re: The Great American Songbook

Dean Martin - "That's Amore"



Jerry Lewis - "The Continental"

Cole Porter sings!





Cole Porter - "Anything Goes"

The Cops 'n Robbers - "I Could Have Danced All Night" (1965)

No this isn't the British Invasion thread. The Cops 'n Robbers were an obscure English R&B band in the Stones/Pretty Things mold who released a handful of sides and never had a hit. Their repertoire was firmly in the English blues tradition (they cut "St. James Infirmary") and they also covered Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (an excellent interpretation that predates Them's better known version, but that's a subject for another thread).

Somebody -- presumably their management -- got the bright idea for them to cover Lerner and Loewe's "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady. Completely atypical of their recorded output, it's a vaguely Latinish arrangement that even incorporates horns. It reminds me a bit of Brill Building pop, except that the lead singer sounds like he wants to break out and go totally James Brown on everybody.

Compare it to Jamie Cullum's version -- could Jamie have somehow heard the Cops 'n Robbers?

Mark Steyn, the world's greatest political columnist, is also a connoisseur of the GAS. To celebrate the Sinatra Centenary he is devoting a column a week to a Sinatra song. It's a great series, not only for longtime fans but also serves as an excellent intro/guide for newbs to the music of Ol' Blue Eyes

"It Was A Very Good Year"

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Ervin Drake didn't care for rock'n'roll but he saw no reason why he couldn't crank out a "folk song". So he went into the room next to the publisher's office, sat down at the piano and wrote:

When I was seventeen
It Was A Very Good Year
It Was A Very Good Year for small town girls and soft summer nights
We'd hide from the lights
On the village green
When I was seventeen...

He finished the thing in ten minutes, although the central idea - life as a cellar of fine wine - had been kicking around in the back of his head for some time. It's not a folk song, or even a pseudo-folk song. It's what happens when a real songwriter tries writing a "folk" song.

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Frank chanced to be driving home through the California desert to his home in Rancho Mirage. He had the radio on, and, of all unlikely things, the disk-jockey played a four-year old Kingston Trio album track: "It Was A Very Good Year".

It's an interesting lesson in how Frank thought about music. The Kingston Trio version sounds nothing like a Sinatra song, but he heard the possibilities in it - all the possibilities, indeed, that Bob Shane missed: the loves of one's life as a series of vintage wines, recollected as if by an old oenophile

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It's about the memory of loves as different as great wines, as intoxicating and as impermanent, save for the lingering savor of a sweet taste just beyond your tongue. By 1965, Sinatra was the acknowledged master vintner of alcohol-infused imagery, from "You Go To My Head" to "One For My Baby", and, unlike Bob Shane, he heard the poetry in Ervin Drake's words. Of Ol' Blue Eyes' record, Shane said simply, "It fit him better than me." Well, yes. But not just because Frank's nailed more chicks. In the Shane version, it is, like many folkie songs of the era, a song about singing a song. Sinatra understood it's meant to be autobiography - not necessarily his but somebody's:

But now the days grow short
I'm in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine from fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs
It poured sweet and clear
It Was A Very Good Year.

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Can´t Get Used to Losing You

Bump for Frank's 100th -- Happy birthday Blue Eyes!



"That's Life"

"Luck be a Lady"

"Young At Heart"

"All The Way"

"One For My Baby (and One More For The Road)"

quote:

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Mark Steyn, the world's greatest political columnist, is also a connoisseur of the GAS. To celebrate the Sinatra Centenary he is devoting a column a week to a Sinatra song. It's a great series, not only for longtime fans but also serves as an excellent intro/guide for newbs to the music of Ol' Blue Eyes

"It Was A Very Good Year"

quote:

---

Ervin Drake didn't care for rock'n'roll but he saw no reason why he couldn't crank out a "folk song". So he went into the room next to the publisher's office, sat down at the piano and wrote:

When I was seventeen
It Was A Very Good Year
It Was A Very Good Year for small town girls and soft summer nights
We'd hide from the lights
On the village green
When I was seventeen...

He finished the thing in ten minutes, although the central idea - life as a cellar of fine wine - had been kicking around in the back of his head for some time. It's not a folk song, or even a pseudo-folk song. It's what happens when a real songwriter tries writing a "folk" song.

---

quote:

---

Frank chanced to be driving home through the California desert to his home in Rancho Mirage. He had the radio on, and, of all unlikely things, the disk-jockey played a four-year old Kingston Trio album track: "It Was A Very Good Year".

It's an interesting lesson in how Frank thought about music. The Kingston Trio version sounds nothing like a Sinatra song, but he heard the possibilities in it - all the possibilities, indeed, that Bob Shane missed: the loves of one's life as a series of vintage wines, recollected as if by an old oenophile

---

quote:

---

It's about the memory of loves as different as great wines, as intoxicating and as impermanent, save for the lingering savor of a sweet taste just beyond your tongue. By 1965, Sinatra was the acknowledged master vintner of alcohol-infused imagery, from "You Go To My Head" to "One For My Baby", and, unlike Bob Shane, he heard the poetry in Ervin Drake's words. Of Ol' Blue Eyes' record, Shane said simply, "It fit him better than me." Well, yes. But not just because Frank's nailed more chicks. In the Shane version, it is, like many folkie songs of the era, a song about singing a song. Sinatra understood it's meant to be autobiography - not necessarily his but somebody's:

But now the days grow short
I'm in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine from fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs
It poured sweet and clear
It Was A Very Good Year.

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The soul duo Sam and Bill (not Dave) take a crack at the Sinatra standard in 1966:

Sam and Bill - "Fly Me To The Moon"

Gene Austin - "My Blue Heaven" (1927)

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Dean Martin - "You Belong To Me"

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Man, that was such a great song. No telling how many people have recorded that.
I think Pee Wee King wrote it.