “Body and Soul” hit the charts running, and within a few weeks reached a million in sales, and within two months had topped two million records sold.
From there the song took on a life of its own in the US and around the world, hitting the number one spot in London, where it held for four weeks, and enjoying great popularity in versions of the song produced in continental Europe. It’s of interest to note here that Bobby Hackett had injured his lip and at the time he recorded “Body and Soul” with Frank Sinatra, he could only play short sessions. Nevertheless, his trumpet accompaniment on this song is simply superb.
Johnny Green, as it turned out, was not destined to become primarily known as a songwriter, though “Body and Soul” is the best-known example of his work to this day. However over the years he stayed employed in a variety of behind-the-scenes work as an arranger, conductor, and musical director for both Paramount Pictures and for MGM, and later for several big symphony orchestras. And he continued to perform on his own as a pianist, recording a collection of his own along the way. He was nominated thirteen times for Academy Awards, and won four for Best Score over the years, for the musicals Easter Parade, An American in Paris, Oliver!, and West Side Story. You might be interested to know that he arranged the “Who Will Buy?” segment from “Oliver!,” which we have discussed before here at Word & Song.
Without further ado, here is the simply wonderful Frank Sinatra version of “Body and Soul,” with the great Bobby Hackett on the trumpet, recorded in 1947 when both performers where only 32 years old. Sinatra loved the song and made two subsequent recordings of it in years following, with Hackett’s original trumpet tracks imported. And thus the music went round and round and it is still popular with audiences and performers to this day.