Steyn's Song of the Week
(I've Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo
Exactly three-quarters of a century ago, an entirely forgettable film opened. And, as happened quite often in those days, it produced three unforgettable songs - one of which is bigger today than it ever was back then. The film was Orchestra Wives, which opened in September 1942, back when the husbands of orchestra wives were some of the biggest celebrities on the planet, and the biggest orchestra husband of all was Glenn Miller. If the bland, bespectacled, somewhat portly Miller seems an unlikely movie star, well, so what? He was an unlikely pop star, too, but it didn't stop him: It was an age when instrumentalists, chaps in tuxedos fronting orchestras, were as lustrous as any Hollywood leading man. Their moment did not long outlast the ...
At Long Last Love
Another live-performance edition, with Robert Davi singing Cole Porter:
The Glory of Love
If you saw singer/pianist Carol Welsman do "As Time Goes By" as our Sunday song a few weeks back, you'll know that she can freshen up the most familiar standard. So we're thrilled to have Carol back live, accompanied by the Steyn house band:
Songs in the Keys of Florida
To see you through the hurricane: a musical celebration of the Sunshine State featuring a century and a half of Floridian songs, including a live performance of the "Miami Beach Rhumba", and veteran songwriter Irving Caesar on the Hindustani origins of "Swanee"
Candle in the Wind
On the twentieth anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, a musical footnote from Elton John and Bernie Taupin
Theme from New York, New York
Mark celebrates the 40th anniversary of a blockbuster - and talks to the pianist and conductor who helped make it a worldwide hit
Love Me Tender
To round out our Elvis Week, I thought we'd celebrate the biggest hit song supposedly written by Elvis: These days more or less every pop star is expected to come up with his own songs. It wasn't always that way...
Rock-a-Hula Baby
The composer who wrote more Elvis songs than anybody else
Wichita Lineman
Mark celebrates Glen Campbell, Jimmy Webb, and the all-time greatest love song about a guy who works for the utilities company
I've Been Everywhere
Mark on a one-hit songwriter whose one hit went around the world
Light My Fire
Mark on the 50th anniversary of an iconic psychedelic rock track turned faintly camp easy-listening classic
The Meaning of the Blues
We're honored to present a brand new live-performance edition, with a very brooding ballad from 12-time Grammy winner Cheryl Bentyne:
Over There
President Trump was a guest of President Macron this past week to mark not only Bastille Day but also the one hundredth anniversary of America's entry into the Great War. So, with that in mind, altogether now...
Peg O' My Heart
Irish hearts, lilting laughter, and a Number One hat-trick
Stormy Weather
Mark celebrates a long-lived American vocalist, Lena Horne, and her signature song by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler
O Canada
One hundred and fifty years ago today - on July 1st 1867 at 12 noon - the Dominion of Canada was born. So there's really only one song we could have as our Song of the Week this weekend...
To Sir, With Love
A 50th anniversary reunion for a great high school song
GOD BLESS AMERICA
Song of the Week by Irving Berlin In this anniversary week of 9/11, we'll be publishing various columns old and new from today and from September 2001. But we thought we'd begin with a musical remembrance: Mark presents a special audio edition of our Song of the Week telling the story behind the song spontaneously sung by Congressional leaders on the steps of the Capitol in the wake of that murderous event. We'll hear Irving Berlin's great anthem sung by Kate Smith, Céline Dion and the composer himself - and we'll explore its origins in the First World War, and in a long forgotten ethnic novelty called "When Mose With His Nose Leads The Band". This podcast is adapted from Mark's essay in his book A Song For The Season. To listen to it, ...
I'll Never Smile Again
Mark celebrates Canada's 150th birthday with a week of great Canadian songs...
Batman makes Girl Talk
Steyn on songs for caped crusaders - and swingin' sexists
TEACH ME TONIGHT
Song of the Week #165 by Gene de Paul and Sammy Cahn Starting with the A-B-C of it Right down to the X-Y-Z of it Help me solve the mys-te-ree of it Teach Me Tonight... Sometimes a news item brings some fragment of song bubbling up from the bottom drawer of your mental filing cabinet, and that's the quatrain that swam into mine when I read that Cherie DeCastro, the last surviving DeCastro Sister, had died. Cherie, Babette and Peggy (plus cousin Olgita, who subbed for Babette and Peggy when, for one reason or another, they'd had enough of the act) were a Cuban Andrews Sisters who showed up in Miami in the 1940s. A talent agent brought them to New York and booked them into the Copacabana, with the Will Mastin Trio, which included Sammy Davis ...
I'll Never Smile Again
Tal Bachman is a hitmaker in his own right, and the son of Seventies rocker Randy Bachman. But Mark had him in mind for an even earlier contribution to the Maple Songbook. Live on stage, a great Canadian performer sings a great Canadian song - for the very first time:
That's Amore
Yesterday at SteynOnline we marked Dean Martin's hundredth anniversary this coming Wednesday with a celebration of Dean on screen. So, for our Sunday Song of the Week, I thought we'd pick a selection from the Dino songbook. As noted yesterday, the Martin centenary observances are nowhere near as extensive as the Sinatra centenary observances were. Frank and Dean were fast friends - until, at a difficult time for both men, a Rat Pack reunion led to a serious falling-out in 1989. But they had an entirely different approach to their craft. In their Vegas heyday, whatever Sinatra did, Sammy Davis and Peter Lawford tried to do too, sometimes pitifully and desperately; whatever Sinatra did, Dean just did the opposite. "I hate guys who sing ...
As Time Goes By
From The Mark Steyn Show, a valentine to one of the great iconic love songs performed live by Mark's special guest, Carol Welsman:
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
For Memorial Day, Mark celebrates a great song of the Civil War
Over The Rainbow
Mark celebrates one of the great iconic movie songs
Waterloo
Mark salutes an Abba classic from the glory days of Eurovision
Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?
To close out this presidential election in the twilight of the Fifth Republic, a suitably elegaic song of France...
Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
Mark celebrates a favorite novelty number
The Look Of Love
A Bacharach & David classic celebrates its 50th anniversary
There'll Always Be An England
March saw, in rapid succession, Dame Vera Lynn's 100th birthday, a terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, and Theresa May formally beginning the process of British withdrawal from the European Union. The combination of events put me in mind of this song...
Born Free
A special edition of our Song of the Week with a brace of 007 guests: Bond lyricist Don Black (Diamonds Are Forever) and Bond villain Robert Davi (License To Kill) are on hand to celebrate the first British song to win an Oscar:
A Winter's Tale
One of the most successful lyricists of our time, the multi-Oscar and -Tony winner Tim Rice, joins Mark to talk about one of Tim's comparatively few hits not to come from a film or show score - after which Emma Kershaw sings it live, complete with previously unheard third verse:
La Vie en rose
Mark celebrates the 70th anniversary of one of the most beautiful of all French songs, performed by the great Patsy Gallant. Patsy had a monster disco hit around the world with "From New York To LA" and then an incredible eight-year run in Starmania, the blockbuster Paris musical hit. But she has always loved Édith Piaf, and Mark is thrilled to present not only her version of "La Vie en rose" but also another Piaf success - "Sous le ciel de Paris":
This Masquerade
For this week's live-music edition of Steyn's Song of the Week, multi-Grammy-winning Cheryl Bentyne of the Manhattan Transfer sings Leon Russell's slinkiest love song:
Dance Me To The End Of Love
Mark welcomes the Klezmer Conservatory Band to perform their haunting klezmerized version of his favorite Leonard Cohen song - and be sure to stay tuned for a bonus number - the irresistible "Miami Beach Rhumba":
Aba Daba Honeymoon
For this week's live-music edition of Steyn's Song of the Week, Maria Muldaur temporarily abandons "Midnight at the Oasis" for a wild jungle ride:
What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
As a postscript to this year's Mark Steyn Christmas Show, here's a first-footing video edition of our Song of the Week, celebrating the only New Year number since "Auld Lang Syne" to become a seasonal staple:
The Wexford Carol
On this year's Mark Steyn Christmas Show Mark was in sentimental mood, recalling some of his earliest festive memories from his grandparents' home in Ireland. So he asked Anthony Kearns to sing his favorite Irish Christmas carol:
Baby, It's Cold Outside
I've been bombarded by emails from readers demanding to know what I think of a limp, inert rewrite of "Baby, It's Cold Outside"...
The (Christmas) Glow Worm
The return of a festive favorite
Jingle Bells
An enduring Christmas song that started out as a Thanksgiving song
Roses of Picardy
This week's Song of the Week is one hundred years old today: that's to say, it was published by Messrs Chappell & Co of New Bond Street, London on December 4th 1916, at a price of one shilling and sixpence. And in one form or another it's been with us ever since...
A Greasepaint Medley
Three enduring songs from one flop musical
Dance Me To The End Of Love
Mark on his favorite Leonard Cohen song
It's All In The Game
The only hit song written by a candidate on a winning presidential ticket
It's De-Lovely
A SteynOnline audio special on the 80th anniversary of a great Cole Porter standard
It's the End of the World as We Know It
A pop culture footnote to our tenth-anniversary observances of America Alone
Morningtown Ride
The grueling schedule of my sellout Aussie tour kept my nose mostly to the grindstone, but I did get a couple of hours off on the Victoria leg and so treated myself to a matinée of Georgy Girl: The Seekers Musical at Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne...
I Honestly Love You
The Steyn Oz tour moves on. We had a great time in Parliament House today, where the Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, gave me a far better introduction than I deserve. I'll be in Sydney on Tuesday. As I said last week, we always like to have a few Aussie Songs of the Week on my forays Down Under, and I'm not sure "Georgy Girl", written by two Englishmen, quite qualifies. But this one does: Ten years ago, I found myself sitting in a taxi in George Street in Sydney behind another cab bearing a big ad for Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz – the Peter Allen musical. Of course! Peter Allen! Australia's most successful pop songwriter – "I Go To Rio", "Arthur's Theme (When you get caught between the moon and New York City)", "Don't Cry Out Loud", "I ...
Georgy Girl
Hey there, Georgy Girl Swingin' down the street so fancy free... We always like to have an Australian Song of the Week to kick off my tours Down Under, but this one isn't strictly speaking an Aussie song, in the sense that its composer and lyricist are English. On the other hand, it's indelibly associated with the biggest pop group ever to come out of the Lucky Country – and it provides the the title for the brand new biotuner about them that's enjoying its world premiere at Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne and which I hope to catch if I get a spare couple of hours over the next fortnight. But my main reason for picking "Georgy Girl" is because the novelist and biographer Margaret Forster died last week. I can't claim to have known her, ...
Ain't Misbehavin'
A hit song by the great nephew of Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar
Down Under
Happy Australia Day to all our readers Down Under. It's actually Tuesday, which is tomorrow, but tomorrow here is probably already yesterday there, so I may be too late. I'm looking forward to seeing many of those antipodean readers next month on my Aussie tour, which kicks off on Valentine's Day in Perth. Half the dates are already sold out, so, if you haven't booked your seats yet, don't leave it too late. Details of towns, times and tickets can be found via the IPA here. We always like to have an Oz song for Australia Day, and, what with one thing and another, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" doesn't seem to get played as often as it used to. So in lieu of that: Do you come from a land Down Under Where women glow and men plunder? Good ...
The Man Who Sold The World
I've received a remarkable number of emails in the last week more or less taunting me to eschew my usual Jerome Kern and Cole Porter and pick a David Bowie number for our Song of the Week. Well, I like a challenge, and, given that the British press has been full of people with not a thing to say about Bowie saying it at great length, I figured that I might as well get a piece of the action. That said, it would be hard to beat this last word in Bowie-eulogizing from The Croydon Advertiser:
Old Coulsdon man delivered David Bowie's milk in summer of '69
Sixteen Tons
A backbreaker of a blockbuster, courtesy of the company sto'
Unforgettable
Mark remembers Natalie Cole, an unforgettable song, and an unshuttupable songwriter
Sinatra Century at SteynOnline
In case you missed it, here's our rundown of Mark's Sinatra Century - 100 years in 100 songs: 1) IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR 2) THE SONG IS YOU 3) HOME ON THE RANGE 4) AFTER YOU'VE GONE 5) IT HAD TO BE YOU 6) THE ONE I LOVE (BELONGS TO SOMEBODY ELSE) 7) LOVE'S BEEN GOOD TO ME 8) STARDUST 9) MY FUNNY VALENTINE 10) WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE? 11) CHICAGO 12) THE CONTINENTAL 13) ALL OF ME 14) WHEN YOUR LOVER HAS GONE 15) NIGHT AND DAY 16) I WON'T DANCE 17) I'VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN 18) SOUTH OF THE BORDER 19) EAST OF THE SUN (AND WEST OF THE MOON) 20) ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY 21) A FOGGY DAY (IN LONDON TOWN) 22) I GET A KICK OUT OF YOU 23) I'M A FOOL TO WANT YOU 24) OUR LOVE 25) ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL 26) I'LL NEVER SMILE AGAIN 27) FOOLS RUSH ...
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
A Christmas song rewritten for Sinatra
Baby, It's Cold Outside
Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban launch the clash of civilizations
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
A happy 75th birthday to the most famous reindeer of all
All I Want For Christmas Is You
Mark hits a new high as he takes a crack at Mariah Carey's Christmas classic
One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)
Frank Sinatra called himself a "saloon singer," because that's where he used to sing, way back when, in Jersey juke joints and roadhouses....
Put Your Dreams Away
Our 99th Sinatra Century song is, after "My Way", the second most performed Sinatra song written by a Canadian...
That's Life
A big hit, but a tense moment in the studio
Body And Soul
Two takes separated by four decades
Mack the Knife
The last crowd-pleaser of a six-decade career
You'd Be So Easy to Love
...but not so easy to sing
Pick Yourself Up
The sexy polka that made a presidential inaugural speech
Time After Time
A timeless ballad from a Sinatra stalwart
The Lady Is A Tramp
April 14th 1937: a major expansion of the American songbook
Goody Goody
Frank sings a classic Johnny Mercer revenge song
Try A Little Tenderness
Via Frank and a couple of Londoners, a black American soul classic
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
Frank and Nancy sing Sonny and Cher
Theme from New York, New York
On September 19th 1979 in Los Angeles, it fell to Vinnie Falcone to conduct what would become one of the biggest Sinatra recordings of all time:
Start spreading the news...
Something
On the first of our Sinatra Century audio specials, Frank's longtime pianist and conductor Vincent Falcone talks, among other things, about the singer's relationship with the George Harrison ballad "Something". So I thought we'd spend a little time with the song as we head into the final stretch before the big 100th birthday.
In November 1968 George Harrison and his then missus Pattie Boyd attended the recording sessions in Hollywood for Sinatra's album Cycles...
Send In The Clowns
Until the mid-1960s Broadway was the biggest supplier of the most enduring standards ...and then gradually it all sputtered to a halt, and even hit shows didn't produce really popular songs. With one notable exception...
My Way
By sheer coincidence, our scheduled Sinatra song is, in fact, a French song. Indeed, by further coincidence, it belongs to a lost age of Franco-Arab cultural co-mingling...
Some Enchanted Evening
Sinatra's highly variable results with the acme of the mid-20th century showtune
For Once In My Life
Ronald Miller's hit-makers share a hot tub...
Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars
The meaning of existence, and all that jazz...
The Girl From Ipanema
The girl who launched a song, and the song that launched an industry
Me And My Shadow
The black cat who crossed Sinatra's path
Moon Love
In 1960, Frank Sinatra left Capitol and founded Reprise Records because he wanted to have total artistic control. But oddly, once he'd got total artistic control, he seemed disinclined to exercise it...
Strangers in the Night
By 1966 it had been over a decade since Frank Sinatra had had a Number One single. It's fine to be acclaimed as a great artist, to have big-selling albums, sell out in Vegas and on world tours, and star in Hollywood movies. But, if popular singing is what you do, there's something special about a Number One hit single...
A Theme to a Kill
An encore presentation of Mark's audio salute to James Bond's music man, John Barry
This Is All I Ask
Sinatra Sings The Sacroiliac Songbook
The Best Is Yet To Come
The song Sinatra took with him to the grave
The End of a Love Affair
We've been spending a little time this Columbus Day weekend with a man who was born in Columbus, Ohio exactly a century ago - October 10th 1915 - and was at Sinatra's side for some of his most thrilling records of the Fifties and Sixties: Harry "Sweets" Edison, whose trumpet mute was a big part of Frank's Capitol sound.
When you're as good a jazz player as Edison, studio sessions aren't really what you want to do. You'd much rather be in some night spot with a handful of other guys taking a full chorus for every solo...
I Thought About You
The master of the muted trumpet, Harry "Sweets" Edison
We'll Gather Lilacs
Sinatra in London with a classic British ballad...
Come Rain Or Come Shine
A bluesy ballad Sinatra sang for 30 years
Moonlight In Vermont
It's All Right With Me
A classic Sinatra moment - on record, on film, on TV.
Autumn Leaves
A truly great song for the season isn't about the calendar, or the weather. It's about the seasons of life and love...
Fly Me To The Moon
According to Johnny Mercer, "Writing music takes more talent, but writing lyrics takes more courage." What he meant was that a tune can be beguiling and melancholy and intoxicating and a lot of other vagaries, but there comes a moment when you have to sit down and get specific, and put the other half of the equation on top of those notes. A songwriter spends his life chasing the umpteenth variation of "I love you"...
Ol' MacDonald
In honor of Alan Bergman's 90th birthday, we've been spending a little time this weekend with some of his early hits for Sinatra. Although I myself have recorded an Alan & Marilyn Bergman number, I reluctantly concede that, vocalist-wise, they're better known for their association with Barbra Streisand ("The Way We Were", "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", etc). But long before Barbra they wrote a few songs for Frank that have a different character...
Nice 'N' Easy
I Cover The Waterfront
Just In Time
A record the songwriter didn't like, of a song the singer didn't like
Angel Eyes
Steyn on a saloon song classic
Come Fly With Me
Up there where the air is rarefied: Sinatra and the soundtrack of the Jet Age...
Ebb Tide
First the tide rushes in. Then you rush out and write the song...
Witchcraft
I've always loved songs that use magic as an image of romantic seduction...
Stars Fell On Alabama
When Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle found their groove in the mid-Fifties, the music just poured out. In 1956 there was so much of it: The year began with the sessions for the defining album of the early LP era - Songs For Swingin' Lovers. It ended with the sessions for Swingin' Lovers' swingin' successor, A Swingin' Affair!...
(Love Is) The Tender Trap
A Sinatra signature - and the birth of a new songwriting team
Learnin' The Blues
The strange story of a one-hit wonder
In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning
For over half a century songwriters tried to get their best work to the best singer of the best songs. The sitcom "Frasier" devoted an entire episode to the proposition, after Dad revealed that he'd written a song for Frank, "You're Such A Groovy Lady".
But in the entire history of Getting Songs to Frank there are no luckier guys than Dave Mann and Bob Hilliard...
Baubles, Bangles and Beads
2015 is the centenary year not only of Frank Sinatra but also of Chet Forrest, born one hundred years ago this weekend on July 31st 1915 in Brooklyn, New York.
Chet who? Well, Robert Wright and his partner George "Chet" Forrest were never exactly household names in the music biz, but they certainly worked with a lot of household names, including Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov...
The Gal That Got Away
A Sinatra song that wore out a jukebox in Toms River, New Jersey...
Young at Heart
An ode to youthful optimism
I've Got The World On A String
The opening of Frank Sinatra's spectacular Second Act
Why Try To Change Me Now?
Frank Sinatra poses a musical question to Mitch Miller....
I Have Dreamed
The early Fifties were a rough time for Sinatra - and for his voice...
(Ah, the Apple Trees) When the World Was Young
We're a day away from Bastille Day, France's fête nationale, and so it seems appropriate to spend a little time with franco-Sinatra. He sang a lot of French songs over the years, most famously this:
Je me lève et je te bouscule
Tu n'te réveilles pas
Comme d'habitude...
Oh, no, wait. Frank sang the English lyric:
And now the end is near
And so I face
The final curtain...
We'll Be Together Again
Frankie sings Frankie
Luck Be A Lady
Frank Loesser was a busy Hollywood lyricist who decided he was going to turn himself into a Hollywood lyricist-and-composer. Having pulled that off, he then decided to become one of Broadway's great musical dramatists to boot. His first stage musical, an adaptation of Charley's Aunt, opened in 1948, with a great score and a legendary showstopper of a song in "Once In Love With Amy". On our double-CD Frank Loesser centenary celebration (exclusively available from SteynOnline), you can hear me...
The House I Live In
We had a Sinatra song from Canada for Dominion Day, and so we surely have to have an American Sinatra song for Independence Day...
How About You?
Dominion Day looms - on Wednesday - and we always like to have a Canadian song for the national holiday. Sinatra recorded many maple-infused numbers over six decades, from "I'll Never Smile Again" and "Put Your Dreams Away", both by my fellow Torontonian Ruth Lowe, all the way to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" and, of course, Paul Anka's "My Way" (he wrote the English lyric). But, for a great national occasion, I figured what could be more Canadian than...
I like New York in June
How About You?
I Concentrate On You
A Sinatra classic - as ballad, bossa or swinger
The Coffee Song
He was the saloon singer - quarter to three, set 'em up, Joe, drinkin' again and thinkin' o' when... spinning round in my brain, like the bubbles in a glass of champagne... But Sinatra liked a non-alcoholic tipple, too. He took "Tea For Two" with Dinah Shore in 1947, and in 1960 recorded "When I Take My Sugar To Tea". But he wasn't averse to something a little more caffeinated:
Way down among Brazilians
Coffee beans grow by the millions
So they've got to find those extra cups to fill...
Soliloquy
Happy Father's Day to you and yours. I miss my dad more and more as the years go by. Our Sinatra Century would be incomplete without this particular entry:..
I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)
A one-hit wonder who never got to hear her one hit sung by anyone - from Sinatra to Molly Ringwald
You Make Me Feel So Young
On January 9th 1956, Frank Sinatra went into the not yet famous Studio A of Capitol Records at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles for the first of a handful of sessions for a new album...
Somethin' Stupid
As a companion piece to Friday's "Nancy (with the Laughing Face)", here's a Frank-and-Nancy moment from a couple of decades later...
Nancy (With the Laughing Face)
Seventy-one years ago this Monday, June 8th, a cute little four-year-old girl was having a birthday party, and a couple of pals of her dad decided to present her with a very special gift...
Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry
Frank Sinatra rescued a lot of songs over the years, but rarely on the scale he did with this one. It was from an awe-inspiringly hideous train-wreck of a musical. But Sinatra recorded it, and made it a standard - and the only torchy ballad of lost love whose central image is of laundry...
Blues In The Night
On June 24th 1958 Nelson Riddle raised his baton, and Frank Sinatra made one of the greatest recordings of a great song...
Pennies from Heaven
This one stayed in Sinatra's book almost to the end, mainly because he just had so much fun singing it...
The Nearness of You
What's the connection between Frank Sinatra and Mickey Rooney?
Oh, that's easy. They were both married to Ava Gardner.
What's the connection between Frank Sinatra and William Shakespeare?
Hmm, well, lemme see...
I'll Be Around
In the pithy summation of Terry Teachout, Alec Wilder "spent his life looking for cracks to fall through". Back in the days when we still had record stores, he didn't quite fit the pop bins or the classical bins or the jazz bins. Which is why, if you're hung up on categorization, it's easier to leave him out of the store altogether...
The Way You Look Tonight
Many years ago - when a lot of the guys who wrote the American Songbook were still around - I started asking composers and lyricists to name their all-time favorite song. This one came right at the top...
I'll Be Seeing You
As much as "It Had To Be You" or "The Way You Look Tonight", "I'll Be Seeing You" belongs to a select group of über-standards, the ones we'll still be singing when 90 per cent of the rest have fallen away. It's one of those "our song" songs - especially if you happened to find yourself on a railway platform in the early 1940s waving a loved one off to war...
Everything Happens To Me
When I first got interested in the great standard songs as a teenager, I sort of assumed that they were all written by the big names - Cole Porter, Gershwin. It took a while to dawn that not everything from, say, the Thirties was concocted by a major writer for a famous Broadway score or a Fred Astaire movie. So after a while, when I heard a song I liked, I'd say, "Hey, I wonder who wrote that." Quite often, the answer would be "Matt Dennis & Tom Adair". Let's just stick to the Sinatra end of their catalogue: Who wrote "The Night We Called It A Day"? Matt Dennis & Tom Adair. Who wrote "Let's Get Away From It All"? Matt Dennis & Tom Adair. Who wrote "Violets For Your Furs"? Matt Dennis & Tom Adair. Who wrote "Angel Eyes"? Matt Dennis. Who wrote "There's No You"? Tom Adair. And who wrote..?
My One And Only Love
Before St George's Day fades for another year, I thought we'd have a Sinatra English song
Fools Rush In
"Fools Rush In" isn't thought of as a Sinatra song. If you were anywhere near a jukebox or a transistor radio in the early Sixties, you'll think of it in Ricky Nelson's bouncy-bouncy teenypop arrangement. But once upon a time the song was new, and Frank Sinatra was the guy singing it...
I'll Never Smile Again
We began the week with Sinatra's one big hit with the Harry James band. We end it with his first big hit with the Tommy Dorsey band. This essay contains material from Mark's book A Song For The Season:
I'll Never Smile Again
Until I smile at you
I'll never laugh again
What good would it do?
All Or Nothing At All
It was June 1939 and the singer Louise Tobin was in her room in the Lincoln Hotel in Manhattan, packing for a gig in Boston with Bobby Hackett's band. Her hubby was napping on the bed. He was a trumpeter, name of Harry James, who'd just left Benny Goodman to put together his own orchestra. The radio was carrying a remote from some joint in New Jersey, and a male vocalist came on...
Our Love
Someday someone should release an album called Classical Frank. I mentioned a couple of days ago that "Take My Love" was adapted from Brahms' Third Symphony. Aside from Brahms (whose Lullaby he also recorded), Sinatra sang over the years Anton Rubinstein, Grieg, Rachmaninov, Ravel and Borodin. That's to say, "If You Are But A Dream" (Rubinstein's Romance No 1), "I Love You" and "Strange Music" (Grieg's "Ich Liebe Dich" and "Wedding Day At Troldhaugen", respectively), "Full Moon And Empty Arms" and "I Think Of You" (both from Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto), "The Lamp Is Low" (Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte)...
I'm A Fool To Want You
2015 is not only the centenary year of Frank Sinatra but also of Billie Holiday, born April 7th 1915 in Philadelphia. We will mark the occasion formally a little later this week, and acknowledge Sinatra's admiration for Holiday. But the respect was mutual, and on Billie Holiday's last major recording the stand-out track was a Sinatra song...
I Get A Kick Out Of You
When Frank Sinatra was 18, it was a very good year. Anything Goes opened at the Alvin Theatre in November 1934 and provided young Frank with a slew of Cole Porter material he would sing in his maturity:.The title song turned up in 1956 on his landmark album Songs For Swingin' Lovers; "Easy To Love" was dropped at the insistence of leading man William Gaxton, but became a highlight of Sinatra's first album at Reprise...
A Foggy Day (In London Town)
Sinatra sang a lot of Gershwin over the years, but if you had to name the most important "Gershwin song" in his book it would probably be "The Gal That Got Away" - words by Ira Gershwin, but music by Harold Arlen. He made a terrific record of it when the song was new, and then returned to it a quarter-century later to make it - in a medley with "It Never Entered My Mind" - the last great saloon-song sequence to be added to the Sinatra act.
But a lot of George Gershwin tunes stayed with him to the end, too...
On The Road To Mandalay
Seventy years ago, the 14th Army under the command of General Bill Slim finally liberated Mandalay and returned it to British rule. Given the popularity of this song among British military concert parties of the time, more than a few of Slim's men must have found themselves singing:
Come you back to Mandalay
Where the old flotilla lay...
East Of The Sun (And West Of The Moon)
Where do you head after you've gone "South Of The Border"? Oh, that's easy...
South Of The Border
St Patrick's Day looms, and so a Sinatra Irish confection would seem to be appropriate. Unlike Peggy Lee, he never recorded "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"; unlike Rosie Clooney, he never recorded "Danny Boy". In the 1949 film Take Me Out To The Ball Game, he sang a song called "O'Brien To Ryan To Goldberg" - Gene Kelly, who was of Irish ancestry, played O'Brien; Jules Munshin, who was of Russian Jewish ancestry, played Goldberg; and Frank Sinatra, who was of Italian ancestry, played, er, Ryan.
But what of the great Irish songwriters..?
I've Got You Under My Skin
The night it took 22 takes...
I Won't Dance
The 1930s were the golden decade of American popular song. The great Broadway blue chips - Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart - were hitting their stride, and, as we've explored in recent weeks, a whole generation of far lesser known names were providing great individual numbers that, thanks to Sinatra, have lasted across the decades...
Night And Day
What's the connection between the Muslim call to prayer and Frank Sinatra?
When Your Lover Has Gone
All Of Me
A Sinatra classic, born from a happy accident at a summer resort, and a widow's grief
The Continental
It's the wee small hours after Oscar Night, and so our Sinatra Centenary song is obliged to take a nod at least in the direction of the Academy Awards. Frank made a whole album of Oscar winners, with the unwieldy title of Sinatra Sings Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River, and Other Academy Award Winners...
Chicago
An anthem to "the town that Billy Sunday couldn't shut down"
What Is This Thing Called Love?
On March 27th 1929 the Charles B Cochran revue Wake Up And Dream opened at the London Pavilion, with a host of West End talent, including Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, Tilly Losch and Douglas Byng. And at one point in the evening Britain's "Radio Sweetheart Number One", Elsie Carlisle, stepped forward and sang...
My Funny Valentine
Valentine's Day looms, and, given his contribution to its popularity, we would be remiss not to include in our Sinatra Century the one great Valentine standard...
Stardust
It's July 8th 1939 and the Harry James orchestra is on stage at the Roseland Ballroom in New York. They have a new singer - a 23-year old boy vocalist who signed with the band a few days earlier - and he steps to the microphone to sing...
Love's Been Good To Me
The other day I was reading, strictly for pleasure, The Complete Lyrics Of Johnny Mercer, and in particular the work of his somewhat frustrating final years. And a handful of pages before the end you turn the page, and from one of those projects that never came to fruition are a couple of songs bearing the credit "Words and music by Johnny Mercer and Rod McKuen".
My God, what was he thinking?
The One I Love (Belongs To Somebody Else)
We're spending this weekend with the Isham Jones/Gus Kahn end of the Sinatra songbook. Following "It Had To Be You" on Friday, here's a song Frank sang for almost half-a-century from June of 1940, as the new boy vocalist with a hit orchestra, to deep into the 1980s, as a lion in winter jumpin' all over a hard-swingin' band...
It Had To Be You
An über-standard everyone sang before Frank
After You've Gone
A song as old as Sinatra that he only got to in the Eighties
Home on the Range
I received a letter, as I do from time to time and particularly since we launched this series, making the familiar complaint that I "only write about the kind of songs Frank Sinatra sings" and thereby ignore the older, vernacular American musical tradition. Well, I happen to think Frank chose pretty good songs, so why kick the habit? For example, here's a ring-a-ding-ding Sinatra classic he recorded in 1946:
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
And the deer and the antelope play...
The Song Is You
It's often said that the pop songs you like when you're 17 years old are the pop songs that stay with you your entire life. And in that respect Frank Sinatra was very fortunate: When he was 17, to pick up where we left off last week, it was a very good year. The songs in the air as a Hoboken schoolboy prepared to start his adult life were the songs he would record a quarter-century later and still be singing on stage, at Caesars' Palace and the Royal Albert Hall, another quarter-century beyond that...
It Was A Very Good Year
Our Sinatra Song of the Century Number One
Auld Lang Syne
This essay is adapted from Mark's book A Song For The Season
Morning Train (Nine To Five)
I love the Great American Train Song. It's a genre that has the sweep and size of the nation...
It's the End of the World as We Know It
After "Cat Scratch Fever", Mister Squaresville goes in search of other rockers to cover
The Quality of Mercer
A musical moment from The [Un]documented Mark Steyn
Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead
This month marks the 75th anniversary of one of the greatest and most enduring film musicals ever made, and one of the few to match the dramatic ambition of the best Broadway shows. The Wizard Of Oz gave us a standard song that won the Oscar that year and was potent enough to provide Eva Cassidy with a posthumous hit in the 21st century. We'll get to that next week, but for this week's Song of the Week here's one of my personal favorites from a truly marvelous score: Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead Which old witch? The wicked witch! Ding-dong! The wicked witch is dead... If you associate those lines not with Munchkins but with layabout lefties, you're probably British. In early 2013, that was the bestselling song at Amazon UK and at iTunes. ...
They Didn't Believe Me
When this weekly feature began eight and a half years ago, our Song of the Week Number One was "San Francisco", to mark the centenary of the 1906 earthquake. But, if I'd been thinking about a Number One song in more profound terms, our Number One song would have been the song we're finally getting round to almost a decade later - because this week's song was really the Number One song for an entire school of songs. As Mel Tormé put it, when Jerome Kern composed this melody, he "invented the popular song". If your idea of a popular song is "Call Me Maybe" or "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" or "The Tennesee Waltz", Tormé's claim is a bit of a stretch. But it's not unreasonable to claim that with this tune Kern invented what we now call the American Songbook - standards that endure across the decades and can be sung and played in almost any style. It is, thus, the Number One Song, the first and most influential entry in that American Songbook...
(I'm In Love With) A Wonderful Guy
A few weeks back, apropos "June Is Bustin' Out All Over", I mentioned that we hadn't done a lot of "month" songs in the years we've been running this feature. Some months - mostly spring ("April Showers", "April In Paris") and fall ("September Song", "September In The Rain") - seem to lend themselves to musicalization. If "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" is about as big a hit title as the sixth month of the year has ever produced, the eighth (which looms this very week) can't even manage a title at all. In the Seventies, Neil Diamond had a monster album called Hot August Night, with him doing what I recall as a denimed and vaguely pelvic thrust on the cover. But, unless I'm mistaken, Hot August Night doesn't actually include a song called ...
Cinderella Rockefella
What with all the Jew-hate around on the streets of Europe in recent days, I thought it would be nice to have a big Europop hit from that fleeting cultural moment when the Continentals regarded Israel not merely as a normal sovereign state but in fact a rather cool and enviable one...
Put On A Happy Face
Some musical advice from Mark's graduation season
Nessun dorma
The all-time great World Cup song
Georgia On My Mind
Steyn celebrates the song Ray Charles used to hum in the back of his car on the way to the gig - until one day his driver told him to record it.
June Is Bustin' Out All Over
Well, it's the beginning of June and that means June is bustin' out all over! Except that June doesn't really bust, does it..?
Yesterday When I Was Young/She
Ninety years ago this Thursday a baby boy was born in Paris ...well, that was the first unexpected plot twist. He was supposed to be born in America...
My Lady Nicotine
Mark explores the art of the cigarette song
Tea For Two
One of the biggest pop standards of the 20th century celebrates its 90th birthday this month. Exactly nine decades ago - April 21st 1924 - a new musical comedy opened in Chicago on its pre-Broadway tour. The plot was the usual fluff - three couples in Atlantic City, complications ensue, etc. It should have been a breeze, but it wasn't going well...
Rock Around The Clock
Six decades ago - April 12th 1954 - a chubby-faced kiss-curled man pushing 30 with a backing group named after a theory published in Synopsis Astronomia Cometicae in 1705 went into the recording studio at the Pythian Temple on West 70th Street in New York and sang a song written by a man born in the 19th century...
Blue Moon
A Rodgers & Hart classic - after three false starts...
Till There Was You
The 50th anniversary of the Beatles' only showtune
On The Good Ship Lollipop/Animal Crackers In My Soup
Shirley Temple - singer, dancer, actress, and rock'n'roller
Almost Like Being In Love
A song for Groundhog Day?
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
This column comes by way of request from several readers, ever since the demise of Cecil the Lion hit the front pages. Here is the story of the biggest hit ever to come out of Africa - and why its author never reaped the benefits: In the jungle, the mighty jungle The Lion Sleeps Tonight... A third of a century ago, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" got to Number One in Britain for Tight Fit. Can't quite place Tight Fit? It sounds like a vaguely parodic name for a boy band, but in fact they were a coed combo - one boy, two girls, a male model and two female dancers, hired as a photogenic front after the record had already been made. The girls had failed to make the cut at an audition for the more successfully contrived group, Bucks Fizz, and were ...
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Number One in January 1934 ...and January 1959
What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
Happy New Year with one of Mark's favorite songs for the season
Camelot
On the centenary of the birth of John F Kennedy, Mark tells the story of how a Broadway musical became a key part of the President's posthumous mythology
Ain't That A Kick - Sammy Cahn All The Way
2015 is Frank Sinatra's centenary year, which necessitates a few modifications to SteynOnline's music, film and entertainment coverage. Our official observances commence tomorrow when our Song of the Week department becomes a Song of the Semi-Week in order to squeeze in 100 Sinatra songs of the century between now and December. Several other folk seem to have opted for this approach, too - our old friend the Pundette has launched a dedicated Sinatra Centenary site for that very purpose - so we hope you'll have lots of finicky fun nitpicking through competing hit parades and demanding to know why this or that song hasn't made the list. Don't worry, we'll still make space for other musical content this year, not least because I need to come ...
Light My Fire
How a psychedelic anthem from the summer of love became an easy-listening blockbuster
What A Diff'rence A Day Made
A day late for Cinco de Mayo, here's Steyn's Song of the Week: the most successful composition by Mexico's first successful female composer.
~and don't forget, if you like Mark's Song of the Week essays, some of his most requested are collected in his book A Song For The Season - including many songs for national days, from "America The Beautiful" to "Waltzing Matilda". You can order your personally autographed copy exclusively from the SteynOnline bookstore.
The Sheik of Araby
April 29th apparently marks the anniversary of the launch of the Islamic conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the year 711. So I thought it would be fun to have a suitably Islamo-dominant number for our Song of the Week.
~and don't forget, some of Mark's most popular Song of the Week essays are collected in his book A Song For The Season. You can order your personally autographed copy exclusively from the SteynOnline bookstore.
Easter Parade
Here's a special Steyn podcast on the most famous pop hit about Easter and its (sort of) centenary...
The Mark Steyn Club
Member Login
Not yet a member of the Mark Steyn Club? Join now!
Follow Mark
Search SteynOnline.com
The SteynOnline Hit Parade
© 2017 Mark Steyn Enterprises (US) Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of Mark Steyn Enterprises.