Welcome to this week's edition of Mark Steyn on the Town. We start in search of a standard and wind up getting a Handel on it. In between come an anglo-franco Caribbean, Japan's all-time biggest non-Japanese hit and Sousa's afternoon nap.
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~Thank you for all your kind comments on last week's show. Peter, a North Yorkshire member of The Mark Steyn Club, liked our Café Continental:
Thanks for the tribute to Gino Paoli on the show. As an aid to teaching myself Italian I learnt song lyrics mainly by Ornella Vanoni and Gino. Many of his songs were inspired by resorts like Alassio (sapore di sale) and Bocadasse.
Had my first continental holiday as a teenager in Alassio in the 50s, a glamorous contrast to previous weeks in Scarborough. There is a tiled wall in Alassio, il Muretto, started by Ernest Hemingway and Gino is commemorated on a tile there. He composed and recorded what must be the darkest popular song ever "Albergo an ore". The theme is a suicide pact, but it is actually rather beautiful.
I see his ashes will be sprinkled in the ocean. But I hope someone recovered the bullet.
Robert Bresler, a First Month Founding Member, especially enjoyed one of our vernal vocals:
Mark, Thank you for including It Happens Every Spring in your program about Spring music. The song was written for a 1949 fantasy film of the same name about baseball. It's sung over the titles in a somewhat giddy fashion, but Frank finds the charm in it. I love the song and the line that begins "what's that cheer I heard a fellow stealing third .... brings out the innocence that fed the dreams of young fellows like me at the time.
Thanks again, Mark, only you could find that song and give thoughtful appreciation of it.
Jake, a Steyn Clubber in the English West Country, also enjoyed our spring songs:
How lovely to describe a finely-wrought lyric as being 'lightly worn.' A Steyn original, I suspect.
I think most people playing music will hear a lyric rather than listen to it but how can anyone not delight to the images It Happens Every Spring conjures up? Like a home movie in your head of classic Americana. It remains my favourite On the Town recording. "Your autumn heart will find the song to sing."
The only McGuire Sisters song I ever heard was a rousing, hot dog! radio play called Begin the Begat featuring lots of abstruse American argot and Yip Harburg's signature colloquial rhymes. I loved it and spent years trying to find the recording in second-hand shops, jumble sales and Sunday car boots all to no avail. (Now these lost treasures just seem to drop into your lap unbidden on YouTube.) Mark should have recorded a version of the number as a giveaway CD tucked inside the sleeve of his book released twenty gosh-darn years ago.
One more. For Michael Smith, a Maryland member of the Steyn Club, the entire show was all working up to a crackerjack outro:
If you hear Fats Domino and don't smile, there's something wrong.
Thanks Mark and congratulations on Episode 100! Another fine one.
~On the Town is my weekly music show on Serenade Radio every Saturday at 5pm Greenwich Mean Time - that's 6pm in western and central Europe or 12 noon North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere in the world by clicking the button at top right here. We also post On the Town at SteynOnline every weekend as a bonus for Mark Steyn Club members. You can find all our previous shows here.
We do enjoy your comments on our weekend programming. Steyn Clubbers are welcome to leave them below. For more on The Mark Steyn Club, now in its ninth year, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership.
Mark Steyn on the Town can be heard on Serenade Radio at its regular times:
Saturday 5pm London time/1pm New York
Sunday 5am London time/10pm Los Angeles
