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Untitled Document
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KERN: The Song Is You (1925-1945) |
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Composer: |
Jerome Kern |
Artist: |
Ezio Pinza, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Elisabeth Welch, Paul Robeson, Julia Sanderson, Robb Stewart, Tony Martin, Josephine Baker, Jo Stafford, Helen Morgan, Jessie Matthews, Irene Dunne, Ginger Rogers, Dixie Lee Crosby, Ozzie Nelson, Harriet Hilliard, Carmen McRae, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Luther, Larry Adler, Perry Como, Johnny Green, Artie Shaw, Bing Crosby, Jerome Kern, Noel Coward, Marilyn Monroe, Hildegarde |
Conductor: |
Max Steiner, Clifford Greenwood, Carroll Gibbons, Paul Whiteman, Norman Leyden |
Choir: |
Studio vocal group |
Ensemble: |
George Olsen Music, Jazz Oliver et ses Boys des Folies-Bergere, Paul Whiteman Dance Band |
Orchestra: |
Ozzie Nelson Orchestra, John Scott Trotter Orchestra, Artie Shaw Orchestra, Axel Stordahl Orchestra, New Mayfair Orchestra, Carroll Gibbons Orchestra, RKO Studio Orchestra, Victor Arden Orchestra, Debroy Somers Orchestra, Paul Weston Orchestra, Eugene Hayes Orchestra, Leonard Joy Orchestra, Leo Reisman Orchestra, Jack Pleis Orchestra, Harry Sosnik Orchestra, Russ Case Orchestra, Victor Young Orchestra, Norman Leyden Orchestra, Johnny Green Orchestra, Nathaniel Shilkret Orchestra, Studio orchestra |
Lyricist: |
Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin, Otto Harbach, Dorothy Fields, Oscar Hammerstein II |
Label: |
Naxos Nostalgia |
Catalogue No.: |
8.120827 |
Format: |
CD |
Barcode: |
0636943282724 |
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‘THE SONG IS YOU’
Songs of JEROME KERN
Original 1925–1945 Recordings
The world-renowned creator of stage-music,
film scores and time-honoured melodies that
rank among the treasures of popular music
culture, Jerome David Kern was born in New
York on 27 January 1885. His youthful talent
was fostered by his mother (who taught him
piano) and at seventeen, having enrolled at the
New York College of Music, he was steeped in
the classical idiom and had already written his
first songs. In 1902, during the first of many
visits to England, he contributed extra material
to Leslie Stuart’s show The Silver Slipper and
for the next few years (despite his father’s
insistence that he should help him run the
family’s New York furniture showroom)
followed his instincts and opted for music
instead. Returning to New York in 1904, he
worked as a pianist and song-plugger in Tin Pan
Alley (in this capacity, on occasions, he played
for various leading entertainers of the day) and
also as an editor, principally for Charles
Frohman’s organisation.
Kern quickly became a familiar figure in
theatrical circles in both New York and
London, where he wrote additional material for
shows and often doubled as a repetiteur. His
own first hit, “How’d You Like To Spoon With
Me?” (written with Edward Laska) found its
way into the score of the 1905 Ivan Caryll
Broadway musical The Earl And The Girl and
by 1912, the year of his own first Broadway
production The Red Petticoat, he had already
penned around 100 songs, most with a
forward-looking ragtime feel, tailored for shows
by other writers. The Girl From Utah (1914)
delighted audiences on both sides of the
Atlantic and although Paul Rubens and Sydney
Jones were its accredited composers, its score
was dominated by Kern’s own contributions.
After an average Broadway run of 120
performances it was imported to the UK and
contained, among other numbers, the oftrevived
hit They Didn’t Believe Me (words by
P. Herbert Reynolds), sung here by its creator,
Julia Sanderson, alias Mrs. Frank Crumit.
In December 1915 his next London show
Very Good Eddie opened at the Princess
Theatre. With libretto by the English-born
American Guy Bolton (1884-1979) its first night
was favourably reviewed by the English
novelist and man-of-letters P.G. Wodehouse
(1881-1975). At once, the three men began a
Broadway and London partnership which
lasted, intermittently, until 1924 and, by
updating the stale traditional forms of musical
comedy, laid the foundations of the modern
musical. Their contributions to the Emmerich
Kálmán operettas Miss Springtime (1916) and
The Riviera Girl (1917) and other minor
Broadway shows were followed by Oh Boy
(1917). Revived as Oh, Joy (1919) this later ran
at the Princess for over a year and presented the
world with one lasting hit, “Till The Clouds Roll
By”, a song which in 1946 was chosen as the
title for the MGM biopic starring Robert Walker
which featured 22 best-known Kern songs.
Prolific and durable, by the early 1920s
Kern already ranked among the most
internationally respected of Broadway
composers. In 1920 he scored The Night Boat,
Hitchy Koo Of 1920 and, most notably (with
book by Bolton and lyrics by Clifford Grey and
the New York-born Buddy G. De Sylva 1895-
1950) Sally – with an initial Broadway
production of 570 performances and a
significant London run of 387 a year later, it
was filmed in 1929. The show’s most lasting
song, Look For The Silver Lining would later
prove almost a Kern anthem (it was revived in
1942, by Jessie Matthews (1907-1981), in a
London revision by Frank Eyton and Richard
Hearne, re-christened Wild Rose).
The firmly established Kern wrote many
other (now forgotten) shows including, in
1921, Good Morning, Dearie (Broadway) and
The Cabaret Girl (London), in 1922 The Bunch
And Judy (Broadway), in 1923 Stepping Stones
(Broadway) and The Beauty Prize (London), in
1924 Sitting Pretty and Dear Sir (both on
Broadway), before penning his next real
benchmark Sunny. With book and lyrics by
Otto Harbach (1873-1963) and Oscar
Hammerstein II (1895-1960), this ran for 517
performances at the New York Amsterdam
from September 1925. Its cast included Clifton
Webb, Cliff ‘Ukelele Ike’ Edwards and George
Olsen and his orchestra, who had a six-week
US No.1 hit with their commercial recording
for Victor of Who?
Kern’s Broadway career continued with
The City Chap (1925) and Criss Cross (1926),
but his biggest coup came in 1927 with his
masterpiece Show Boat. Based on the 1926
novel by Edna Ferber and with book and lyrics
by Hammerstein and a cast that included Helen
Morgan as Julie and Jules Bledsoe as Joe (the
part later so associated with Paul Robeson) this
much-acclaimed musical has remained a firm
favourite. After 572 performances at the
Ziegfeld Theatre, it toured for ten months
before opening at Drury Lane, London, in 1928.
Frequently resurrected (lately on Broadway in
the 1994 Howard Prince revival which won
five Tony Awards) it was filmed three times,
most recently by MGM in 1951, with Kathryn
Grayson and Howard Keel. Its score boasts
two undisputed Jerome Kern mega-hits: Ol’
Man River and the poignant Bill, sung here by
its creator in a later syndicated program
recording, which was actually a revival of a
Wodehouse-Bolton lyric from Kern’s 1918
Broadway show Oh, Lady! Lady!
The early 1930s saw Kern scoring
Broadway successes now classifiable as
‘vintage’: The Cat And the Fiddle (Harbach;
1931 and filmed in 1934 – this playful
extravaganza contained such hits as She
Didn’t Say ‘Yes’ and “The Night Was Made For
Love”), Music In The Air (1932, filmed in 1934;
with lyrics by Hammerstein, this included “I’ve
Told Ev’ry Little Star” and The Song Is You)
and Roberta (Harbach; 1933). This last refocused
Kern’s attention unequivocally towards
Hollywood (barring Very Warm For May in
1939, at only 59 performances a virtual
Broadway flop but which included All The
Things You Are, he would write no further
stage-musicals).
Filmed by RKO in 1935 with Irene Dunne,
Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the original
show Roberta’s hits Yesterdays and Smoke
Gets In Your Eyes were supplemented by I
Won’t Dance and the Oscar-nominated Lovely
To Look At (both with lyrics by Dorothy Fields
and Jimmy McHugh), heard here respectively
in hit creator versions by Irene Dunne (1898-
1990) and Fred Astaire (1899-1987). (Further
adapted, Roberta was re-filmed in 1952, as
Lovely To Look At, by MGM). Also in 1935,
Kern scored I Dream Too Much (an RKO
vehicle concocted for the Metropolitan Opera’s
reigning French coloratura soprano star Lily
Pons) and revised (for Warner Brothers) Sweet
Adeline (the 1929 Broadway show, in which
Morgan created Why Was I Born?, had run for
234 performances). At the box office,
however, both were upstaged by his 1936
successes Show Boat or Swing Time. A
‘satisfactory but unexciting’ RKO reprise of the
Astaire-Rogers formula, this last produced an
Oscar-winner with Dorothy Fields’ The Way
You Look Tonight which, along with A Fine
Romance became an Astaire ‘No.1’ hit.
For the remainder of his life Kern was
fruitfully engaged in various Hollywood
productions. During 1937 he scored High,
Wide And Handsome (for Paramount; a
‘disappointingly stilted period musical’
(Halliwell), conceived for Dunne, about a
travelling showgirl who falls for a farmer, and
co-starring Randolph Scott and Dorothy
Lamour, this offered “Can I Forget You?” and
the timelessly nostalgic The Folks Who Live
On The Hill), while When You’re In Love (in
Great Britain known as For You Alone)
provided a starring vehicle for Metropolitan
Opera sensation Grace Moore and the youthful
Cary Grant). In 1938 came Goldwyn Follies,
for MGM, followed in 1940 by One Night in
The Tropics, a comedy for Universal. In 1941
Lady Be Good (a biographical musical ‘with
very little connection with [Gershwin’s] 1924
musical’) carried the interpolation The Last
Time I Saw Paris. Although not specifically
written for any particular show or film this
song, originally dedicated to Noël Coward,
won the film an Oscar.
In 1942, Kern collaborated with Johnny
Mercer (1909-1976) on You Were Never
Lovelier (for Columbia, a ‘pleasing musical’
vehicle for Astaire and Rita Hayworth, this
offered “I’m Old-Fashioned” and the Academy
Award nomination Dearly Beloved) and in
1944 worked with Ed ‘Yip’ Harburg (1898-
1981) on Deanna Durbin’s Can’t Help Singing
and Ira Gershwin (1896-1983) on the Oscarwinning
Cover Girl (a wartime glamour
musical for Columbia which teamed Hayworth
with Gene Kelly and also won three
nominations, including one for Long Ago And
Far Away, heard here in a contemporary US
No.6 hit cover-version by Jo Stafford). After
scoring, with Harburg and Leo Robin (1900-
1985), Centennial Summer (the film he did
not live to see, this first aired All Through
The Day), in 1945 Kern returned to New York
to collaborate with Hammerstein on a new
musical for Ethel Merman, based on the life of
the legendary sharp-shooter Annie Oakley.
However, before he could begin the work on
the show he died on 11 November, leaving the
honours for Annie, Get Your Gun to his
erstwhile rival Irving Berlin.
Peter Dempsey, 2005
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