“Laura”

Music by David Raksin
Lyric by Johnny Mercer
Introduced instrumentally as the theme from the 1944 Otto Preminger film Laura
Introduced vocally by …. See below!

Special thanks to Nick Rossi for helping with this column and also for suggesting it to begin with. Nick is writing what promises to be an even more comprehensive story about the song “Laura” for the journal Noir City, and I am really looking forward to reading that. More thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer for proofing & editing, Michael Lavine for the music, and Rob Waldman & Dan Weinstein for general kibbitzing.

Postscript 1: Sinatra, Cole Porter, and “Laura”

Bob Kimball mentions this story, but here’s a longer version of it from no less an authority than Sinatra himself, who recalls a poignant conversation that he once enjoyed with the great Cole Porter in 1956. (This is from Mr. Sinatra’s famous 1986 “Yale Interview” with Sidney Zion. Click here for video excerpt.)

It was during the same period that we were doing High Society, Mr. Porter and I were sitting, people were chatting, and I said to him, “Cole, I’m curious about one thing. If you had not written a particular song, but you found you loved it and wished you had written it, what would it be?” And he said, “Laura.” And it fractured me, because I was crazy about the song “Laura,” it’s such a beautifully written song, the lyrics and music are so beautifully intertwined. I asked him why, and he said, “I don’t know why, but Johnny Mercer and Raksin...” - the boy’s name was David Raksin who wrote it for the film, Laura. By the way, I found out later they threw him a bone, because they wanted to get him out of his contract at Fox, and they said, “Just write us a little song for the picture.” A little song for the picture! It made him a very famous man. But that to me was quite interesting that Cole Porter, who had such an enormous catalogue, chose a song by practically a beginner, Raksin was really a beginner.

At this point, Sid responds: “And then about three million Jewish girls got named Laura! I knew two million of ‘em.”

Raksin himself confirmed the Cole Porter story, telling Phil Furia (in Skylark) that Porter sent Mercer a telegram “saying ‘Laura’ was his ‘favorite song—among those he didn’t write.’” (And yes, I think it’s cute that Sinatra refers to Raksin as a “boy”; Raksin was actually three years older than Sinatra.)

Postscript 2: “The Days of Wine and Roses”

In his account, David Raksin says that Johnny Mercer had not seen the movie when he wrote the lyrics to “Laura.” I personally like to think that he eventually did watch it.

At the end of the film, no spoiler alert here, Clifton Webb (as “Waldo Lydecker,” great name, that) recites part of “Vitae Summa Brevis,” a classic poem from 1896 by the great British poet Ernest Dowson.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

Here’s the edited audio from the Laura soundtrack:

In 1962, Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini were commissioned by director Blake Edwards to write a title song for the film The Days of Wine and Roses. The movie was based on a 1958 teleplay by J. P. Miller which had taken its title from Dowson’s poem. It’s said that as soon as Mercer heard the title, he immediately recognized it as a line from Dowson. I do not doubt that Mercer was well-read enough to know Dowson’s work even before 1944, but he also would have remembered the poem from its inclusion in the film Laura—that is, assuming that once his song “Laura” was such a big hit that he actually went and watched the movie itself!

Postscript 3: “Laura”: The Verse

At the time that Robbins Music decided to commission a lyric from Johnny Mercer and publish the Laura theme as a popular song, Raksin obliged to add a verse. The verse is included in the original 1944 sheet music, but of all the thousands of recordings of “Laura,” the verse has only been performed a handful of times, including on two different albums by Michael Feinstein. Here are some versions that do utilize the verse, starting with the two by Michael. The first, a sublime performance done with just guitar accompaniment—although considering it’s the seven-string instrument of Bucky Pizzarelli, that means it’s more like a guitar and a half—and hear how he references the famous introduction by George Van Eps to Sinatra’s 1945 version of “I Don’t Know Why.” This is from a CD released in time for the Mercer centennial in 2009, in conjunction with the documentary by Clint Eastwood and the late Bruce Ricker, and the second is with the Israeli Philharmonic.

There are also two renditions by outstanding, veteran female vocalists, Chris Connor, sounding not much older than she had 30 years earlier on her 1987 release, Classic, and Joyce Breach, who uses “The Bad and the Beautiful” as introduction before she sings the verse, on her 1999 Reel Time.

Chris Connor, from the album Classic (1987)

Joyce Breach, in a medley with “The Bad and the Beautiful” from Reel Songs (1999)

And two more that do not seem to be on youtube:

Betty Buckley from Much More
Richard Rodney Bennett: Way Ahead of the Game: The Lyrics of Johnny Mercer

Postscript 4: The Lyrics

VERSE

You know the feeling
Of something half-remembered,
Of something that never happened,
Yet you recall it well.
You know the feeling
Of recognizing someone
That you’ve never met,
As far as you could tell.
Well—

REFRAIN

Laura
Is the face in the misty light, Footsteps
That you hear down the hall,
The laugh
That floats on a summer night
That you can never quite Recall.

And you see Laura
On the train that is passing through,”
Those eyes,
How familiar they seem! She gave
Your very first kiss to you.
That was Laura,
But she’s only a dream.

Postscript 5: David Raksin conducts and sings “Laura” Live on Video, 1988

A concert dance starring that excellent musician / historian / raconteur, the sadly late Ian Whitcomb. Shared by Daniel Weinstein, who informs us: “ Ian Whitcomb & his Dance Band~Part 6 of 13 @ The Los Angeles Variety Arts Garden ~ 1988. Therein you will see/hear David Raksin singing Laura to Ian's band playing the stock arrangement, written by Mark Winstein (no relation!) and including myself in trombone (I get to play the melody. Thank you, Bill Harris!)”

Postscript 6: apocrypha

A google search for the complete lyrics (including the verse) yielded this “alternate” verse, but after doing one of my customary deep dives, I can’t find anything else about it, or even where it came from. Can this be one of those AI “hallucinations” that we keep hearing about? Somehow it seems appropriate for a song about a half-remembered woman that may not even actually exist.

You can give your heart to a melody,
Or a poem that you happen to know.
You can look back on a memory,
That was yours in the long ago.
You can think of a face you used to see,
In the guttering candlelight,
But there’s never a face in a melody,
That can haunt you night after night, like...
(Chorus: “Laura is the face in the misty light...”)

Postscript 7: A Brief Bit about Sinatra and “Laura”

Sinatra first started singing it on the air in April 1945, but didn’t make a recording of the song until October 1947. A few months earlier, he had already recorded “Stella by Starlight,” the film theme by Victor Young, with lyrics by the brilliant and perennially underappreciated Ned Washington, another tale of an ethereal woman who may not actually exist. Both of these classic 1947 Columbia Recordings had amazing orchestrations by Axel Stordahl. Here’s what I had to say about them in Sinatra! The Song is You.

“Was it a vision,” Keats asks in “Ode to a Nightingale,” “or a waking dream?” Stordahl decorates “Laura,” a noir song about a dream girl, vividly imagined but, in the lyric at least, ultimately unreal, with surreal, dreamlike motifs. Pizzicato violins suggest “footsteps that you hear down the hall,” and the muffled French horns together with a flute distant enough to be several blocks away enhance the quality of the scenario. For a closer, Sinatra seems to dissolve into the ether, like a movie flashback where everybody’s faces get all mushy and wavy. “Stella by Starlight” (from the Ray Milland ghost story The Uninvited) showcases Stordahl’s ability to create the moody presence of otherworldly enti- ties via spooky one-finger piano passages and bass lines that go bump in the night. “Laura” and “Stella” are perfect embodiments of the Sinatra-Stordahl ideal; they’re depicted so vividly that you could almost swear that they were real, and not just characters in a song—characters who aren’t even really there to begin with since “Stella” is a ghost and “Laura” exists only in a dream.

Postscript 8: More Sheet Music Covers
(collect them all!—That’s a lotta “Laura!”)

Johnny Johnston #1, Perry Como, Dick Haymes
Tommy Dorsey, Dinah Shore, Johnny Johnston #2
Jerry Wald, Freddy Martin, Hal McIntyre
Woody Herman #1, Woody Herman #2

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

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“Laura”

Music by David Raksin
Lyric by Johnny Mercer
Introduced instrumentally as the theme from the 1944 Otto Preminger film Laura
Introduced vocally by …. See below!

Special thanks to Nick Rossi for helping with this column and also for suggesting it to begin with. Nick is writing what promises to be an even more comprehensive story about the song “Laura” for the journal Noir City, and I am really looking forward to reading that. More thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer for proofing & editing, Michael Lavine for the music, and Rob Waldman & Dan Weinstein for general kibbitzing.

Is “Laura” the most significant song from a major motion picture to never even be nominated for an Academy Award (™)?

1944 was a great year for music and also for movies: 12 songs were nominated, many of which were notable for being especially tailored for the WW2 era that birthed them, especially the year’s big winner, “Swingin’ on a Star.” Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke wrote this for Bing Crosby, by far the most popular singing star of Hollywood’s studio era, in what would be his most successful movie role to date, Going My Way. There were other 1944 movie songs that also became all-time standards, including “Long Ago and Far Away” from Cover Girl and “The Trolley Song” from Meet Me in St. Louis. Some of the nominated songs are beloved by music buffs like me, like “I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night” from Higher and Higher and “I’ll Walk Alone” from Follow the Boys. And there’s at least one 1944 Academy Award-nominated song that is best remembered by future generations because of Bugs Bunny: “Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart” from Hollywood Canteen.

But then there are some that are, frankly, head-scratchers even for those of us rather extreme song buffs, among them “Remember Me to Carolina” from Minstrel Man and “Silver Shadows and Golden Dreams” from Lady, Let’s Dance. I can only assume that the Academy members nominated these because of their fondness for minstrel shows and ice dancing. And there’s another puzzler: the all-time jazz and pop standard “Brazil” by the great Carioca composer Ary Barroso, which was officially introduced in the 1944 Republic Pictures Brazil aka Stars and Guitars, even though it’s barely heard in that B-musical.

But “Laura?” Not even nominated! Furthermore, Steve Lawrence and Billy May did not even include it on their great 1964 album Academy Award Losers.

I think it’s safe to say that “Laura” has become, over the decades, by far the most widely loved, recorded, and performed movie song of the 1944 season, and quite possibly of the entire decade. And as my colleague, guitarist and historian Nick Rossi, points out, “Laura” might be the most successful song introduced in a film noir. There are a few challengers, starting with Matt Dennis and Earl Brent’s masterpiece “Angel Eyes” from Jennifer (1953) and “Stella by Starlight” from The Uninvited (1944), although the latter is perhaps more of a supernatural / horror film than a crime-oriented / noir film. Perhaps the Academy was only considering songs that were introduced in movie musicals, which would explain why none of the three songs referenced here, “Laura,” “Stella by Starlight,” and “Angel Eyes,” songs that have all been massively popular standards over the last 70-80 years, were nominated by the Academy.

Fortunately, David Raksin, composer of “Laura,” did receive a nomination for one of his 1944 assignments, Forever Amber, which was nom’d for “Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture”; perhaps ironically, that movie (based on a novel by one of Artie Shaw’s many wives) and its music are not remembered nearly as well as “Laura.” “Laura” is also one of only a few songs by the immensely talented Raksin to become something of a standard: “Smile” did not give him the proper credit (his contribution is still not acknowledged by the publisher) and “The Bad and the Beautiful” is mainly known only by jazz buffs through the superlative recording by Bill Evans.

“Laura” might not have been considered by the Academy (™) because it didn’t become a proper song with lyrics until several months after the fact. Both Laura and To Have and to Have Not, which sports another all-time classic song in “How Little We Know?” were released on October 11, followed by Meet Me In St. Louis about ten days later on the 22nd. (Like I say, a great year for movies and music.) The “Laura” theme is only heard instrumentally in the movie. and the lyric wasn’t unveiled until around February 1945, which was too late for the 1944 Academy Awards ceremony, held on March 15, 1945.

At the time, 20th Century Fox did not own their own music publishing firm, but they partnered with Robbins Music, based in the Brill Building in New York. Robbins executive Abe Olman was the firm’s chief liason with Fox, and it was Olman’s idea to turn the Laura theme into a popular song. According to our great friend, the late Bob Kimball, Johnny Mercer was actually their third choice: first they went to Oscar Hammerstein II (who was currently engaged in writing State Fair with his new partner Richard Rodgers for Fox) and then Irving Caesar, an old-timer whose hits were mostly long behind him. As Raksin told Michael Feinstein, Caesar actually wrote a lyric, and titled his version of the song “Two Dreams,” but Raksin wisely rejected it.

As Raksin told the late Phil Furia for his biography of Mercer (Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer) :

“It was an abominable lyric.” Abe Olman thought Caesar’s lyric was serviceable and turned to Raksin asking, “Who are you to turn this down?”
“The composer, that’s who.”
A songwriter himself, Olman could sympathize with the young composer. “Well, who would you like?”
“Well, there’s a guy I don’t know, but he’s such a wonderful lyricist I would adore to have him.”
“Who’s that?”
“Johnny Mercer.”
“Oh, I know him.”

At this point, Olman dispatched a telegram to Mercer:

“DEAR JOHNNY HAVE PHONED DAVE RAKSIN TO CONTACT YOU IN REGARD TO THE LYRIC FOR THE MELODY FROM LAURA TREMENDOUS CALLS FOR THIS TUNE FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY AND POSITIVE IT CAN BE A NUMBER ONE HIT STUDIO ADVISES THEY HAVE RECEIVED SEVERAL THOUSAND LETTERS CONCERNING SONG HOPE YOU CAN HOP ON IT RIGHT AWAY”

In 1944, Mercer was writing mostly for Paramount Pictures (Here Come the Waves, Out of this World) and was soon to win his first of four Oscars for the classic MGM musical The Harvey Girls, released in January 1946.

As Bob Kimball reports:

Mercer wanted to use the title “Footsteps in the Dark.” He hadn’t even seen the movie—”I simply absorbed the tune and let it create an atmosphere for me.” Raksin said, “I thought Johnny’s achievement was amazing, that he should get that feeling into a lyric. And I know he worked hard, sweated blood sometimes, but you would never have known it. He would show up without a hair out of place—with this thing he had written on the tip of his little finger.”

Bob also quotes Mercer himself:

“If a fellow plays me a melody that sounds like something, well, I try and fit the words to the sound of the melody. It has a mood and if I can capture that mood, that’s the way we go about it. Laura was that kind of picture. It was predesigned, because Laura was a mystery. So I had to write “Laura” with kind of a misterioso theme.

That’s hard, because there are so few notes. And because the intervals are tough, the key changes are strange. And at the time it came out, it was most strange. But since it has become so popular, it’s easier now. But that kind of song is always difficult, because you have to write a lyric that’s going to be a hit, and you don’t have many notes to work with.”

(Above, the King Cole Trio’s MacGregor transcription of “Laura” with Nat singing, probably recorded in Spring 1945. Below, Nat’s piano instrumental version of the song from the 1952 album Penthouse Serenades.)

As Raksin told Gene Lees (for his biography, Portrait of Johnny):

So Johnny came to see me. He said, ‘Oh boy, what a great tune.’ I gave him a copy of the tune and an acetate. He came back in a few days with the lyric. Somebody later said to me that I had changed the lyric. I said, ‘I can just see myself changing Mercer’s lyric!’ It turned out that Johnny had two places where he had different words and couldn’t choose and asked my opinion. I told him, ‘I prefer this one,’ ‘I prefer that one.’ And he accepted that.

The vocal versions of “Laura” start appearing around February 1945. Nat King Cole may have been the first; after all, Johnny Mercer was a friend, and as a cofounder of Capitol Records, for a time he served as Nat’s hands-on producer. Nat and the King Cole Trio, with bassist Johnny Miller and guitar legend Oscar Moore, recorded “Laura” not for Capitol, unfortunately, but for a MacGregor transcription. The date is sometimes given as May 1944, but this is almost certainly wrong; February or March 1945 is much more likely. (Nat never sang “Laura” on a commercial Capitol Recording, but he recorded a lovely piano instrumental version in 1952 for his album Penthouse Serenades.)

Then in February, there were two versions by big-name big bands, both made for Columbia Records: Harry James and his Orchestra with a vocal by Buddy DeVito on the 14th, and then Woody Herman on the 19th. This proved to be a major break for Herman, who had just switched recording affiliations, from Decca Records to Columbia. As Woody told Stuart Troup, the co-author of his posthumous memoir The Woodchopper’s Ball (1990):

It was still wartime, and companies could press only a limited number of records for an artist before moving on to another artist. So I made a deal.

“Don’t worry about the guarantees,” I told Columbia. [I presume that Woody means label head Mannie Sachs.] “Just give me as much publicity as your top two artists.” The top two Columbia artists then were Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore. Every time Columbia put an ad in a trade paper, I got one. That drove the other bandleaders crazy—Les Brown, Harry James. They couldn’t figure it out. Sinatra would be on one page, Dinah Shore on the other, and I would be on the next: “Columbia Records presents …” We became Number One in the country because of that as much as anything. It pushed us to the very peak of popularity.

It also helped Woody attain the upper brackets of mass market popularity that he happened to record “Laura.” As he tells the tale:

“Laura” was the first side we recorded on our first Columbia date, and it was also our first release. I had seen the movie, heard the theme and liked it. Harry James was Columbia’s big band then, and he thought he had it sewed up. He recorded it a few days after {sic} us, but Columbia scrapped his and released ours.

“I had arranged with Johnny Mercer to sing his lyric. We were performing at the Meadowbrook in New Jersey when we went into the studio in New York on February 19, 1945, to make the cut. It became a smash hit. Columbia had a gold record made as a special gift to me, even though the record hadn’t really sold a million copies. It couldn’t, because the companies weren’t allowed to press that many. But Columbia gave me the gold record as a token. Over a period of years, it finally did sell a million.”

Woody was more specific when he related the story to his longtime superfan, the late George Hall (a close friend of mine). As Woody told George, the band was set to record “Laura” as an instrumental. The Herd was then playing at the Meadowbrook in the evenings and set to record at 799 Seventh Avenue that same day. Woody was staying at a hotel in Manhattan and he was on his way over to the studio to do his first date for Columbia, when, unexpectedly, he spotted the gap-toothed, huckleberry face of Johnny Mercer, waiting for him in the lobby. The two took a cab over to the studio, and, on the way, Mercer showed Herman his newly-penned, handwritten lyrics to “Laura.” Herman quickly made an executive decision to make a vocal version of the theme, with himself singing.

(There are, not surprisingly, holes in all these stories: it seems unlikely that Ralph Burns could have rewritten the entire arrangement to fit a vocal chorus that quickly, and, contrary to Woody’s recollection decades later, the James version had been waxed five days before—not after—the one by Woody and the Herd. It’s also quite telling that Mercer knew that Woody was the one to sing it, and even though he was a partner in Capitol Records, he gifted it to Woody rather than a Capitol artist or band. Of course, I have no doubt that Nat Cole immediately wished that he had officially sung it for an Capitol Records release.)

In 1945, the Herman Herd had an outstanding vocalist in Frances Wayne, who was soon to marry trumpeter and arranger Neal Hefti, but it was decided that the lyric of “Laura” better suited a male singer. The only boy vocalist with the Herd was the leader himself, although he mainly shouted the blues and novelty numbers. “Laura” was Woody’s first great ballad vocal, and, as many have noted, showed what a great singer of love songs he could be, leading the way to such efforts as his album with Erroll Garner, Songs for Tired Lovers, which, although the title is an obvious gag, is a lovely album of ballads. (Daniel Weinstein reminds me that the 1941 “T’is Autumn” is also another early example of Woody crooning a more “serious” song.)

Played today, the James record is relatively generic: Buddy DeVito has a beautiful voice but little individuality; he seems like a road company Sinatra, although this is notable at a moment when most big band baritones still were imitating Bing Crosby. The James arrangement, which features a big string section, sounds rather like an anonymous Hollywood studio orchestra. In fact, the James “Laura” sounds like the opening half of the famous Spike Jones RCA record, in which the “other orchestra” plays it completely straight before the City Slickers come in and tear it to pieces. Spike Jones actually plays about eight bars of the Raksin theme as kind of a Hollywood rhumba a la Desi Arnaz.

(Rob Waldman and I were speculating as to whether the first half of the Spike version might have been arranged by Richard Jones, Spike’s younger brother. Dick Jones who went on to a consequential career as an arranger-conductor-producer of easy listening albums for Capitol Records, and worked frequently with Sinatra in the mid-1950s. One of these albums, the 1957 Stringtime, in fact, contains a very fiddle-heavy arrangement of “Laura.”)

The Ralph Burns / Woody Herman version, however, is modish, stylish, and highly noir-ish, and Woody’s Johnny Hodges-inspired alto saxophone solo is as much of a selling point as his singing. You can hear why Columbia issued Herman over Harry. The Herman / Burns version also boasts short but effective solos by vibraphonist Marjorie Hyams and trombonist Bill Harris.

George Hall, being almost as much of a nerd as I am, mentioned to Woody that the James record was eventually issued almost 25 years later on a Harmony LP, which was actually titled Laura. Woody responded, “Well, if it wasn’t for Ralph’s great chart, then Columbia would have issued Harry’s version and put mine on a Harmony LP 25 years later.”

VERSE (About which there will be more information in part two)

You know the feeling
Of something half-remembered,
Of something that never happened,
Yet you recall it well.
You know the feeling
Of recognizing someone
That you’ve never met,
As far as you could tell.
Well—

REFRAIN

Laura
Is the face in the misty light, Footsteps
That you hear down the hall,
The laugh
That floats on a summer night
That you can never quite Recall.

And you see Laura
On the train that is passing through,”
Those eyes,
How familiar they seem! She gave
Your very first kiss to you.
That was Laura,
But she’s only a dream.

Part Two will include:

Everything you wanted to know about the rare verse to “Laura”
The Story about Sinatra, Cole Porter, and “Laura”
And the connection between Laura and The Days of Wine and Roses!

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Most of us of my generation grew up with peak Mad through the reprint paperbacks that were omnipresent in the 1970s. That’s where I first encountered my all-time personal favorite piece, “If Famous Authors Wrote the Comics” from Mad #46 (April 1959), text by Frank Jacobs, and artwork by Wally Wood. In addition to having a distinctive visual style of his own, which I most strongly remember from his run on Marvel’s Daredevil in the mid-1960s, Wood was an expert visual mimic—in this piece, he accurately captures the drawing style of Charles Schultz, Ernie Bushmiller, Chester Gould, Harold Gray, and other iconic creators of the funny papers.

I’ve included the whole story below, and isolated my two favorites. The combination of Tennessee Williams and Little Orphan Annie is a particular mini-masterpiece, especially in the way Jacobs simultaneously captures both Williams’s southern affectations and Annie’s vintage 1930s slanguage: “Ah told yuh never to tell me thet, Little Annie…”

There were, however, a couple of omissions: Wood supplied a caricature of William Shakespeare, rendered as if he were a comic strip artist, seated at a large drafting table, with (presumably) his illustrations pinned up on a board behind him. And yet there was no specifically Shakespearian gag in the piece. Likewise, Jacobs and Wood somehow neglected to provide a famous author to detail the exploits of our favorite spinach-chomping sailorman, Popeye.

(Side note: the late Sheldon Harnick was a lifelong devotee of Gilbert & Sullivan and was proud to acknowledge their influence on his work. In one of our final conversations, I shared this G&S parody with him. He hadn’t seen it before—and he agreed was pretty brilliant.)

So I came up with some verbiage, and went to my friend Michael Kraus. With the help of AI, we managed to come up with this. (The visuals are by CHAT but the blame for the text falls on me.)

(PS: Mad magazine notwithstanding, there’s at least one previously documented instance when Popeye went all Shakespearian on us, spoofing The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet this time, in a 1940 Fleischer Brothers cartoon illustrated below.)

Coming soon:

If William Faulkner wrote “Li’l Abner”

If Hunter S. Thompson wrote “Doonesbury”

If Jack Kerouac wrote “Archie”

If Tom Stoppard wrote “Calvin and Hobbes”

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Hello Bluebird! (SSS #211 2026-08-22)
Listen: + Playlist:

Buddy Greco @ 100 with Courtney Newman (SSS #210 2026-08-15)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jimmy Van Heusen: “On the Road with Bing & Bob”
(SSS #209 2026-08-08)
Listen: + Playlist:

Tony Bennett @ 100: “Ultimate Mr. Broadway” (SSS #208 2026-08-01)
Listen: + Playlist:

Louis Armstrong: The Great African-American Songbook
(SSS #207 2026-07-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

Bastille Day! Jacques Brel (SSS #206 2026-07-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz Goes Broadway! West Side Story
(SSS #205 2026-07-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Wednesday August 15, 1956:

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (and his All Stars) join the Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe as part of an all-star concert produced by Norman Granz at the Hollywood Bowl. The results are issued as the two-LP package (with more material being added in the CD era) as Jazz at the Hollywood Bowl.

That same night, Nat King Cole and Harry Sweets Edison go to a baseball game. Their team, that is the local team—quite possibly the Los Angeles Angels, part of the Pacific Coast league—wins. Nat and Sweets are so elated that, after the game, late in the evening, they gather the rest of Nat’s touring rhythm section (guitarist John Collins, bassist Charlie Harris, and drummer Lee Young) into Studio C at the Capitol Tower and record the first five tracks for what will become Cole’s best-remembered jazz album After Midnight.

Thursday August 16, 1956:

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong go into another studio at the Capitol Tower and record the whole of their first full album together, Ella and Louis, with a rhythm section of Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich.

Nat King Cole, joined by his daughter, Natalie (then six years old), his producer, Lee Gillette (with mustache), and his manager. Carlos Gastel, pay a call on Ella and Louis at the Capitol studio. Phil Stern is on hand to take a very famous photo. (However, part of me likes to imagine that Oscar, who was an avid amateur photographer, took the shot—because he isn’t actually in the photo.) Note that Ella and Louis are wearing the same clothes that they are in the very famous Ella and Louis cover photo by Phil Stern.

PS: the Blue Note Tone Poet series is putting out a special 70th anniversary edition of After Midnight this Fall. (Yes, I am involved! If anybody requests it, I will run those album notes here on Substack.) Keep watching this space for details.

Here are some playlists (courtesy youtube):

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Buddy Greco @ 100 with Courtney Newman (SSS #210 2026-08-15)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jimmy Van Heusen: “On the Road with Bing & Bob”
(SSS #209 2026-08-08)
Listen: + Playlist:

Tony Bennett @ 100: “Ultimate Mr. Broadway” (SSS #208 2026-08-01)
Listen: + Playlist:

Louis Armstrong: The Great African-American Songbook
(SSS #207 2026-07-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

Bastille Day! Jacques Brel (SSS #206 2026-07-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz Goes Broadway! West Side Story
(SSS #205 2026-07-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This time special thanks to the very great Mark Cantor, as well as to Michael Lavine for finding the “Flying Home” (Sid Robin edition) sheet music, and as usual to Elizabeth Zimmer, Daniel Weinstein & Nick Rossi. Yes!

Okay, the title of this post is deliberately provocative and admittedly an exaggeration: Mike Stoller and the late Jerry Leiber, as producers perhaps even more than as songwriters, are among the major auteurs in all of American music, but they didn’t invent what jazz fans call vocalese. (As Lewis Porter explains, the usage of this term was coined by Leonard Feather.) However, Jerry & Mike do deserve at least a little credit for being among its earliest practitioners. Their vocalese lyric to the big band classic “Flying Home” was recorded on January 30, 1952, three weeks or so before King Pleasure’s breakthrough “I’m in the Mood for Love (Moody’s Mood for Love)” on February 19, 1952, and nine months before Annie Ross’s landmark “Twisted” on October 9, 1952. (Yes, they deserve “Props” for a song about “Flying.” Ha!)

Our buddy, Professor Lewis Porter, has given us a comprehensive survey of the early pre-history of vocalese, before Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, and his first (of four) installments is to be found here.

By 1952, “Flying Home” was already one of the most iconic numbers in jazz or American pop, and Jerry and Mike, being major jazz fans as well as scholars and practitioners of the blues, both grew up with the classic Lionel Hampton recording, with its much-memorized tenor saxophone solo by Illinois Jacquet.

The team briefly mentions some of the backstory behind this very unusual lyric in their collective memoir, Hound Dog, written with the resourceful David Ritz. Around 1951—they were both 17 or 18 at the time—they were doing some work for Harry Goodman. Goodman (1906-1997) is best known to jazz history as Benny’s older brother and a highly competent professional bass player, who played a key role in the rhythm section of some of Benny’s most celebrated bands. However, in the larger picture, Harry Goodman was much more active as a music publisher. Based in the Brill Building, he started his publishing company, Regent Music, initially as Benny’s business partner, and their younger brother, Gene, previously Benny’s band boy, also part of the firm. Their first copyrights were mostly Benny’s big band instrumentals. By the 1950s, Regent Music was leaning heavily into rhythm & blues, as it was starting to be called, which was clearly going to be the next big trend in music.

“The fact that we were selling songs didn’t excite our ambition; it was hearing those songs sung by master singers that had us running back to Mike’s little upright piano. At the same time, we inevitably ran into the characters—some shady, some legit—who hung around the edges of the business.

Harry Goodman ran his brother Benny’s publishing firm. Harry was the guy who got us to put words to “Flying Home,” a Benny Goodman—Lionel Hampton composition. Not only did he work Benny’s tunes, but he had a publishing deal with Chess Records. That meant he needed blues songs, and we assured him that the blues was our specialty.

“You got hits?” Harry asked.

“We got hits,” I answered.

And that’s all they have to say about it. I used to be in touch with Mike (who, by the way, recently, at the age of 90-something, composed the excellent score to the 2025 Broadway musical version of Beaches), his wife Corky Hale, and Mike’s son, Peter Stoller, but I haven’t been in contact with them for a while. I would love to find out more, specifically how it occurred to them to write a full-on, Jon Hendricks-style vocalese lyric to this arrangement when that was a very new concept.

As far as I can tell, the Leiber & Stoller “Flying Home” has been recorded three times. First, as I mentioned above, on February 19, 1952 by Amos Milburn for Chess Records. Then again, by Chris Connor, on July 31, 1958, in a session produced by L&S, around the time that the highly influential original LHR debut album Sing a Song of Basie was about to be released.

Unlike most of Jon Hendricks’s vocalese adaptations of classic jazz instrumentals, Leiber & Stoller’s text to “Flying Home” only covers about half of the famous record, cutting off just a few choruses into the tenor sax solo and not including any of the tutti shout chorus at the end.

Amos Milburn and His Aladdin Chickenshackers: Amos Milburn (piano and vocals), Maxwell Davis – Tenor Saxophone (musical director and tenor saxophone), Billie Smith (tenor saxophone), Jewell Grant & Leroy Robinson (alto & baritone Saxophone), Johnny Moore (guitar), Lloyd Trotman (bass),Jesse Sailes (drums), Los Angeles, January 19, 1952 (On this recording, Maxwell Davis plays an actual tenor solo in homage to Illinois Jacquet.)

Chris Connor with unknown orchestra and chorus, New York, July 31, 1958. No one else is credited, i.e., no conductor or arranger, but there is a credit: “Special Lyrics by Leiber & Stoller.”

And, more recently, there’s a third recording of the L & S lyric, by the contemporary, Chicago-based jazz singer Rose Colella in 2014. According to Tom Lord, the personnel is: Chris Madsen (saxophone), Dan Murphy (piano), Dan Effland (guitar), Joe Policastro (bass), Mikel Avery (drums).

“Flying Home” lyrics: The Prequel

And it turns out that when Regent Music Corp. (1619 Broadway) first published the song in 1941, there was a lyric included, by Sid Robin. Sydney Robin (1912-1986) was a lifelong New Yorker and apparently not related to the very successful lyricist Leo Robin (from Pittsburgh). He spent most of his songwriting career collaborating with more famous African-American musicians and composers, and ultimately contributed the words to roughly three jazz standards that most everybody reading this will know: “I Miss You So” (associated with the Cats and the Fiddle, also recorded by The King Cole Trio and Chris Connor, among others), “Harlem Nocturne” (the Earle Hagen theme, an instrumental hit for Earl Bostic, but sung wonderfully by Mel Tormé and others), and “Monday Every Day” (for which Robin apparently wrote both words and music, and which was sung definitively by the great Al Hibbler, and also sung wonderfully by Jo Stafford). He also worked on a number of songs with Louis Jordan, including “Look Out, Sister.”

While I think all of the songs listed above are excellent, I have to admit that Robin’s lyrics to “Flying Home” are far from his best, and they probably derived from the usual situation in the big band era when a publisher has what he thinks will be a hit but he feels that it has to have a lyric, even a perfunctory one. (Oh I could write a lot about those! A few examples: “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” words by Andy Razaf, “A String of Pearls,” words by Eddie DeLange, and many, many tunes by Raymond Scott and Maxwell Anderson, although some of those worked out very well, especially “Sleigh Ride.”)

It seems like Harry Goodman realized that the Robin text wasn’t very good—after ten years nobody wanted to sing it—so perhaps that’s why he commissioned a new lyric from Jerry and Mike. Between the two different sets of words for “Flying Home,” the curious point is that the 1941 Sid Robin lyric was officially published but, as far as I can tell, never sung or recorded by anybody. Contrastingly, the 1951 lyric by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller was recorded at least three times (1952, 1958, 2014) but never actually published as sheet music.

“Flying Home” lyrics: The Postscript

Thanks to George Connolly for pulling my coat-tails to this third completely different lyric. The British entertainer, Georgie Fame (born Clive Powell in 1943), who has been active in jazz, pop, and blues circles since the mid-1960s, also wrote his own set of words as part of a rather unusual Benny Goodman songbook / tribute album in 1983 with the somewhat ungainly title In Goodmansland. This was a set of duets with the Swedish pop and jazz artist Sylvia Vrethammar (I know what you’re thinking, but no, apparently she wasn’t one of the Abbas). It’s actually not a bad album, in a British jazz / R&B guy-meets-Swedish pop star kind of way, and kudos to them for doing a Benny Goodman project. The mix on the recording is kind of mushy, and a lot of the words are unclear, but below, my buddy Tom Buckley helped me to transcribe this set of words as well, although I can’t blame him for obvious errors.

A few additional notes regarding the classic Lionel Hampton / Illinois Jacquet record:

Nick Rossi reminds us that the actual riff that inspired the song is is by Charlie Christian, who doesn’t get credit, although Benny Goodman (who also published it) and Lionel Hampton (who made it into a big band classic) do.

From Daniel Weinstein: First, a clarification of the structure of the 1942 Lionel Hampton big band version (the previous versions, by the Benny Goodman Sextet with Charlie Christian in 1939 and by a Lionel Hampton pick-up group on Victor in 1940, do not follow this structure.)

The 1942 record starts with a 4 bar intro featuring Hamp’s vibes;

1st chorus in Ab Major - ensemble 16 bars followed by 16 bars of Hamp’s vibes improvising over the bridge and the last 8, with a different riff by the sax section;

2nd and 3rd choruses in Ab Major - Illinois Jacquet’s iconic solo; 2 bar modulation by Hamp’s vibes;

1st shout chorus in Db Major (including screaming trumpet responses to Hamp on the bridge by Ernie Royal);

2nd shout (1/2 chorus only,) beginning on the bridge (with further call and response between Hamp and Royal) and concluding with the last 8 bars.

The Leiber and Stoller lyrics are fitted to both the melody and to the first chorus only of Jacquet’s solo. The Amos Milburn record has Milburn singing the melody and solo lyrics in F Major, after which the key changes abruptly to Ab for Maxwell Davis’ take on Jacquet’s solo. I am guessing that the second chorus of Jacquet’s solo, consisting in the first 16 bars of one note repeated in a syncopated fashion, did not strike L&S as fodder for further clever lyrics (anything further, Fodder?)

Final note: The iconic Jacquet solo starts with a few notes from “Ah, so pure” (”M’apparì tutt’amor” or “Ach so fromm”) from Friedrich von Flotow’s opera Martha (1847). In 1942, this was one of the most recognizable pieces of music in the world, 85 years later, “Martha” is mainly remembered for its jazz interpretations (Fats Waller, Adrian Rollini, Connie Boswell and The Bobcats) and as a quotation source in the Jacquet solo. It’s interesting how the different lyric writers come up with different words for those notes.

FLYING HOME
The Leiber & Stoller lyric, and how it connects to the Lionel Hampton & Illinois Jacquet record:

(Full ensemble)

Flying home, I just got my reservation
Flying home, cuttin’ straight across the nation
Flying home, won’t you meet me at the station
Gotta be with you.

I’m flying home, sproutin’ wings upon my back,
I’m flying home, hoppin’ on the fastest track,
I’m flying home, baby, won’t you take me back
I got to be with you.

(Hampton’s brief vibraphone solo)

Ever since I went away, I’ve been feelin’ blue
Packing up my clothes today, flying home to you.

(Hampton + full ensemble)
Flying home, caught a plane that’s really jumpin’
Flying home, I can hear my heart a-thumpin’
Flying home, gee, I want to tell you something
Gotta be with you.

(Illinois Jacquet tenor saxophone solo)
One rainy day I went away
But now I’m flyin’ on home
Yes, I’m flyin’ home to stay.

Why was I so mean to you?
How could I have made you blue?
Every time I think of what I did,
I start to a-cryin’ too.

But now that’s over,
We’ll start anew.
Baby, soon we’ll be in clover
And then we’ll do the many things
That we wanted to do
Tears will be forgotten

I’m flyin’, flyin’, flyin’
Fast as I can go, dear
Don’t you want to know, dear
I’m flyin’, flyin’, flyin’
Flyin’ on home to you

On the Amos Milburn disc, there’s a tenor saxophone solo by Maxwell Davis at this point, which quotes and references the iconic Jacquet solo.

“Flying Home”
The 1941 lyric by Sid Robin:

Flying home, to a place that’s always sunny.
Flying home, with my pockets full of money.
Flying home, to my little hometown honey.
Waitin’ for me there.

C’mon let’s go, don’t you mind this sudden flurry,
Don’t you know, that I’m in an awful hurry,
Ain’t it so, that my baby’s gonna worry
If I don’t get there.

My heart is burnin’
Ever since I’ve been learnin’ how I missed her (him)
Now I can stand it,
Won’t you please understand

I’ve been lonesome,
Living by my ownsome
Flying home, from now on there’s no more grievin’,
I won’t roam, once I’m there I’m never leavin’,
Flying home to that love I’ll be receivin’,

We’ll be so happy
That’s why I’m flying home.

FLYING HOME
1983 lyric by Georgie Fame:

Checking out, got my reservation,
And there ain’t no doubt about the situation.
Now I’m heading south to the destination;
People, soon I’ll be flying.

Hold the phone, let it keep ringing.
I’m flying home—listen to me singing.
And the more I go, now I’m really winging,
And you know I’m not lying.

We gotta go, and don’t you know
It’s really fun up in the sun.
Kick off your shoes, forget your blues;
Fasten your belts, all aboard—
(Moving all the way.)

Taking off, leaving all the paperwork.
I’ve had enough; you can do the dirty work.
Life is tough if you’re in the middle of it—
That’s why I’m flying.

(start of tenor saxophone solo section)

Ooh-wee, don’t you agree?
I’ll be with you above the clouds.
It’s really amazing scenery
The sky has a rosy hue;
I know that you’ll dig it too.

[Several lines unclear beneath the music]
Nobody around to slow us Down,
We promise fun for everyone

Soaring and feeling free,
Every now and then [I’ll be with you? I’ll look at you?].
Oh, what a party—you and me,
Heavenly.

[Several lines unclear - this is best I can figure out]
We’ll have a rapture sort of time
And man, everything will turn out fine.
See there’s no other way
So we’ll take “the right stuff” every time

Ooh, we better be
Fast! Slow! Let’s Go!

(clarinet solo)
[Instrumental section]

He’s one happy fellow
[In his head, out of the valley].
See his girl—now tell us,
She’s a real winner, like a humdinger
[No one thinks of service, never one for fun].
Go ahead, raise the character curtain,
On the biggest aeronautic show in all the world.
Flying home!

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Buddy Greco @ 100 with Courtney Newman (SSS #210 2026-08-15)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jimmy Van Heusen: “On the Road with Bing & Bob”
(SSS #209 2026-08-08)
Listen: + Playlist:

Tony Bennett @ 100: “Ultimate Mr. Broadway” (SSS #208 2026-08-01)
Listen: + Playlist:

Louis Armstrong: The Great African-American Songbook
(SSS #207 2026-07-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

Bastille Day! Jacques Brel (SSS #206 2026-07-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz Goes Broadway! West Side Story
(SSS #205 2026-07-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Very special thanks this week (in particular) to the indefatigable Rob “On the Job” Lester for his very special help, not only in proofing but in researching this week’s entry. Way to go, Rob! Thanks also, as always, to Elizabeth Zimmer. Yes!

“The Banjo (That Man Joe Plays)”
By Cole Porter
Introduced by William Stephens in the London revue Wake Up and Dream! (1929)
Recorded by Jack Hylton and his Orchestra, March 26, 1929 (HMV B-5622)

“The Banjo (That Man Joe Plays)” is, to put it mildly, a unique entry in the Cole Porter canon. It taps into two traditions, both of which Porter rarely addressed again in any other song.

First, in the late ‘20s, there was a succession of pop songs celebrating the instruments of the orchestra and certain fictitious musicians who had what these songs describe as a superhuman ability to play them.

The central thesis in this particular continuum was “Piccolo Pete,” by the Texas-born composer and bandleader Phil Baxter, a major hit for Ted Weems and his Orchestra. There would be dozens, going into the 1940s, including a whole subgenre of organ grinder songs and another series about drummers. (I will list a representative few of these below with Youtube links. (And at some point I am going to compile a whole program of these: Sing Sing Sing Celebrates the Orchestra!)

“Piccolo Pete” (Phil Baxter) Ted Weems and his Orchestra

“Harmonica Harry” (also Phil Baxter) and also Ted Weems and his Orchestra

“Accordion Joe” (Cornell Smelser)

Recorded by Smelser with an all-star orchestra:

“Sam. the Old Accordion Man” (Walter Donaldson)

“Sam” was first recorded by The Williams Sisters at the end of 1926 but more famously recorded by Ruth Etting in 1927 and then recreated by Doris Day in the Etting biopic Love Me or Leave Me (1955).

The quirky composer Herman Hupfeld, who is best known to history for “As Time Goes By,” actually wrote two notable novelty songs about instruments and instrumentalists of almost mythic prowess:

“Goopy Geer (He Plays Piano and He Plays by Ear)”

This 1932 song seems to have only been recorded in England, but it was also the basis for a very early Merrie Melodies cartoon.

Is it a coincidence that two of Hupfeld’s early songs were used in Warner Bros. cartoons? This is ten years before his most famous song would play a key role in the most celebrated WB movie ever, Casablanca. “When Yuba plays the Rumba on the Tuba” was a major hit for Hupfeld, and, unbelievably, at the time of its release, was much more popular than “As Time Goes By.” The song was extensively featured in the 1938 Merrie Melodies short You’re an Education, directed by Frank Tashlin. (Side note: In 1931, “Yuba” was one of the very first North American songs written in what was then the Cuban rhythm known as “the rhumba,” which had recently been introduced to North American listeners via the breakout hit, “The Peanut Vendor.” And yes, Hupfeld’s lyrics to “Yuba” include a side swipe at “The Peanut Vendor.”)

The Revellers:

and in the 1938 Merrie Melodies short, You’re an Education:

“When Gimble Hits the Cymbal” (Mack Gordon & Harry Revel)

This is the first of several songs about a big band drummer of mythic ability, who, judging by the British-Hebraic accent employed by drummer / vocalist Max Bacon, was Jewish. (I wonder if Buddy Rich ever heard this.) It was written by a major American songwriting team, then writing for Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, but somehow first recorded in the UK in 1933, and then in 1934 and ‘35 is played by American bands, principally Joe Haymes and The California Ramblers. Mack Gordon’s lyrics reference other songs about mythical musicians, including “Goopy Gear.”

“Drummin’ Man” (Gene Krupa & Tiny Parham)

It only makes sense that the most celebrated drummer of his day (practically any day) should have a song revelling in his instrumental prowess.

“Paradiddle Joe” (John Morris)

Another song about a super drummer (and there are more: Mel Tormé did one called “Drummer Boy”), this one by Tony Pastor, singing with his own Orchestra in 1940, a song written by and featuring Pastor’s own drummer Johnny Morris.

“The Ghost of Piccolo Pete” (again Phil Baxter) and again Ted Weems and his Orchestra

We will end with “The Ghost of Piccolo Pete” again by Phil Baxter & Ted Weems, a sequel song from 12 years later, in 1939.

(This is hardly an exhaustive list! There are many more of these “Mythical Musician” type tunes—Tin Pan Alley’s symbolic children of Orpheus—and yes, as I say above, at some point I intend to gather as many as I can for a radio show.)

“The Banjo” also taps into the much broader and older tradition of nostalgic songs about the South, what were called “Plantation Songs” in the 19th Century but, after Jolson, were referred to by Tin Pan Alley-ites as “Mammy Songs,” even though they were more about geography than family or maternity. “The Banjo (That Man Joe Plays)” is almost the only Cole Porter song that can be so described, and even this might be a stretch since all the geographical references in the text are to the West (“Frisco”) rather than to the South. However, terms and images like the “lazy moon,” women named Amanda on “that old-fashioned veranda” are the kind of things we find in Mammy songs, as is “Miss Mandy / Strumming that tune for her favorite dandy.” It’s admittedly somewhat subversive of Porter to include a distinctly 1920s phrase, “propaganda,” popularized in the Soviet Union, here.

Porter wrote “The Banjo” for his 1929 London revue, Wake Up and Dream!, which opened at the Pavilion Theatre on March 27. Then, on December 30 at the Selwyn in New York, Wake Up and Dream! became virtually the last show to open on Broadway in the 1920s. As far as I can tell, the London production consisted entirely of songs by Porter, including “Looking at You,” “I’m a Gigolo,” and the soon-to-be mega-standard “What Is This Thing Called Love?” However, the New York edition dropped a number of the Porter songs and added others by various authors both British and American. But “The Banjo” was included in both editions, sung in both by William Stephens. (Dan Weinstein informs us that “The repeated use of syncopation in the rhythm of the melody is reminiscent of ‘I Know That You Know.’”)

And yet, even though the song appeared in this successful revue in two major cities, somehow it only seems to have been recorded once, by Jack Hylton and his Orchestra (for HMV on March 26, 1929), a group that seems to have recorded absolutely every single interesting song composed in the 1920s and ‘30s. It was on the flip side of “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” a song from Porter’s 1928 Broadway show Paris which he re-used in the London production of Wake Up and Dream!. The Hylton track features a prominent banjo ringing away throughout, which already was an archaic sound on a 1929 dance band arrangement, and the vocal trio also seems like a throwback to old-time plantation and minstrel show days.

(Side note: the song is also included in two British dance band medleys of Wake Up and Dream! “Selections,” by Bert Firman on Zonophone and The New Mayfair Dance Orchestra, also on HMV.)

William Stephens, who performed “The Banjo” in both London and New York, had a rather unusual career: there’s one earlier Broadway credit, for a 1903 show listed as an “opera” titled A Princess of Kensington (41 performances). There’s also one other show, a 1930 production at the Vanderbilt Theatre titled The Vanderbilt Revue, with songs by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh as well as our man Cole. According to the New York Times, he seems to have reprised the Porter song “I’m a Gigolo”:

An inferentially pretty risque gigolo skit and the appearance of the palpitant-voiced William Stephens, a leftover from the superior “Wake Up and Dream!,” in a subsequent song called “Ex-Gigolo” {sic} continue the merriment, which sinks toward the finale of the first act and through the first number of the second part- something in the way of a legend about the jackdaw of Rheims-only to rise again sharply thereafter.

(I’ll let you guys look up “the jackdaw of Rheims.”) Here’s Variety on this same revue:

Unquestioned hits of the evening were the Griffiths Brothers inside a prop horse and William Stephens baritoning “I’m a Gigolo” next ‘to Closing … The Times Square bunch will be dropping in, to catch the act regularly. Stéphens caught a bright lyric and an. ear-tickling. tune: as his share, and must haye known.that he could deliver it, because of the position allotted. Certainly he took full advantagé of the opportunity, and, after the lull, the spot was perfect.

Postscript: Rob “On the Job” Lester reminds me that there’s at least one more Cole Porter song about the South, although it’s not exactly a plantation song or a mammy song. “Mississippi Belle” was commissioned from Porter by Warner Bros. for an unproduced film, and so far as I can find, it has only been performed and recorded by the resourceful and vivacious Miss Daryl Sherman, for an excellent album of Porter songs with a New Orleans flair, titled Mississippi Belle: Cole Porter in the Quarter (2011).

Verse 1

Joe plays the banjo and plays every night
Under a lazy moon
I know what Joe’s gonna play all right
He only knows one tune
It may be a limited repertory
Still every note of it tells a story

Refrain:

When that man Joe makes that banjo
Play that old tune I adore
San Francisco, dear old ‘Frisco,
Calls me ‘cross the prairies once more

Something lingers in his fingers
That reminds me of early days
And I’m back with my Amanda
On that old-fashioned veranda
That’s why I make propaganda
For the banjo that man Joe plays

Verse 2:

Whenever Joe starts that old song of mine
Somehow my memory strays
Back to the Gold Coast in forty-nine
Back to those good old days
A banjo is playing and there’s Miss Mandy
Strumming that tune for her favorite dandy

https://www.sheetmusicsinger.com/the-banjo/

Over the next five Tuesdays, I am doing a comprehensive zoom series on the life and music of our favorite centennial celebrant, the legendary TONY BENNETT! To register (and it’s very reasonable) click Here:

Coming Next: Summer Time is Comedy Time
Jackie (Mason) and Me: In Honor of The Jackie Mason Musical, written by his longtime partner, Ginger Reiter, and starring his daughter, Sheba Mason, in a limited run in New York. At the Actor’s Temple Theater July 25-26. For Tickets and more info, click here.

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Tony Bennett @ 100: “Ultimate Mr. Broadway” (SSS #208 2026-08-01)
Listen: + Playlist:

Louis Armstrong: The Great African-American Songbook
(SSS #207 2026-07-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

Bastille Day! Jacques Brel (SSS #206 2026-07-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz Goes Broadway! West Side Story
(SSS #205 2026-07-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Tony Bennett was never shy about giving props to his heroes and inspirations: Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Louis Prima, Ella Fitzgerald, but also Miles Davis and Erroll Garner, as well as Judy Garland and Jimmy Durante. Sometimes, however, I think he reserved his greatest reverence for Louis Armstrong. Louis was absolutely a god to Tony: a brilliant role model that shone brighter than any other, a veritable North Star, a guidepost for all others to be measured against.

Tony had his favorite stories about Pops: like the time he painted Armstrong’s portrait and then presented it to him at his house in Corona. Pops’s comment was, “You out-Remembrandt-ed Rembrandt!” He hung it in his den there in Queens, where it remains to this day. When visitors would ask who the artist was—Tony signed it with his birth name, “Benedetto”—Pops would say, “A boy from the neighborhood.” Tony, who did in fact grow up in Astoria, Queens, not too far from Corona, got a very big kick out of that.

Tony had the immense thrill of meeting Armstrong and hearing him perform live on several occasions, but had the opportunity to actually work with him only once. The occasion was the weekly variety series, The Chevy Show, on NBC in January 1961. Famously, the regular host was Miss Dinah Shore, but she occasionally took off (as she did for most of the summer) and let someone else preside. In this case, it was another female popular singer who was also a veteran of the big band era and a major hitmaker in her own right.

Normally the guest stars on The Chevy Show included comedians and actors as well as singers and musicians—Art Carney and Carl Reiner were both semi-regulars—but with Kay Starr at the center, the producers decided to make it an all-music lineup. They came up with the conceit of presenting the program as a musical equivalent of the summit meetings between the major powers of the world at the United Nations. Starr, as the host, would be the chairperson of the “swingin’ summit,” and the other guests would be delegates. The writers also borrowed the general concept of Louis Armstrong as a musical good-will ambassador for the United States, which indeed he was, and took the visual language from the iconic cover to Armstrong’s 1956 album Ambassador Satch, in which the veteran trumpeter-singer bandleader is togged out like a diplomat in a very formal, old-school tailcoat.

The four guests were, to say the least, a diverse and eclectic group: Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong, George Shearing, and, in one of his final appearances, Harpo Marx, then 71. Of the four, only Tony had previously appeared on an episode of The Chevy Show and worked with Dinah Shore, but they all qualify as extravagant entertainers whose stock-in-trade was music.

In some ways, the episode was an outgrowth of an earlier television musical titled The Lord Don’t Play Favorites, which aired on the NBC series Producer’s Showcase on September 17, 1956, roughly a year after the Frank Sinatra / Paul Newman / Eva Marie Saint production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, by far the most famous production of that series. Both Starr and Armstrong (along with Buster Keaton) were on The Lord Don’t Play Favorites; their big trio-plus-choir number on The Chevy Show is “The Good Book,” which was written by Hal Stanley, a successful songwriter who was also Kay Starr’s personal manager, and which was reprised from the 1956 telecast.

Tony’s clearest memories were of being on the set and rehearsals with Armstrong. In particular, he remembered that when Armstrong was doing one of his solo numbers, somehow a fly had found its way into the rehearsal space. In the 1990s, Tony remembered vividly that this random visitor somehow inspired one of Armstrong’s most entertaining improvisations: he sang to the fly, he sang around the fly, in effect he made the fly into a partner, transforming the solo into a duet. As Tony put it, “He treated that fly as if it was Bing Crosby!” The sad part was that this was only during the rehearsal; when the time came to actually shoot the program—by the 1960-1961 season, most major variety shows, apart from The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS, were pretaped rather than live—the spontaneous bit with the perky insect did not get captured on videotape.

LIke Armstrong, Kay Starr (1922-2016) was another of Tony’s favorites: he had endless admiration and enthusiasm for the generation of big band-incubated popular singers who were slightly older than he, such as Ella Fitzgerald (of course), Doris Day, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, and Starr. He told me that in the early ‘50s, he would have loved to have been on the roster at Capitol Records, where many of these ladies, as well as Nat King Cole and, soon enough, Sinatra, had leeway to make creative repertoire choices and also, if they wished, to make pop albums; this was something that his own producer (and, essentially “boss”) at Columbia Records, Mitch Miller did not encourage; as Miller himself acknowledged to me years later.

Postscript: Around 2000, I received a call from Danny Bennett, Tony’s manager (and first-born son). His dad was planning an album that would eventually be released as Playin’ with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues (2001). This was both his only album of blues-oriented material, though not every song is a traditional 12-bar blues, and the first of a half dozen or so subsequent albums of duets. Tony’s first thought—along with Ray Charles—was to get Kay Starr to join him for a duet; he knew what a great blues singer she was. The issue they had was that Tony hadn’t heard Kay sing in decades, even though she was still active, there was no way to know what she was sounding like. (Four years older than Tony, at that time she was pushing 80.) That was what Danny needed to know: did Kay Starr still have it? I told Danny that I had heard her sing recently (true) and yes! She still sounded great (also true).

So yes yes! She wound up dueting with Tony on “Blue and Sentimental,” based on Herschel Evans’s iconic feature with the original Count Basie band, with lyrics added by Mack David and Jerry Livingston. (The melody itself was inspired by an older song by Victor Young called “Can’t We Talk It Over.”) And yes, she sounded amazing and their duet was one of the highlights of an excellent album.

Here’s a breakdown of the 1961 Chevy Show:

Opening: Kay Starr & company: “Music Makers” (Harry James & Don Raye)
The program opens with the “summit meeting” in progress, with Madame Chairman Kay Starr singing special lyrics to Harry James’s longtime theme, “Music Makers.”

Kay Starr: “When You’re Smiling” (Mark Fisher, Joe Goodwin, & Larry Shay)
Kay performs a short but memorable chorus of the 1928 jazz standard by Chicago bandleader Mark Fisher. (Who, as far as I know, was not related to Fred Fisher, the Chicago songwriter who wrote the most famous song about Chicago, or his illustrious family.) The tempo slows down for the bridge (“when you’re crying, you bring on the rain…”) and Harpo’s extreme reaction is one of the comedic highlights of the entire hour.

Kay Starr introduces Tony Bennett (“our ambassador of love”)
“I’ve Got The World on a String” (Harold Arlen & Ted Koehler)
“Takin’ a Chance on Love” (Vernon Duke, John La Touche, & Ted Fetter)
Tony was on about a zillion variety shows in the years immediately before and after his blockbuster hit, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and this is one of his absolute greatest segments. Tony is obviously jazzed and inspired by the immediate presence of so many of his all-time favorite artists, not only Louis and Kay but Harpo and Shearing.

Kay Starr intro’s Louis Armstrong
“Mack the Knife” (color) (Marc Blitzstein, Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht)
“Blueberry Hill” ( Al Lewis, Vincent Rose, & Larry Stock)
I can’t wait to read what Ricky Riccardi will say about this segment in his forthcoming, updated edition of What a Wonderful World, his already definitive study of Armstrong’s later career. As far as I can tell, these big band arrangements are unique in his discography, and this full-color, hard-swinging treatment of “Mack” is particularly amazing. (Armstrong’s segment is followed by an especially nutso Chevrolet commercial.)

Kay Starr & Harpo Marx introduce George Shearing:
“Honeysuckle Rose” (Fats Waller & Andy Razaf)
Harpo’s brief bit, introducing George Shearing charades style, is a reminder what a potent force he was on early television. (For obvious reasons, this Marx Brother had much less of a career on the radio.) Shearing does not disappoint with an exciting, highly baroque chorus of the all-time jazz standard, which shows what he had in common with both Erroll Garner and Dave Brubeck.

Harpo at the piano
More comedy from Harpo, this time at the keyboard. I can never get enough of his wacky pantomime antics.

Louis Armstrong introduces Kay Starr
“Happy Days and Lonely Nights” (Billy Rose & Fred Fisher)
“I Only Want a Buddy Not a Sweetheart” (Eddie Jones)
Two vintage songs (from 1928 and 1932, respectively) from Starr’s amazing second period at Capitol Records (1959-1962) in which she made no less than six classic albums. These two songs capture her at her best, and I would like to know who the hot soul-jazz organ player behind her is, particularly on the second. “I Only Want a Buddy” starts slowly and soulfully before revving into swingtime, at which point she is joined by a doo-woppy male choir.

Kay Starr, Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett: “The Good Book” (Hal Stanley & Irving Taylor)
On one hand, I am grateful (and I know that Tony was) that he got to sing one number with his hero, Pops, as well as Kay Starr. And this is a fun, rolling spiritual that Kay’s manager, Hal Stanley, wrote for the 1956 TV musical, The Lord Don’t Play Favorites. Still, if we could pick one song for Tony and Pops to do together, I doubt it would be this one. Anyhow, there’s no denying that it’s fun, in an Old Testament kind of a way.

Start of international segment
Kay, Pops, Tony, and Harpo have fun with balloons and early television chroma-key effects. (underscore: “Around the World” by Victor Young)

Tony Bennett: “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” (Harold Arlen & Johnny Mercer)
Little known fact: this 1943 “saloon song” was even more of a career perennial for Tony than it was for Sinatra. Tony sang it many, many times, fast and slow and every tempo in between—but I would be willing to bet a bottle of chianti classico that this is the only occasion when he ever sang it in Italian. (Rob Waldman points out that the bartender is played by the great character actor Stanley Adams.)

Louis Armstrong’s French lesson “C’est Ci Bon” (Jerry Seelen, André Hornez & Henri Betti)
Eartha Kitt introduced the English version of this bouncy and agreeable French chanson, and everybody sang it, from Dean Martin to Stan Freberg. Still, my favorite version is Armstrong’s, and this 1960 TV chart is even more fun than his Decca single.

Harpo Marx: “Last Rose of Summer” (Thomas Moore)
Tony goes Italian, Pops goes French, Kay gets all kosher on our ass, and one of the great Jewish comedian-musicians goes Scotch-Irish. As in the Marx Brothers movies, the only time Harpo stops being hysterically funny is when he plays one of his harp solos; obviously, he took his music very seriously, and this is one of his more moving pieces.

Kay Starr in Israel: “Eli, Eli” (in Hebrew)
There already was a tradition of gentile pop and jazz stars rendering this most traditional of Jewish prayers: Patti Page, Perry Como, even Lionel Hampton. All of Kay’s other numbers on this program were at least partially swinging: this is her only “serious” number and it’s very moving. As far as I know this is the only time she ever sang it—or anything else in Hebrew. (Her number is followed by another Chevy spot.)

Finale: “The Man Upstairs” (Hal Stanley, Henry Manners, & Russ Morgan)
Another Kay Starr pop-Gospel number provides a fitting conclusion for an amazing hour. (and Kay promotes next week’s Chevy Show, which will be another international and jazz-centric program, in which Dinah travels to Copenhagen and plays hostess to the Swe-Danes, with Alice Babs and Svend Asmussen.)

Above: Kay Starr and Buster Keaton in The Lord Don’t Play Favorites (NBC Producer’s Showcase, 1956) and below, Kay’s original RCA single of “The Good Book.” Below that, here original Capitol single of “The Man Upstairs.”

Over the next five Tuesdays, I am doing a comprehensive zoom series on the life and music of our favorite centennial celebrant, the legendary TONY BENNETT! To register (and it’s very reasonable) click Here:

Coming Next: Summer Time is Comedy Time
Jackie (Mason) and Me: In Honor of The Jackie Mason Musical, written by his longtime partner, Ginger Reiter, and starring his daughter, Sheba Mason, in a limited run in New York. At the Actor’s Temple Theater July 25-26. For Tickets and more info, click here.

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Tony Bennett @ 100: “Ultimate Mr. Broadway” (SSS #208 2026-08-01)
Listen: + Playlist:

Louis Armstrong: The Great African-American Songbook
(SSS #207 2026-07-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

Bastille Day! Jacques Brel (SSS #206 2026-07-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz Goes Broadway! West Side Story
(SSS #205 2026-07-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In March of 1988, the American Jazz Orchestra, which had been formed by Gary Giddins and Roberta Swann two years earlier, presented a rare performance of Duke Ellington’s elusive masterpiece, the 1943 Black, Brown and Beige.

I was very pleased to be asked to write a review of that concert for The Village Voice. I was 26 at the time, and I have never been able to see that story again since The Voice’s online archive doesn’t go back that far. Finally, my great friend (and fellow Substacker and fellow KSDS online host) Loren Schoenberg tracked down the text on an obscure website somewhere. So here is a story that I haven’t seen for over 38 years.

To me, one of the major aspects of the 1988 AJO performance is that it’s the only one I have experienced where Ellington’s spoken narration was performed—recited by no less than the great Bobby Short—and there also was a vocal (on “The Blues”) by Michelle Hendricks. (Incidentally, Maurice Peress, who conducted the AJO for this show, also made two entirely different recordings of BB&B, but although the 1992 version featured Joe Williams singing “The Blues,” neither one included the spoken narration.)

I am delighted to share this vintage 1988 story because this Thursday and Friday (July 23 and 24), Jazz at Lincoln Center is presenting a special summer concert featuring this rarely-performed work, with the JALC Orchestra conducted by Chris Crenshaw and and a special guest vocal by the marvelous Ekep Nkwelle. In all the years I’ve been following this music, this is only the third time I’ve been able to hear this remarkable work played live, so I am truly looking forward to it. For info, click here!

Masterworks of orchestral jazz, even when they have been definitively recorded by their creators, deserve to be performed in concert. But beyond merely keeping charts alive, orchestras can restore history. Nothing drove this point home more than the American Jazz Orchestra’s concert at Cooper Union last Thursday, an all-1940s Duke Ellington program that climaxed with his longest, fullest composition, Black, Brown, and Beige. Just playing this piece correctly -- or any seminal score by Ellington, Herman, Basie, Evans, Carter, J. J. Johnson -- would justify the existence of the AJO, but this time they’ve transcended even that need by finishing what the master architect left undone. Now in its third year, the AJO has topped its eight previous programs by restoring one of the greatest works in American music.

It’s tempting to portray Maurice Peress, the man responsible for repairing BB&B, as toiling for years to piece it back together. Actually, for the now complete version Peress conducted at Cooper Union, he simply thinned down the overlong first movement (”Black”) and beefed up the third (”Beige”). According to biographer Derek Jewell, Ellington wrote the 45-minute epic in about a month (during which time he continued to give his customary two or more shows a day), and then premiered it at his first Carnegie Hall concert in January 1943. Admittedly under-rehearsed and with rough spots, BB&B was shredded by reviewers who thought jazz couldn’t sustain such scope. Ellington reacted by tearing the seven sections apart and never again presenting it whole.

If ever there was a job for a repertory orchestra, here was a horror to rectify: BB&B is a glorious cathedral in ruins. Ellington called it a “tonal parallel to the history of the American Negro.” and as such its music has blood-and-spirit resonances. On the opening “Work Song,” kettle drums depict pounding sledge hammers, for instance, and the orchestration even has “a place to grunt.” This bleeds into the “Spiritual” (better known as “Come Sunday”), a fluid transition originally borne by Tricky Sam Nanton’s trombone. Britt Woodman, who took the part in the incomplete version that Ellington recorded for Columbia Records (which featured Mahalia Jackson) in 1958, and currently with the AJO, intoned a plaintive moan that melted into a prayer. Here Ellington lures us into a black church where Johnny Hodges’ alto (Norris Turney at the AJO) leads a hymn. From aching muscles to revived spirits—and that constitutes only part of the first movement.

Later sections are equally vivid. “Brown” celebrates the victories of black soldiers from the American Revolution to World War II, while tenor sax Ben Webster (Loren Schoenberg) evokes the civilian home front from slavery to emancipation to Jim Crow. Finally, in the 1940s, “Beige” Harlemites are allowed to enjoy such urbane pleasures as waltzing clarinets in their Sugar Hill penthouses. The vagueness of the original ending has been clarified, as Ellington would’ve surely done if not for the bad taste in his mouth from the original reviews. BB&B now concludes with a stern reminder that the “Work Song” and the “Spiritual” will always be part of black life. Technically not a suite, a concerto, or a symphony, in it Ellington uses solo and ensemble horns the way Handel uses voices; you might call BB&B an instrumental oratorio.

But even that sounds too serious, too European, for what Ellington and now the AJO have pulled off. With history having proved Ellington right, the AJO could relax and revel in his humor -- like all of Ellington’s music, Black, Brown and Beige laughs when it isn’t crying. The title alone ridicules the idea of the ghetto pecking order, and he has fun with it, like Cecil B. DeMille at once condemning and glorifying ancient Roman excesses. With typical Ellingtonian perversity, the seven sections are overtly representational, but then the single most abstract sequence turns out to be the one with words: “The Blues,” sung hieroglyphics with no Rosetta Stone. And, making perfect sense when you follow Ellington’s logic, it’s not even a blues.

During his lifetime, Duke Ellington officially released two very different versions of Black, Brown, and Beige, on records, and neither was complete or definitive. There was the December 1944 recording for RCA, which included 18 minutes of the work, and the 1958 LP for Columbia Records, which featured Mahalia Jackson. Both of these are glorious in their own way, but they’re far from complete. Just the same, the 1944 recording was very well presented by RCA, in a rare example of a major label supporting a major jazz composer in a very important work, in a beautifully appointed 78 RPM album released in 1946. Although the tracks themselves have been reissued many times, I don’t think the artwork and notes have seen the light of day in decades, so I’m including them below as a kind of massive bonus track or “Lucky Strike Extra.”

DUKE ELLINGTON: JAZZ IMMORTAL

EDWARD KENNEDY ELLINGTON was born in Washington, D. C., in 1899. He rejected an art scholarship at Pratt Institute to play piano in several minor bands around Washington and, in 1923, came to New York with four other musicians and an idea that Gotham might be receptive to his music.

The Duke was correct. He opened at a little Broadway spot called the Kentucky Club, and soon the city’s jazz enthusiasts were spreading glowing word of his band. In 1927 he went into the Cotton Club in Harlem, then the city’s leading night club, and remained there for four years during which radio and record appearances gave his band a national reputation.

Great success followed quickly. Ziegfeld featured him in Show Girl, in which the Duke’s orchestra debuted a ballet to which Harriet Hoctor danced. With Maurice Chevalier he did a show on Broadway, and his orchestra toured the country in vaudeville, playing the Palace frequently and becoming the first Negro band to be engaged on the Texas Inter-State Circuit. And in Hollywood Ellington did several films, including Belle of the Nineties and Murder at the Vanities. In 1933 the band made a hugely successful European concert tour, repeating this triumphant procession again in 1939, just before World War II began.

The Duke returned to the Cotton Club, by then downtown on Broadway, in 1937-38, and continued his radio, vaudeville, and record work. In 1942 he wrote and appeared in the Negro hit musical revue, Jump for Joy, on the Pacific Coast, coming to New York in January ’43 for an historic twentieth anniversary concert in Carnegie Hall. This was Ellington’s debut in that auditorium and a wildly enthusiastic audience remained for three hours to cheer the Duke and his musicians.

All these years the Duke was writing the songs which have made his reputation as one of America’s foremost composers. They include: “Mood Indigo,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “Creole Rhapsody,” “I Got It Bad,” and three ASCAP song-of-the-year award winners, “Caravan,” “Solitude,” and “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart.”

Ellington is married and has one son, Mercer, also a composer and now a member of the armed forces. Ellington’s sartorial habits still justify his high school appellation of “Duke,” but more important is his serious and thoughtful work on behalf of his fellow Negroes. This activity has made him a life member of the NAACP, and he was recently cited as one of the twelve most distinguished Negroes of the past decade.

BLACK BROWN and BEIGE

a Saga of the Negro in America as composed and played by DUKE ELLINGTON and his famous orchestra

BENEATH the surface of Duke Ellington’s busy life, as he travelled the length and breadth of this great nation to play for all manner of its people, stirred the restless rhythms of a new and insistent theme. It was conceived in the clicking wheels of innumerable trains. It was with him asleep or awake. It was before him as he watched the eager reception of his music from bandstand, stage, or concert hall and, as its swirling pattern took shape, it cried for expression until he was compelled to set it down.

For Duke Ellington had a story to tell—a poignant history of his people through three centuries of life in the new world. As truly as minstrels of old, he has traced the saga of a people who worked and fought, lived and died for liberty. He pictures them heavy with the work of America’s great industries, bent over the soil of America’s great yield, fighting to victory in America’s battles. He speaks of their deep religious fervor; he draws upon the wells of their sorrow, he presents them in the exuberance of their joy, in the simplicity of their philosophies. Here is the rich tradition, the soul, the mind, the hope of a freedom-loving people, in a musical translation which all America can understand.

As its title indicates, this most ambitious of all Ellington compositions was originally divided into three movements. At its premiere in Carnegie Hall (January 23, 1943), however, Ellington played a more abbreviated form, and it is these excerpts which the composer and his famous orchestra offer in the accompanying RCA Victor Records. Following is the Duke’s own interpretation of the music, as reported by Inez Cavanaugh.

WORK SONG

RCA Victor Record 28-0400-A

Work! Work! Work! That was the Negro’s introduction to America. Since 1619 he has heard the steady swinging of his ringing axe, the swish and slash of crop and brush, the sounds of busy hands. Silently he worked at first well; prodded by the slave-holder who knew him to be rebellious of his loss of freedom, he sang at his work, hugging to himself the hope that a better day would dawn for his race in this new land. So the work song was born ...

A song punctuated by the grunt
Of a heaving pick, a driving axe …
A song punctuated by the swish
And thud of a sledge hammer ...

A song to a mule ... an ox …
Fellow beasts of burden.
A song preceding the thrust
Of the foot that drove the shovel

Deep into the fallow, yielding earth …
A song accompanied by the lift and fall
Of the hoe …
A song sustained through the long tilt
And pull of the plow …
A song used as a weapon
To slash the ties of bondage!

(WF NOTE: I’m not sure what the above text is, either lyrics that have never been recorded or part of Duke’s written narration.)

In this work song, a “way back” figure has the heavy opening, leading into an heroic, robust, Harry Carney sequence. “The voice of a fighting man working like a diamond drill to work,” is the way Duke Ellington feels about it. Tricky Sam Nanton takes over with a homestead plaintiveness in his profound song, progressing firmly and steadily to the Otto Hardwicke spiritual which concludes on a moving tone. “That’s the way it should and ... must end,” says Ellington. “How can it be tied and boxed and stored away when there’s so much more to do? These unfinished endings are reality ...”

COME SUNDAY

RCA Victor Record 28-0401-A

Come Sunday and there is rest, there is peace. As the workers gather in the sun, the little white church with its glistening steeple seems to beckon them. They are filled with wonder and delight at the light shining through the stained glass windows. Breathlessly they listen to the wondrous sounds floating out to them. Now strangely soft and tender ... how unlike the harsh voice of everyday life.

Back Sunday feels from there, watching the church, drinking in the singing, the praising of God. The words are naked, muffled, but their meaning is clear. They find their own words as they hum along with the singing, weaving counter-melodies and rich harmonic patterns. So the spiritual is born ... the highly emotional worship-song of God in song.

Vividly descriptive, COME SUNDAY is introduced by Ray Nance’s pizzicato. Returning to his bow, he continues his solo as one of seven counter-melodies affecting a more and beautiful organ tone, the whole elevating the movement inside and outside of the church. The theme develops to the time when the workers have a church of their own and, in strong contrast, Johnny Hodges’ powerful alto saxophone sings. “We have no organ, no lovely white church with its steeple shining in the sun, but we are singing, and we do believe, and we shall keep on singing ... COME SUNDAY.”

THE BLUES

RCA Victor Record 28-0401-B

Duke Ellington places the inception of the BLUES at the end of the Spanish-American War, when the many Negro soldiers decorated for their heroism at San Juan Hill returned to their homes. As Ellington explains: “Where there are heroes there is glamour, and where there is glamour there is attraction to the opposite sex. Many soldiers returned to attract other men’s mates. Some returned to find their own women otherwise attracted ... it was the old story of the love triangle. In all love triangles there is the short side ... and he who loses and loves is on the short side ... with the Blues!”

Joya Sherrill’s meaningful vocal interpretation of Duke Ellington’s all-time answer to the perennial question “What is the Blues?” is highlighted by a magnificent tenor solo by Al Sears, singing a blues of his own on his saxophone in the true blue Indigo tradition. A trombone trio talking it over with the ensemble completes the side.

“The Blues …
The Blues ain’t …
The Blues ain’t nothin’ but a cold gray day.
And all night long it stays that way.
Ain’t comp’ny leaves you alone,
Ain’t nothin’ you want to call your own.
Ain’t comp’ny with sense enough to get up and go,
Ain’t nothin’ like nothin’ I know.

The Blues …
The Blues don’t …
The Blues don’t know nobody as a friend,
Ain’t been nowhere where they’re welcome back again …
Low ... ugly ... mean ... BLUES!

The Blues ain’t somp’n that you sing in rhyme,
The Blues ain’t nothin’ but a dark cloud markin’ time.
The Blues is a one-way ticket from your love to nowhere,
The Blues ain’t nothin’ but a black crepe veil ready-to-wear.

Sighin’ ... cryin’ …
Feel just like dyin’ …
The Blues ain’t …
The Blues ain’t nothin’ …
The Blues ...”

(WF NOTE: “The Blues” was sung at the 1943 Carnegie premiere by the very wonderful Betty Roché and then on the recording by the equally impressive Joya Sherrill. The only major jazz vocalist to include this number in his act on a regular basis was the late Mel Tormé, who sang it brilliantly on his classic 1956 album with the Marty Paich Dektette.)

THREE DANCES

RCA Victor Record 28-0400-B

Three exhilarating, exciting dances have been grouped in the typically brilliant Ellington finale.

1. WEST INDIAN DANCE—A dedication to the valorous deeds of the seven hundred free Haitians of the famed Fontages Legion, who came to aid the Americans at the siege of Savannah in the Revolutionary War. This dance boasts a melodic transitionless duet in the West Indian manner, which melts into the sax mixture and finally ascends to the ultimate in the primitive permutation of Taft Jordan and Tricky Sam. Ray Nance adds a few touches of his violin in rhumba rhythm.

2. EMANCIPATION CELEBRATION—The most complex of the Three Dances, this composition describes the advent of joyfulness on the part of the young people, and the bewilderment of the old at that “great gettin’ up mornin’.” Youth anxiously anticipated a lifetime of glorious freedom; for age, after long, weary years of servitude and a goal of rest and care, suddenly found itself intensely free to go—but where?

The total strain of this dance captures the spirit of youth’s “graceful awkwardness” and abandon, in the solos of Tricky Sam Nanton and Junior Raglin. In combination, they form a trumpet duet which reflects the despair and frustration of two old people who, with heavy hearts, hear the stark pronouncement “You are free to go!”

3. SUGAR HILL PENTHOUSE—This dance (also known as “Creamy Brown”) opens with a sixteen bar sequence by the four saxes, with Harry Carney’s creamy clarinet on top. Ellington describes it as “representative of the atmosphere of a Sugar Hill penthouse in Harlem, which cannot be understood nor appreciated unless one has lived there.” He slyly continues, “If you ever sat on a beautiful magnetic cloud overhanging New York City, you were on Sugar Hill.”

Over the next five Tuesdays, I am doing a comprehensive zoom series on the life and music of our favorite centennial celebrant, the legendary TONY BENNETT! To register (and it’s very reasonable) click Here:

Coming Next: Summer Time is Comedy Time
Jackie (Mason) and Me: In Honor of The Jackie Mason Musical, written by his longtime partner, Ginger Reiter, and starring his daughter, Sheba Mason, in a limited run in New York. At the Actor’s Temple Theater July 25-26. For Tickets and more info, click here.

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Bastille Day! Jacques Brel (SSS #206 2026-07-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz Goes Broadway! West Side Story
(SSS #205 2026-07-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

For many years I have had four close friends who all live within a few blocks of each other in midtown: the filmmaker and director Jim Burns, the producer Scott Perrin, the New York living legend, Bill Boggs, and the amazing piano colossus, Monty Alexander; to this very day, are all still living around the corner from each other around West 54th Street and Broadway. (In fact, those are the only major friends I have in midtown, which is even more expensive and unmanageable than the rest of New York.) More recently, I’ve acquired another, much younger friend, who also resides in the same area, the comedian and actress Sheba Mason.

So for many reasons, I have spent a lot of time on those few blocks, usually visiting or having a meal with one or other of those fine gentlemen. And back in the days before covid, I would frequently encounter a possibly even more legendary New Yorker, the comedian Jackie Mason, who, coincidentally, happened to be Sheba’s father.

Jackie Mason, people tell me, had his faults as a human being, but he was always extraordinarily nice to me. He was also one of the more approachable celebrities; you would always find him in a bodega or a convenience store having a lively conversation with someone. He always seemed to have time to say hello, or, more usually, to argue about politics or whatever was in the news that day.

Like the rest of you, I saw Jackie (who died at 93, during the pandemic in 2021), many times on TV. I also had the pleasure of seeing all of his one-man shows on Broadway, often with my (non-midtown) friends Loren Schoenberg and Ken Peplowski.

I was only involved in a professional situation once with Jackie. There were several periods in the 1990s when he co-hosted a TV talk / panel show with his friend, the celebrated attorney, Raoul Felder. (By a further coincidence, I had met Mr. Felder through his brother, the great songwriter Doc Pomus, aka Jerome Felder—talk about a magic moment!) In 1997, the two of them shared a series on PBS titled Crossing the Line.

And they had another show in 1998—I’m not sure what the title was. I remember this, because, shortly after the death of Sinatra, Jackie and Raoul put together a panel to talk about the late chairman, that included Bill Boggs, Jonathan Schwartz, Mark Simone, and myself. When I come to this part of the anecdote, all of a sudden, I get very fuzzy. I did the program, but I never actually saw it, and my memories are sketchy at best. This period was a low ebb for me; I went through the death of my father, as well as my first (and not the last) divorce. The death of Sinatra was another overwhelming blow to me; somehow I took it personally.

One point I do remember is that in talking about Sinatra, Jackie focused the discussion on Sinatra as an artist and a musician; this was a period when most of the mass media only discussed him in terms of his larger-than-life personal history, his connections to power figures in both politics and, allegedly, the underworld. Alas, Sinatra didn’t get taken seriously as an artist, by and large, until well after his passing. But I was impressed that Jackie only wanted to talk about the music and the artistry. Bravo, Jackie!

For years, I’ve been trying to get a copy of that program; recently I tried writing to the other participants—they’re all still with us, thank The Lord—to see if any of them had a copy, but no dice. The only one I haven’t been able to reach is Mr. Felder. (If anyone is in touch with him, let me know.)

There’s another story—I’m not sure if it’s worth sharing. Around 2010, I went, as I often did, to a one-man show at a world famous supper club on the highly fashionable Upper East Side. The headliner was a legendary movie star celebrating his 90th birthday; it won’t help anything to actually mention his name. But let’s just say the show was not good, and leave it at that. In fact, it was memorably lousy, epically awful. One of the worst and most uncomfortable evenings I’ve ever experienced. I’ve since read that Tony Bennett, Donald Trump, and others were there, but the only ones I remember seeing were Jackie and Raoul. We were sitting close enough to see each other; and we might have said hello before the show. Afterwards, however, we bolted out of there as quickly as possible, without saying a word to each other. In fact, we were trying to pretend that none of us was actually there—and it would help if we didn’t acknowledge each other, talking would have spoiled that. All the times I saw Jackie afterwards, we both made a point not to bring it up.

Since meeting Sheba, I have been reminiscing a lot about Jackie and my casual connection to him, both on that one TV show and in casual conversations in many a West 50s deli. I am pleased to spread that word that Sheba and her mother, Jackie’s longtime partner, Ginger Reiter, are presenting a new, original show that captures all the various sides of this complicated man. It’s titled simply, The Jackie Mason Musical, and Ginger wrote the book, music, and lyrics; Sheba is starring, playing Ginger, and Ian Wehrle, a very talented actor, comedian, and musician, plays Jackie himself. Ginger has written songs that you can easily imagine coming out of Jackie’s mouth, like “Ode to the Early Bird Special,” “The Finger,” and “I Never Met This Yenta.” It’s at the Actor’s Temple Theater the weekend of July 25. I’ll be there, and I hope to see some of you there as well

.Info re The Jackie Mason Musical

Sat July 25. 3PM and 7:30PM. Sun July 26 3PM.

Actors Temple Theatre . 339 West 47th Street.

To purchase tickets telecharge (click here)

Over the next five Tuesdays, I am doing a comprehensive zoom series on the life and music of our favorite centennial celebrant, the legendary TONY BENNETT! To register (and it’s very reasonable) click Here:

Coming Next: Summer Time is Comedy Time
Jackie (Mason) and Me: In Honor of The Jackie Mason Musical, written by his longtime partner, Ginger Reiter, and starring his daughter, Sheba Mason, in a limited run in New York. At the Actor’s Temple Theater July 25-26. For Tickets and more info, click here.

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Bastille Day! Jacques Brel (SSS #206 2026-07-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz Goes Broadway! West Side Story
(SSS #205 2026-07-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/podcasts/the-daily/the-most-american-episode-of-the-daily-ever.html

The New York Times is hardly failing; the only person who thinks it is, as we know, is 47. And to be fair, if there’s one thing he actually knows about (and it probably is the only thing) it’s failure. (47 has a black belt in failure, so perhaps we should not dismiss his opinion on the subject.)

The only instance when I have been inclined to agree with 47 was when the NYT recently published that instantly infamous list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters. I won’t go into that, other than to note that the NYT, which is a great newspaper that has covered the art form known as the American Musical Theater comprehensively—and, generally, accurately—from even before its inception, has apparently decided that theater music should not even be a part of the discussion. Screw you, Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel, Stephen Schwartz, Michael R. Jackson, Craig Carnelia, Andrew Lippa, Frank Wildhorn, Rupert Holmes. (Not to mention Lee Adams, who will turn 102 next month, and John Kander, who will turn 100 next year. God Bless them both!) (Apologies to any worthy living composers of theater music whom I have inadvertently omitted.)

One more griping point about the NYT songwriter list: I am glad to see that the very knowledgeable Jody Rosen was included in the songwriter’s jury, but disappointed that they did not decide to invite John McWhorter, who knows more about great songs than any 12 other columnists at the paper-of-record put together.

I had a different reaction to the NYT podcast The Daily this past Sunday, July 5, when they consulted a quorum of NYT contributors to pick what they consider to be the “most American” entries in a vast range of categories, from art to music to politics to science to sports and other forms of culture. (I was disappointed that neither Jody nor John was consulted, but okay.)

Joshua Barone was asked to select the “most American” piece of classical music. I think most of us, starting with me, would have gone with “The Rhapsody In Blue.” (Now that’s the obvious, even predictable choice.) But Mr. Barone selected Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo,” which is a respectable and commendable choice. Not my choice, but I won’t argue with it.

Jon Caramanica was asked to select the most “American” popular song. He actually won me over to his point of view, although, apparently he seems to have only considered popular songs from about 1970 or later. Thus no “The House I Live In,” “Strange Fruit,” or “God Bless America.” But okay. At first, my hackles went up when he picked what he admitted was a second rate rap number (I hesitate to use the word “song”), “Trump Trump Baby” by Forgiato Blow.

But, to my surprise, he makes a convincing case for it. This rather despicable, thoroughly non-musical piece of expletive deleted does a credible job in encapsulating everything that’s wrong with our great country in the miserable age of 47. This selection hardly gives us the best of America, in fact, it’s precisely the opposite, But, unfortunately, Mr. Caramanica is correct, the rapper (“Mr. Blow?”) holds up an accurate mirror to our dystopian era. Lousy music and lousy politics go hand-in-hand. 2026 is not the time for “Ballad for Americans” or “Ol’ Man River,” this is the moment, unfortunately, for “Trump Trump Baby.” (I will do everyone a favor and not link to it. If you really feel you have to listen to “Trump Trump Baby,” you are officially on your own.)

If you want a great song that offers a more positive message—and by a living songwriter yet—might I suggest “Put on a Happy Face” by Lee Adams and the (recently) late Charles Strouse, introduced by a great living musical artist, Dick Van Dyke in the 1960 Bye Bye Birdie. (I’m also including Tony Bennett’s hit single below; “Smile, bubbe, it’s your birthday!” And in fact, Tony’s 100th birthday is very soon indeed.)

Sort of related: I already shared this as a Substack note, but here is a recent Wall Street Journal story of mine, and this covers all of my candidates for the title of the most American songs ever written, although admittedly I didn’t see fit to include any rap numbers. (If I had, my choice would have surely been “Ghetto Anthem” by Jay Z, which incorporates Charlie Strouse and Marty Charnin’s “It’s the Hard Knock Life,” or possibly “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mixalot, because, frankly, who doesn’t like big butts? I can not lie.)

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/america-250-our-nations-essential-songbook-159a72f9?st=F4LVyE&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

The following item is not at all related, except to show the glory of American music even in the era of McCarthy (who was still in office in 1956). This is my latest story in the Journal.

Seventy years ago, on the afternoon of July 7, 1956, the Duke Ellington band bus pulled into Freebody Park in Newport Rhode Island and that night, the orchestra played what the Maestro considered to be the most impactful concert of his career. This date goes down in history alongside George Gerswhin and Paul Whiteman at Aeolian Hall in 1924 and Benny Goodman at Carnegie in 1938, and is even more important, in retrospect, than any of Ellington’s own series of annual concerts at Carnegie. Shortly after midnight, the full band launched into “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue”; halfway through, tenor saxophone colossus Paul Gonsalves gave out with the “Wailing Interval.” Lo and behold, when he finished his solo, 26 choruses and six minutes later, the whole world had changed.
You can read it about in today’s Wall Street Journal.

A few more recent jazz and musical theater stories:

More Ellingtonia: I Like the Sunrise (Hannah Gill & Robbie Lee)

Crazy For You at the Goodspeed Opera House

La Cage Aux Folles at City Center Encores!

And lastly, my most recent episode of Sing! Sing! Sing!, which is a “Jazz Goes Broadway” mixtape of different interpretations of the score to West Side Story. It’s amazing how many there are, how many of these songs found their way into the cultural bloodsteam—a three-hour show is hardly enough to even skim the surface. This is in celebration of a great concert on Tuesday July 14, for those of you lucky to be in the San Diego area, which will feature a double-bill of jazz treatments of the classic Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim score: first the always highly entertaining bassist and bandleader Jennifer Leitham with her trio, then the KSDS Jazz Orchestra will play the amazing Johnny Richards arrangements of the 1961 jazz masterpiece, Stan Kenton’s West Side Story. (I, for one, have no idea how they’re going to handle the mellophoniums!)

To hear my show, click here.
For the playlist, click here.
And most importantly, for tickets click here

Over the next five Tuesdays, I am doing a comprehensive zoom series on the life and music of our favorite centennial celebrant, the legendary TONY BENNETT! To register (and it’s very reasonable) click Here:

Coming Next: Summer Time is Comedy Time
Jackie (Mason) and Me: In Honor of The Jackie Mason Musical, written by his longtime partner, Ginger Reiter, and starring his daughter, Sheba Mason, in a limited run in New York. At the Actor’s Temple Theater July 25-26. For Tickets and more info, click here.

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Jazz Goes Broadway! West Side Story
(SSS #205 2026-07-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I try to be careful about referring to celebrities by their first names, but I believe I know Mel Brooks well enough to refer to him informally as Mel. We first met and hung out together listening to Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks at the old Cajun jazz club in Chelsea around 1999. About eight years later, I had the pleasure and privilege of working with him on the Young Frankenstein original Broadway cast album, and sharing several very memorable meals with Mel and the late (and yes, great) Tommy Meehan. (Continued gratitude to Brian Drutman for allowing me to be part of that project.) I am actually more impressed that every time we have run into each other since then (usually involving Vince Giordano), he always remembers my name and compliments me for the notes on the Young Frankenstein original cast album. (PS: For those of you who don’t know it, Young Frankenstein is a great show! There, I said it.)

My gratitude also to Bruce Jenkins, who wrote about Mel and Anne and their connection to this song about 20 years ago in his excellent biography of his father, Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins. And lastly to “Jersey Jim” Davison and “Brother Anthony” DiFlorio III, who found this specific episode (and many others) of Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall and preserved it.

This post is dedicated to Anne Bancroft, whom I met only once—again at the Cajun—but it was a highly memorable occasion. (Remind me to write more about Mel and Anne in a future Substack.)

Thanks again to team slouching, especially Rob “On-the-Job” Lester, Elizabeth Zimmer, & Rob Waldman.

In his 2021 autobiography, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business, Mel Brooks gives the following account of the incident:

It’s 1961 and I was working with Charles Strouse (whom we all called Buddy) and Lee Adams on a Broadway show called All American. Buddy and Lee had just had a huge hit with Bye Bye Birdie and I was brought on to write the book for their new musical project.
One day when we were in the middle of writing, Buddy said to me: “Mel, come with me. I have to go to a Perry Como Show rehearsal at the Ziegfeld Theatre because I’m going to be playing the piano for Anne Bancroft. We’re rehearsing for a performance she is going to do at the Actors Studio later this week and I have to find the right key for ‘Just You Wait’ [from My Fair Lady]. After I get the key, we’ll go back to work at my place.”
So I tagged along. When we get to the Ziegfeld Theatre they’re doing a dress rehearsal. After a few minutes the guest star, Anne Bancroft, takes the stage.
I’d never seen anything like it. She was wearing a stunning white dress and she was singing in a sultry voice a Gertrude Niesen favorite, “I Wanna Get Married.” She was just incredibly beautiful.
When the song was over, I leapt to my feet, applauded madly, and shouted, “Anne Bancroft! I love you!”
She laughed and shouted back, “Who the hell are you?”
I said, “I’m Mel Brooks! Nobody you’ve ever heard of!”
She said, “Wrong! I’ve got your 2000 Year Old Man record with Carl Reiner. It’s great.”
That was the beginning.

Mel is, of course, mostly correct. He remembers the wrong song, but most of the other details check out. He’s right about Charles Strouse; even I called him “Buddy” in the 2010s—much to the dismay of his wife, Barbara, who thought it rather undignified. This was Mel’s major Broadway show, almost 40 years before The Producers. Most of us primarily remember All American, which closed after 80 performances, for introducing the Tony Bennett standard “Once Upon a Time” (soon to be the A-Side of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”), which Buddy and Lee Adams had actually written years earlier at the resort Green Mansions. The only mention of All American in Mel’s memoir is this incident. The show is only significant to him 65 years later because it provided him with an opportunity to work with Buddy Strouse, who in turn introduced him to Anne Bancroft. (PS: All American was Mel’s third Broadway credit, after contributions to New Faces of 1952 and the 1957 Shinbone Alley.)

The dates make sense: Anne Bancroft, who was a surprisingly frequent guest on The Perry Como Kraft Music Hall, appeared on the episode broadcast on Wednesday, February 22, 1961. Which means that the KMH show was probably in rehearsal during the week of Monday, February 13, at the original Ziegfeld Theatre at 1341 Sixth Avenue (corner of West 54th Street) and was taped on Friday, February 17. All American opened a month later at the Winter Garden on March 17 (and closed slightly more than two months later on May 26).

THE SONG IT ISN’T

Mel has a very good memory, especially for anything musical, so I would be surprised if this is his mistake; I would personally prefer to blame one of his editors or proofreaders. “I Wanna Get Married” is from the 1943 musical comedy Follow the Girls, which opened in April 1944 and enjoyed a healthy two-year run on Broadway, with a book by the highly esteemed Guy Bolton. The cast included: baritone Bill Tabbert, playing a sailor five years before South Pacific; cabaret and nightclub headliner Gertrude Niesen (as a burlesque dancer named Bubbles LaMarr); and Jackie Gleason (as Goofy Gale). The score was by a three-man team: Dan Shapiro and Milton Pascal credited with the lyrics, and music by the British composer Phil Charig, who wrote several notable songs for the London stage and also collaborated with Ira Gershwin on several key numbers in the mid-1920s. Mel was right that this is a sultry song, all about the specific ins and outs (rather literally) of connubial bliss, and that it was introduced by and associated with Gertrude Niesen. “I Wanna Get Married” was also a hit for Louis Prima and his Orchestra with the attractive (pre-Keely Smith) singer Lily Ann Carol.

THE OTHER SONG IT ISN’T

The 1944 “I Wanna Get Married” is not to be confused with a more recent work with the same title by the excellent contemporary singer-songwriter Nellie McKay, which is also very sexy and very funny. It’s also a bit more sarcastic—or is it? In any case, when I mentioned the earlier song to Nellie years ago, she was utterly unfamiliar with it. (I have no idea if she’s heard it since then.) This song is on her debut album, Get Away from Me (2004).

THE SONG IT IS

But the song that Anne Bancroft (born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano) actually did sing on the Como show in 1961 is another sexy and funny song about marriage and other intimate relationships, namely, “Married I Can Always Get.” This wasn’t written for a Broadway show at all, but rather for Manhattan Tower, the pioneering song cycle and concept album by composer-conductor Gordon Jenkins, first released in 1946. Ten years later, Jenkins expanded and re-recorded the work for a new album, a 12” LP released by Capitol Records, as well as a special television version of the work for the series Saturday Spectacular. “Married I Can Always Get” is from that later expanded edition. Beverly Mahr, the fine studio vocalist — who by then was married to the composer — introduced the song on the album, while on the show it was performed memorably by the veteran big band vocalist Helen O’Connell.

Incidentally, Mr. and Mrs. Kaminsky (Brooks) were not the first couple to fall in love to the soundtrack of Gordon Jenkins and Manhattan Tower. Maria Cole relates in her memoir that in 1946, when the work was brand new, during her first date with her future husband Nat, they turned on the car radio and heard the record being played on a deejay show. It was “about five o’clock one morning after we had stopped to eat after the last show at the Zanzibar [the jazz club in the Brill Building where they both were appearing]. It was a gorgeous morning, with the sun coming up as we drove, and suddenly Gordon Jenkins’ beautiful Manhattan Tower came over the radio.” (Nat King Cole’s long and rewarding collaboration with Jenkins was also still in the future at that point.)

And another fun fact about Manhattan Tower: “Married” was probably only the second-most recorded excerpt from the work: “New York’s My Home,” which is part 3 of the original 1946 album, is even more widely known as an independent song. There are versions by Sammy Davis, Jr., Chris Connor, Dick Haymes, Shirley Horn, pianist Eddie Heywood, and even Ray Charles (on Genius Hits the Road), while both Patti Page and Robert Goulet did their own whole Manhattan Tower albums. (For the record, there are additional versions of “Married” by the great Julie Wilson, Teddi King, Jeri Southern, Micki Marlo, and others.)

Anne Bancroft, who hadn’t yet turned 30 in the spring of 1961, was an amazingly popular recurring guest on the Como show; she appeared on the KMH no fewer than seven times, at least once per season. What’s especially notable is that, although she is obviously a very proficient song-and-dance woman, virtually no one other than Como (and her future husband) ever made use of her obvious talents in this area.

Surprisingly, she was never in a musical on Broadway or on screen, apart from a few bits on TV here and there and a couple of moments in Mel’s movies. She also had some brief musical performances in Carl Reiner’s 1989 film, Bert Rigby, You’re a Fool. Watching her here, I can’t help but wish that I could have seen her in Applause or Coco or one of those other leading lady-driven shows designed for a name-above-the-title female headliner. She was considered as the lead in Funny Girl (1964) (pre-Streisand) but turned it down because she apparently didn’t get along with lyricist Bob Merrill, or so it’s said. (According to composer Jule Styne, Anne had dated Merrill three years previously, “and that it ended terribly.”)

ANNE SINGING WITH ANOTHER SHORT JEWISH GUY NAMED “MEL”

As we have noted, there aren’t many clips of Anne singing on television. This one is notable for being a British show with the British host, comedian, actor, and pianist Dudley Moore. Goodbye Again was a sketch comedy, music, and variety program from Lord Lew Grade’s independent production company ITV. It starred the Beyond the Fringe team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore; occasional bits from the show, coincidentally, were re-run on NBC in the USA on the post-Perry Como series The Kraft Music Hall Presents. (In 1970, she starred in an Emmy-winning TV special, Annie: The Women in the Life of a Man, which also included musical interludes and is eminently worthy of being more widely shown 55 years later.)

Final Note: Longtime friends o’ Friedwald know that for many years I have been obsessed with Gordon Jenkins’s Manhattan Tower. In 1997, I presided over the first CD reissue of the original 1945-’46 recording, as part of a collection on Razor & Tie (licensed from MCA-Decca) titled The Gordon Jenkins Collection. In 2016, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the work, I did a feature story for The Wall Street Journal, and, even more ambitiously, I somehow summoned up the wherewithal to produce a 70th Anniversary concert at Urban Stages, featuring an all-star cast of New York jazz and cabaret singers. Somewhere along the line, I wrote a very long, hopefully very complete history of the work. Although I culled material from this longer essay for the Journal story, the full essay—which is close to 15,000 words—has still never been published. I have a feeling that this may be too much, even for Substack. If anybody wants to actually read it, please leave a comment here. Excelsior!

It’s not my cup of tea,
They won’t throw rice at me for a while yet.
I have no plans to wed,
Be resolutely led down the aisle yet,
With a smile yet.
When the organ plays “Oh, Promise Me”
I will be an absentee.
For the nonce I choose to be fancy free.
They can throw old shoes but they won’t hit me,
Not me.

I wanna dance,
Until the darkest heavens turn gray,
Until the dawn strolls in with the day.
Then I’ll say,
“Don’t let the band get away”
But matrimony
I’m not ready yet.
Married I can always get.

It’s not for me,
With all its smug connubial joys.
That ever-constant smashing of toys
Wrecks my poise,
While hubby is out with the boys.
No wedding gown
For this silhouette.
Married I can always get.

I’ll live the life that I’m used to.
I’ll get a ring when I choose to.
Because by now I have found
That the nicest rings are on a merry-go-round.

I’ll be blasé
With any man whose motives are base.
I’ll keep each wily wolf in his place,
Till the chase
Finally ends in an embrace
But as far as wedlock, unlock me, my pet.
Married I can always get.

(At this point, Ms. Bancroft goes into a dance number with three chorus boys and a cat.)

(There are additional lyrics, that are sometimes sung, though not here):

You feel an urge with certain parts of love you’re inspired
But when you try to find your desire
He’s retired, businessmen are quite easily tired
The very fact just gets me upset
Married I can always get

I wanna find an honest swain who gaily pursue
And when he drinks champagne from my shoe
That’s my cue to act like a shy ingenue
As we croon a lovers’ duet
Married I can always get
I’ll go the way that the wind blows
Along the path that is primrose
I have my plan all rehearsed
I will kiss anybody who will kiss me first

I’ll take a cruise
Into a more adventurous clime
And if the captain’s still in his prime
He will find you don’t have to sail all the time
I wanna stick to romantic roulette
Married I can always get
But not yet, but not yet
But not yet
Yet, yet
Married I can always get

And one post-final word from Rob:

The song that Anne Bancroft sang on The Perry Como Kraft Music Hall in 1961 was NOT this one, either:

Coming Next: Summer Time is Comedy Time
Jackie (Mason) and Me: In Honor of The Jackie Mason Musical, written by his longtime partner, Ginger Reiter, and starring his daughter, Sheba Mason, in a limited run in New York. At the Actor’s Temple Theater July 25-26. For Tickets and more info, click here.

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Yes! I made it just under the wire. I wanted to get in a Judy Garland story before the end of this month, because, as everyone knows, June is the perfect time to celebrate Garland the great, who was born on the 10th in 1922 and died on the 22nd, a much-too-short 47 years later. (For more intel on Judy and June, our pal Rob Lester has graciously supplied a postscript, which you will find at the end of this missive.) Two years ago, I wrote about an occasion (read about it here) when Judy Garland shared a stage (sort of) with John Coltrane; today I make a connection between Judy Garland and Lee Konitz and Lennie Tristano. Special thanks to Rob Lester and, for the previously unpublished photo, to Lawrence Schulman.

Metronome magazine, which was founded in 1885 as an industry journal for professional (usually classical) musicians was, throughout the swing and bebop eras, ranked alongside DownBeat as the major publication covering jazz and jazz-adjacent popular music. During these years, they also covered pop singers—George Simon did one of the major interviews with Sinatra in 1948—but relatively few movie stars. In fact, the subheadline to the story refers to Garland as a “moom pitchah star,” which is, as Dan Weinstein reminds us, Yinglish “the written Jewish dialect humor characteristic of Milt Gross’s ‘Nize Baby,’ and the ‘Hyman Kaplan’ stories of Leo Rosten.”

Ruth Barry, who was 21 in 1947 (even younger than Garland) was one of the few women writing professionally about music at that time, but she’s more famous for another reason. That same year, she married the great saxophonist and jazz icon Lee Konitz, and was the mother of his five children. She had been born Ruth Marie Hamalainen in 1926 to a Finnish-American family, her father being the Reverend Eino J. Hamalainen. In 1946, she had worked with the more famous Metronome writer and editor Barry Ulanov on one of the first feature stories about the legendary pianist and pedagogue Lennie Tristano. Apparently, she took her literary alias from Ulanov.

As she says in the article, Ruth Hamalainen / Barry went to the MGM studio to interview Garland, who seems to have completely charmed her, the way Garland did with everybody she ever met.

“Call me a square!” says Judy

The diminutive moom pitchah star talks over her musical tastes: she likes Tom, Ben and Harry.”

by Ruth Barry

It was a very simple assignment. “Go talk to Judy Garland about music,” the editors said. So I went to talk to Judy Garland about music. And I went miles. All the way out to Culver City, MGM’s home base, a bedraggled Western town at the outskirts of Los Angeles, where the studio Goldwyn built for Mayer or vice-versa sprawls across the sandy loam. With a publicity woman in tow, I marched into the MGM commissary (no relation to Molotov—that’s what they call lunchrooms on movie lots), said hello to a couple of guys in the music business who had fallen into better days (such as Mel Tormé), and came to a sudden stop beside a little girl with a familiar face.
“Judy Garland,” the publicity woman said.
“Ruth Barry,” I said.

How cool that Barry happened to run into Mel Tormé, who was someone of interest to Metronome readers—more so than Lauritz Melchior or José Iturbi. Barry also suggests that when those of us who are not in the movie business hear the term “commissary,” the first thing we would think of are the Kommisars in the Soviet Union, specifically Vyacheslav Molotov, who was effectively Stalin’s second-in-command. But let us move on:

Three courses and a half-hour later we got down to music. Music commands almost as much attention in Hollywood as the movies, not financial attention, mind you, but lots of talk. Little movie people and big ones like to talk about music. Bit players, directors and stars like to talk about music. Judy Garland apparently enjoys talking about music. Judy’s face grew animated as she discoursed about her tastes, good and bad, favorable and unfavorable, in music. What she had to say was of more than passing interest, it says here, because she is a singer, because she was once married to Dave Rose, because she is married at present to Vincente Minelli {sic}, a director of distinction on Broadway and in Hollywood, whose pre-screen reputation was largely made on musicals.

So this is where we are in the Garland story. She was probably in the middle of production for The Pirate, released in May 1948, directed by Vincente Minnelli. She was also in the middle of marriage #2, to Minnelli (whose name is misspelled) and her first child, Liza, is about a year old. Barry mentions that Minnelli was best known as a director of musicals, although they really don’t talk about either theater or film in this discussion. Barry asks Garland who she likes (and note that Judy apparently knows more about proper grammar than a professional journalist) in terms of music, and they get into it.

“Whom do you like?” I asked with grammatical exactness.
“Whom?” she replied with echoing precision. “Harry James, Tommy Dorsey. And Benny, Benny Goodman. Benny is the greatest,” Judy opined.

None of these are particularly surprising, they were probably the three most popular bandleaders of the swing era, leaving aside Glenn Miller, who was gone by 1947. Still, it’s hard to list three better musicians or bandleaders than these three. (I’m including Garland’s 1944 V-Disc of “I May Be Wrong,” in which she is accompanied by Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra. Also Harry James’s classic 1941 record of “You Made Me Love You,” famously inspired by Garland.)

“Any other musician?”
“Willard Robison. Such an underrated musician. Such a fine composer. I’ve been listening to his songs for years, as often as possible to him singing his songs. They have a quality. The greatest. He is really an idol of mine.”

Now this is a major surprise. You really would think she would have picked Harold Arlen, the name-above-the-title songwriter who was most important to her career. (See this week’s Sing Sing Sing or Lawrence Schulman’s 2015 compilation Judy Garland Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook for more details.) I keep meaning to do a substack—or more than one—about Willard Robison, a marvelously idiosyncratic composer who bridged the worlds of the American Songbook with folk and country music and exerted a profound influence on both Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer, to name just two. (And there’s a longish essay on Robison in my 2017 book, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums.) Apparently Garland sang only one Robison song in her career, “A Cottage for Sale,” his most widely performed number, on the November 10, 1963 episode of The Judy Garland Show.

“Any other composers of popular music?”
“Richard Rodgers, of course,” Judy said with some vehemence. “There’s no musical comedy composer like him. In his field, he’s the greatest.”

As we know, she sang quite a few more songs by Richard Rodgers, with both Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. In 1947, Rodgers was on her mind, not least because she was set to make a classic cameo—alongside the aforementioned Mel Tormé— in the 1948 Rodgers & Hart biomusical, Words and Music. (An underrated movie which I still prefer to the 2025 Blue Moon.)

“Singers,” I introduced the next category. “Whom do you like?” I was nothing if not grammatical.
“Three girls,” Judy said, a little euphemistically it developed, when she named the “girls.”
“Who?” (Enough of the object pronoun.)
“Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Kate Smith.”
Curious combination, I thought, but after all this was Hollywood where curious combinations made millions.

Barry makes more minor gags about Garland’s grammatical expertise. But her three choices of favorite singers are the most memorable part of the entire interview. If she were picking caucasian female singers, she probably would have leaned towards Jo Stafford, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, or Ginny Simms, in addition to Smith, but her choices here are amazingly prescient and relevant to Garland’s own canon. Like Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland was a superb musician, a great artist, and never merely a pop idol or a moom pitcha star. Like Billie Holiday, she had a unique gift for incorporating her own story into the lyrics that she sang, making that story ring true, and created a direct and intimate connection with her listeners. And like Kate Smith, Garland kept everything simple and forthright, and sang warmly, from the heart. From the perspective of 2026, Smith has been an undervalued music and pop culture icon for many decades now, and fully worthy of Garland’s—and our—appreciation.

Next? Ah, yes, there is so much talk, even at the chatty level, about the longhairs, past and present, but mostly present. What, I asked, did Judy think about classical composers? Was she much interested, and if so, in whom? (There it goes again.)
“I am very much interested in classical music,” she affirmed. “Delius is the greatest for me. I like Debussy and Ravel a great deal, too.”
“How about Paul Hindemith? Ernest Bloch?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Judy shook her head. “Those moderns aren’t for me. You know I’ve gotten awfully tired. Where at one time I was deeply moved by the heavier, louder music, now I prefer the quiet sound of, say, Rachmaninoff.”

Here’s another piece of archaic slang: “longhair,” referring to classical music. This was a generation before The Beatles. In retrospect, Hindemith and Bloch (but especially Hindemith) don’t sound much more “modern,” at least to me, or avant-garde than Frederick Delius, Claude Debussy, or Maurice Ravel, but I will leave Judy to her opinion. (And PS: Sergei Rachmaninoff could be pretty loud, too.)

We talked a little longer, about painting, which Judy studied for a while, in which she is “still very much interested,” about her daughter Liza, “who is my whole life.”

Yes! It’s very cool that she mentions (Baby) Liza.

Shortly before I left, Judy summed up for herself.
“Call me a square,” Judy suggested, “call me a square if you want to, but these are my tastes. This is the kind of music I like, the musicians I like. Harry, Tommy, Benny. The girls. The classical composers I’ve mentioned. And quiet music. So call me a square.”

She added that she hadn’t liked the Woody Herman band. Harry. Tommy. Benny. Those were her bands. So there were her tastes, neatly lined up for me, and the world, to see. A little girl grown up into a movie queen with lots of interest in the allied art of music. Her tastes reflect a large chunk of Hollywood thinking; as such they are important. They also reflect the personality of a big little girl who has sufficient wisdom to know her own mind in music as, I gather, in other things. She stands by her tastes. “Call me a square, if you want to,” she challenges. So if you want to, call Judy Garland a square.

It’s funny that Garland, as if suddenly becoming aware that she’s talking to a hepcat (a hep kitten?) from Metronome, now feels somewhat self-conscious about not liking the most far-out, cutting-edge music that there was. (Yes, in 1947, Woody Herman was already delving into modern jazz, and, around the same time, so would Benny Goodman.) Barry gives us a good ending, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and which correlates perfectly with Garland’s own highly developed sense of irony. The truth is that nobody would ever call Judy Garland a square, neither then nor now.

postscript #1 by Rob “On-The-Job” Lester: Before June’s ”bustin’ out all over” is a bust or just a memory as July steps in, I thought we should reflect on the departing month because it’s the perfect one to celebrate Judy Garland who was born in June of 1922 and: appeared in vaudeville in June of 1926 with her sisters and parents; completed her first film (The Big Revue) in June of 1929; recorded her first single record (“Stompin’ at the Savoy” and “Swing Mister Charlie”) in June of 1936; and spent June of 1939 filming Babes in Arms with music by Richard Rodgers who had a June birth 20 years before Judy’s. Then there were her marriages.... In June of 1941 the newspapers announced that she was engaged to the man who would be the first of her husbands (David Rose), but a Rose is a Rose is a Rose and in June of 1945 she married her second husband, Vincente Minnelli, in June of 1952 she wed her third husband (her manager Sid Luft) and in June of 1965, she married Mark Herron, her fourth husband. Her other "June" connection was being hired for the leads in the films In the Good Old Summertime and Royal Wedding, replacing June Allyson both times. But the latter role, first given to June, then Judy, went to a Jane (Jane Powell) when Judy didn’t work out and her contract was ended in June of 1950. She died in June of 1969.

Did Judy ever sing about the month of June? Sources tell us that Judy was originally considered as the leading lady for the film version of Carousel, which contains the aforementioned "June Is Bustin' Out All Over," and we'd have had Judy playing Julie, but that character isn't in that song anyway. However, Miss Garland did sing "June in January" one October on the radio. Lastly, how about "How About You?" with the first line of its chorus "I like New York in June. How about you?" She duetted on this in the film Babes on Broadway with Mickey Rooney and in two episodes of her TV series (once with him, once in a medley with Barbra Streisand). And while she may not have played a character named June, at the time of her death that June in 1969, daughter Liza Minnelli was beginning work on her early movie role, playing the title character in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon.

postscript #2 by Daniel Weinstein: One last comment about Judy’s dislike of the Woody Herman band. Circa 1944-6, Woody’s First Herd seemed in a competition with Stan Kenton’s ever enlarging group for “loudest big band.” I have a hunch she is referencing the First, rather than the Second Herd, though the 1947-’48 group could also play very loud. I’d say it was less of an identifier for that later band. Also, the First Herd, though not as “hard core bebop” as, say Billy Eckstine’s contemporaneous group, was still considered a “modern jazz” big band for its time.

Coming Next: Summer Time is Comedy Time
Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Perry Como, & Gordon Jenkins: “Married She Could Always Get.”
Jackie (Mason) and Me: In Honor of The Jackie Mason Musical, written by his longtime partner, Ginger Reiter, and starring his daughter, Sheba Mason, in a limited run in New York. At the Actor’s Temple Theater July 25-26. For Tickets and more info, click here.

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

July 4th Special—Great American Cities in Song (SSS #204 2026-07-04)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

PART TWO: Chet Baker / Gene Bertoncini / Michael Moore

As we discussed in Part One, Gene played on one session with Chet Baker, part of a 1977 session with Astrud Gilberto. (Gene is also credited with playing a duet with Baker on another track, but, as he made clear to us, the guitarist on that song is actually Bucky Pizzarelli.) Around the same time, Gene also did several live gigs with the great trumpeter-singer, none of which were recorded, alas, but survive in the memories of Gene and Michael Moore.

In 1977, the team of guitarist Gene Bertoncini and bassist Michael Moore had been playing around the New York area for several years, and that year they made their first album, the now-classic Bridges. By this time, critics like Whitney Balliett and Gene Lees were beginning to acknowledge them as one of the great jazz duos of the day, to the point where fans and other musicians began to refer to this micro-ensemble as simply “The Duo.” Around this time, they began a series of week-long runs in Annapolis, Maryland, at a venue called the King of France Tavern. One of their gigs there, in May 1977, was advertised by the club as part of what they were calling “The First Annapolis Jazz Festival.”

Michael Moore remembers the club vividly, although he recalls that they usually worked there around Thanksgiving rather than May. “Gene and I worked in a club in Annapolis and we played there every year for some years. It was in an old hotel there and it was a lovely place that went back to the 18th century and I guess it’s still there.” As Mike says, the King of France Tavern is still located at 16 Church Circle in downtown Annapolis in the basement of the Maryland Inn, built in 1784.

“So we played there as a duo and we built up a good following, and each time it seemed like it was getting better. And one year, the owner said, ‘Could you possibly bring another musician with you for a change this year?’ So, I’d been working with Chet Baker on and off on certain concerts and I suggested to Gene, ‘Maybe Chet would like to play with us.’ Gene said, ‘You think he would?’ I said, ‘Well, it wouldn’t hurt to ask him.’ And Chet said yes, he was really happy to do it.”

Comes the day of the gig and Baker’s reputation as being somewhat unreliable precedes him. “We were waiting outside for Chet to get there because Gene was worried that maybe he wouldn’t show. I reassured him, ‘No, Chet is very professional. If he takes a gig he’ll be there.’ Then the car pulls up, and it looks like a scene out of The Grapes of Wrath. Chet had his wife with him, and another guy, and a dog, and all this stuff tied to the roof.” Gene’s first thought was, “Gee, I don’t know if they’re going to let this dog in there.”

Mike remembers that the other guy in the car—Mike can’t remember his name, only that he was from Holland—filled two very important roles in Chet’s life. He played the flute, and, according to Mike, he was a very good flautist. And, no less importantly, he was also a professional pharmacist. “And a very nice guy,” adds Mike. He recalls a moment when the four of them were walking up the stairs to their rooms, and Baker saying, “Hey, we’re going to make it!” and being, in general, very upbeat and encouraging.

The central issue with Baker at this point was that he was wrestling with a variety of physical problems, including bad dentures. “Which meant that Chet could never practice. So, for the first three nights of the week, Chet played very little, he sang mostly, and it was beautiful. It was just gorgeous and the flautist played very nicely as well.” Well, every night, Baker played more and more and grew stronger and stronger. “Each night he would play a little bit more on the horn, and, so finally, by the end of the week, he was just incredible. I mean, he was Chet Baker!”

So we had a really, really great week with him and we enjoyed that. And there was even talk about us doing some recording, but that never came about.” As for the King of France Tavern, “I think the place changed hands and we stopped going there. But for years it was a great gig. Later on, Annapolis got to be overrun with tourists, but then it was a nice town. We made a lot of friends in the area and I really looked forward to that job there.”

There’s one other occasion when Gene played with Chet Baker on a much more informal basis. Gene told the story to Mike Moore shortly after it happened, and more recently to me (and Josh Marcum and Melissa Stylianou), and this version is based on both of those accounts.

First of all, Mike wanted to explain about Chet. “Chet was basically a very sweet guy. But when Chet had problems, he could get very weird. I witnessed it myself in Nice. He couldn’t get his methadone and he was really being nasty to everybody there. It was really sad. That time he took his horn, he threw it down the street and jumped up and down on it. It was a very sad thing to witness. So he could be irascible sometimes—but most of the time he was just a sweet guy.”

On one occasion, Baker was playing in a New York club with a rhythm section featuring the young pianist Kenny Kirkland. And, according to Gene’s account, the trumpeter was in one of his rare bad moods—really bad. Gene wasn’t on the gig, he was just in the audience, although, as always, he had his guitar with him.

Says Mike, “Kenny was a brilliant piano player.” We have no way of knowing if Kirkland played something that actually annoyed Baker, or if Baker was just in a really bad mood, possibly for pharmaceutical reasons, of the kind that Mike witnessed in Nice. As Gene suggests, Kirkland played something that somehow made Chet uncomfortable, and he reacted in a violent, aggressive fashion. The trumpeter proceeded to pick a fight with him. In the middle of the pianist’s solo, Baker stormed up to him and started cursing him out, demanding to know, “What the f*** are you doing?” Kirkland tried to keep the music going, so rather than sit there and argue with Baker, he responded, “Hey, do you want to play or just stand there and talk?”

By this point, the crowd is aware that Baker is acting like a jerk. Somebody in the house yells, “The pianist is right!” This further annoys the trumpeter, who snarls back at the audience, “F*** you, too!” Not long after, Kirkland, understandably, storms off the stage. And Chet makes an announcement, “I don’t need that expletive deleted—I have the great Gene Bertoncini with me tonight.”

Gene’s major memory of the incident was that, at this point, he was both very uncomfortable—he had witnessed Chet Baker essentially bullying a 20-something pianist off the stage for no good reason—but, at the same time, Gene was very flattered.

“So I reluctantly went up on stage with Chet and we played ‘Funny Valentine’ and he was comfortable. He was comfortable with me. That meant so much to him, just to be comfortable with the musicians playing with him. There were a lot of guys that could just play circles around you, you could easily make a guy like Chet feel inadequate. He was very sensitive. But I think that he got a good sense from me. And it was just great.”

Gene and Mike have both acknowledged that Chet Baker could be very difficult, but they have also both cherished all of their moments with him. Roughly 30 years later, Gene composed an original work in honor of the trumpeter, titled simply “For Chet.” This is a lovely, lyrical waltz that Gene has recorded four times over the last 20 years in four completely different ensemble contexts: with a string quartet on his 2005 semi-classical album, Concerti, in a guitar duo with Tom Wolfe on the 2007 Two Guitars - One Voice, in a unique trio with trumpeter Clay Jenkins and bassist Ike Sturm on the 2014 Joy, and, most recently in an even more unique trio with Ike plus his longtime favorite vocalist, the sublime Melissa Stylianou, who sings the melody wordlessly—and exquisitely—on the 2018 album Dream Dancing.

To this day, when you ask Gene how he feels about Chet Baker and his music, he will always say, “Chet never played a note that he didn’t mean.”

further reading: I highly recommend Jim Gavin’s definitive biography, Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker. (And I just finished Jim’s new book on Anita O’Day, and it’s also excellent.)

Postscript: The excellent, Wisconsin-based jazz singer Janet Planet, who recorded a classic album titled Just Above a Whisper with Gene in 2004, informs me that she has recently written words to Gene’s melody, “For Chet.” She recited them to me over the phone and I agreed they were lovely—fully worthy of Gene’s composition. She has not recorded them yet, but I look forward to sharing them with everybody when she does.

Coming Next, Hopefully before June is over (not much time left, I know!): Exactly what, or more specifically who, is the connection between Judy Garland, Lee Konitz, and Lennie Tristano?

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (SSS #203 2026-06-27)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100: Sketches of Broadway (2026-06-24)
Listen: + Playlist:

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Mary Lou Williams Songbook with Dr. Michael Garber
(SSS #195 2026-04-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

April in My Heart: Songs About April
(SSS #194 2026-04-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

April Fool’s Day Special: Classic Parodies with Spike Jones & Co.
(SSS #193 2026-04-04) - 3/31/26, 3.49 PM
Listen: + Playlist:

THE NAT KING COLE BIRTHDAY SPECIAL:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 2 (SSS #192 2026-03-28)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 1 (SSS #191 2026-03-21)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14) SPECIAL BONUS MINI-EPISODE
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This Father’s Day, the Knicks were a special present to my late dad. It turns out that it was a gift I paid forward, as they say. Without quite being aware of it, I sent John Pizzarelli a Father’s Day present—a gift by which he would remember his own late father, the legendary Bucky Pizzarelli.

Before we proceed, I need to inform you that if you don’t already listen to Radio Deluxe, the long-running and highly-recommended radio show hosted by John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey, then stop reading this Substack and go to this page immediately. Radio Deluxe is a wonderful program that draws on a wide and diverse range of wonderful and special recordings. If there’s an overriding message to Radio Deluxe, it’s that many areas of great music—modern jazz, the major singer-songwriters, and show tunes—are more compatible with each other than most of us ever cared to acknowledge.

As John notes on Radio Deluxe this week, in 1977, the legendary trumpeter and occasional singer Chet Baker did a series of sessions for A&M Records, the very successful pop-oriented label run by another noteworthy trumpeter, Herb Alpert. Roughly half of the Baker A&M tracks were issued at the time on the LP You Can’t Go Home Again. The rest were not heard from until 1989, after Baker’s death, when they were released as part of an expanded edition of You Can’t Go Home Again as well as a separate CD titled The Best Thing for You.

The most intimate and the loveliest track from these shows is the Tadd Dameron classic, “If You Could See Me Now,” one of the great ballads of the bebop era. Baker sings and plays with just guitar accompaniment, and it’s beautiful: those of us who love Baker’s singing all agree that he didn’t do it often enough, and this is a late-career vocal gem by an artist who should have sung a lot more than he did. The vocal, the trumpet solo, and the guitar accompaniment are all close to perfect.

The credited guitarist on that track is Gene Bertoncini, but Gene always denied it was he. For years, Gene has insisted that it’s actually his great buddy, longtime mentor, and frequent partner Bucky Pizzarelli. To this day, Gene has no idea as to how or why he got the credit that should have been given to Bucky. (As it happens, Gene did play on another session with Baker in 1977, which was actually part of an album by Brazilian singer and cultural icon Astrud Gilberto: The Girl from Ipanema, arranged by Don Sebesky. Producer Hank O’Neal, who was dating Ms. Gilberto at the time, vividly remembered the session, as it was the first time he ever met Gene or Chet.)

So Gene is on The Girl from Ipanema with Baker and Gilberto, but not the You Can’t Go Home Again / The Best Thing for You material. Somehow, when “If You Could See Me Now” got released in 1989, somebody somehow thought it was Gene. Gene never liked to broach the subject because he always felt terrible about it; he hated the idea of taking credit for someone else’s work and, as long as I’ve known him, he has always been quick to give credit where it’s due.

As some of you know, Gene and I are currently working on a book together, and just this week he was telling me some stories about playing with Chet; there are live gigs that he remembers vividly, in fact, much more so than that studio session with Astrud.

So we talked about “If You Could See Me Now” and Gene proceeded to show me a smoking gun, proof positive that the guitarist on the track could be no one other than Bucky. A casual listen will reveal, for all to hear, a low A string playing throughout. Here was proof positive that this was indeed a seven-string guitar playing behind Chet. Case closed.

So informed, I went to the source: I sent the track to John Pizzarelli, and he responded almost immediately, and confirmed that it could be no one else but his father, Bucky Pizzarelli.

That’s got 1977 Bucky written all over it.
Easily him. No one else.
Great stuff!
Piz

We were all fortunate in that I happened to bring this track to his attention at the same time John and Jess were planning a special episode of Radio Deluxe for Father’s Day, as a tribute to Bucky, that would include a number of “stealth” tracks, i.e, those where it’s not widely known that Bucky was on the session—most famously, although perhaps not surprisingly, the iconic recording of “Georgia on My Mind” by Ray Charles with Ralph Burns conducting. (The late Bob Porter always insisted the arrangement was actually by Al Cohn; I know both Al and Ralph, and alas, it never occurred to me to ask them.)

To listen to the latest episode of Radio Deluxe, click here.

Here are the three tracks that actually do feature Gene playing behind Chet, as well as Astrud Gilberto. (This is actually the second time Gene recorded with Gilberto, whose ex-husband Joao was one of Gene’s closest friends and greatest influences. Their first album together was Astrud Gilberto with Stanley Turrentine in 1971.)

Admittedly, I have a hard time hearing both Gene and Chet on the more pop-oriented “We’ll Make Today Last Night Again,” credited to the singer as sole author. There’s a Motown-y choir behind Gilberto and some funky bass from Gene’s other longtime recording partner Ron Carter, playing electric, but also an expressive tenor saxophone solo probably by Eddie Daniels. “Wanting You” has lots of electronic rhythm section. “Wanting You” is also pop-driven and emphasizes strings as well as a brief wordless passage by the singer.

“Far Away,” co-credited to Gilberto, is not the similarly-titled tune by Carole King. However, this “Far Away” is clear and away the gem of the album, not least because Baker sings a full-on duet with Gilberto here, one of the very few he recorded in his entire career. “Far Away” opens with an introduction that quotes one of the most famous examples of 20th-century classical music, Concierto de Aranjuez, which Baker, following the lead of Miles Davis on his 1959 Sketches of Spain, had himself recorded on his 1975 CTI album Concierto. In fact, the melody to “Far Away” seems, at points, to have been based directly on Roderigo’s Concierto. It’s a curious track; Baker’s trumpet is excellent, but, as a pair of singers, both Gilberto and Baker are extremely passive; they don’t necessarily sound like they’re relating to each other. And maybe that’s the point: the lyrics go “Far away… you’re so far away.” This is a song about not connecting and not relating, and these two take that notion very literally. They celebrate the disconnect.

Gene’s role is admittedly minimal here, but the “Far Away” track in particular is certainly a moment that he can be proud of: when he joined two icons of mid-century jazz and world musical culture in their only collaboration.

Coming next: In addition to the 1977 Gilberto sessions, Gene had the opportunity to play with the legendary trumpeter on several live gigs. The story of how those went down is coming in part two.

Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | “By Request”
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Mary Lou Williams Songbook with Dr. Michael Garber
(SSS #195 2026-04-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

April in My Heart: Songs About April
(SSS #194 2026-04-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

April Fool’s Day Special: Classic Parodies with Spike Jones & Co.
(SSS #193 2026-04-04) - 3/31/26, 3.49 PM
Listen: + Playlist:

THE NAT KING COLE BIRTHDAY SPECIAL:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 2 (SSS #192 2026-03-28)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 1 (SSS #191 2026-03-21)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14) SPECIAL BONUS MINI-EPISODE
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald’s Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since Ken Poston at KSDS Jazz 88.3 San Diego asked me to do a weekly radio show, focusing around jazz vocalists (and what I call “jazz-adjacent” artists) and songs. Every week I try to do an interesting theme, everything from more serious topics, like the Civil Rights Movement, to something frivolous like my multiple-part “Salute to Fruit!” (The first show in this subseries consisted of roughly 50 different songs about apples, including the elusive “Wouldja for a Big Red Apple.” The second part of “Salute to Fruit” will be that many songs that concern themselves with bananas.) And there was a show of songs about the ocean (“Songs in the Key of Sea”) and about chickens (I couldn’t NOT do a show about chickens. It was titled “Poultry in Motion.”)

And I have honored musical traditions from all over the world, including Italy, Cuba, Brazil, Germany, Turkey, a program of Sinatra doing French chansons (“In the OUI Small Hours” or “Songs for Swinging Snail-Eaters”), and even California! To me, it’s too easy to do a show of songs about New York, I had to do one specifically about Harlem—coming soon, Brooklyn!

In addition to which, it’s a personal mandate of mine to build shows around composers, from the canonical ones (Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Rodgers, they’ve all been covered more than once) to songwriters who have never gotten any kind of a tribute, like Bob Hilliard, Marvin Fisher, and Harry Woods. Not to mention Kander & Ebb and Lerner & Loewe. And I am especially proud of honoring contemporary and living songwriters like Paul Williams, Stevie Wonder, and, yes, Bob Dylan. I’ve done three whole shows of songs by Burt Bacharach, the first of which while he was still with us. (And yes, also Charles Strouse, while he was still around to hear it.)

Coming Soon:

Judy Garland sings Harold Arlen (I’m know that I am NOT the first to think of this.)
For Independence Day: USA 250 “Great American Cities” (last year I did “every state in the 48 is great”)
The songs of Mack Gordon & Harry Revel
Also for July 4: Louis Armstrong plays & sings the Great African American Songbook
For Tony Bennett 100: Ultimate “Mr. Broadway”
Salute to Fruit, part 2: “Yes We DO Have Bananas” (a show with a-peel)
Ultimate Johnny Mercer / Harold Arlen Songbook
Miss Peggy Lee sings the Johnny Mercer Songbook
Only the dead know Brooklyn
The Willard Robison Songbook
A Touch of Texas
For Boxing Day (or Guy Fawkes Day): The Great London Songbook
The Ultimate Vegetable Medley (in which the “Celery Stalks at Midnight”)
Candy and other Just Desserts
A Jazz Portrait of Randy Newman (also Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Carole King, Jerry Lieber & Mike Stoller.)
For Oktoberfest: “Too Close for Kaempfert”

And now, here are the first 200 episodes PLUS about 25 bonus shows. (A more detailed list of mostly more recent shows, including playlists is available here.) Listen to as many as you like, and let me know how you like them. (Plus I’m always open for more suggestions for shows.) Let me hear from you!

In the summer of 1926, another pair of songwriters had the same idea as Berlin; veterans Buddy DeSylva and Lewis Gensler wrote songs for a show called Queen High, which ran for more than ten months (September 1926 to July 1927) and they included their own song with the same title. (Although more accurately, the title on the sheet music was given as “Gentlemen Prefer Blonds,” sic.) By an oddball coincidence, the choreographer for both shows was Sammy Lee; you might think he would have informed either the producer or the songwriters that they were re-using a song title that had was already currently being heard on Broadway.

There are at least two medleys of “vocal gems” from Queen High that include the song, the American “Gaiety Musical Comedy Chorus” (if they were around today, they’d surely be appearing at 54 Below) and, from London, The Savoy Orpheans (also below).

Bonus tracks: here are two more Queen High medleys, although neither features the “Blondes.” The first is the two piano team of Edgar Fairchild and budding songwriter Ralph Rainger (warning: you might want to skip this one, it’s in pretty chewy condition), followed by Carl Fenton’s Orchestra. (In between the two, you will find a a piece of sheet music from Queen High signed by Edgar Fairchild for our buddy, the great pianist Peter Mintun, in 1971.)

Two additional fun factoids regarding Queen High: Although this “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” never caught on, one song from the score did: “Cross Your Heart” (also by Buddy DeSylva and Lewis Gensler) recorded in 1940 by Artie Shaw and his Orchestra, and then picked up by Mel Tormé in 1949, who essentially sang it in tribute to Shaw. And, yes, there was a London production of Queen High, which opened at the Queen’s Theatre (appropriately enough) on November 2, 1926. The London Queen High starred Joyce Barbour, who had sung Irving Berlin’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” less than a year earlier in the revue R. S. V. P. (as covered in part one of this Substack series). I wonder if she also sang the DeSylva “Gentlemen Prefer Blonds [sic]” in Queen High?

Lastly, the DeSylva-Gensler “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” waited almost 80 years to be recorded fully by itself (other than as part of a medley), in a live album of a concert produced by Scott Siegel, The Broadway Musicals of 1926, in which it is engagingly sung by the trio of Nancy Anderson (blonde), Nancy Opel (blonde), and Sutton Foster (not blonde). (Thank you once again to sheetmusicsinger.com. This is a great resource!)

DeSylva lyrics

1. Nita Loos has writ a story
   Full of wit and sure of glory:
   “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”
   Borrow it at once or buy it.
   It’s the truth, I’ll verify it.
   Gentlemen prefer blondes.
   They make the fellows jealous.
   They make ’em pay the price.
   And still their victims tell us,
   “They’re Nordic but they’re nice.”
   Blondes are Nordic but they’re nice.

Refrain:
When they give away a string of pearls
Gentlemen prefer blondes.
When it comes to “educating” girls
Gentlemen prefer blondes.
“Light my gloomy life,”
They mutter to ’em thickly,
“I have a brunette wife
Who’s invalid and sickly”
So, is a girl to blame if she responds?
Since gentlemen prefer blondes.

2. In the story, you must hand it
   To this flaxen bobbed-haired bandit.
   She is out to dig gold.
   What she does to Mister Eisman,
   That ten carat ring surprise-man,
   Is a shame to behold.
   Just wait till you have read it:
   She trims him in a flash.
   You’ll say it’s to her credit…
   It’s rather to her cash.
   Yes, sir, rather to her cash.

Refrain:
When the female features they would scan
Gentlemen prefer blondes.
When they break the Act that’s called the Mann
Gentlemen prefer blondes.
My! but she was dumb,
This queen of Jessie Jameses.
In London she said, “Come
Let’s view the River Thamezes.”
Yet when they’re deeding over stocks and bonds
Rich gentlemen prefer blondes.

At this point I will just mention the classic 1949 Broadway musical, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with a score by Leo Robin and Jule Styne and a book by Joseph Fields and Anita Loos herself. And there’s also the 1953 20th Century Fox movie adaptation, which truncated the score but gave us Marilyn Monroe and the equally preferable Jane Russell. There is a short but memorable title song in the show, which did not make it into the film when it happened.

(Above, Carol Channing with that title song.)

When the Broadway show Gentlemen Prefer Blondes became a hit, the country singer-songwriter Eddie Noack decided to come out with an original song using that title. This was at least a minor hit for Noack, who would later be considered a pioneer of the rockabilly genre.

Around 1974, the Hanes hosiery company launched its campaign revolving around the slogan and the jingle “Gentlemen Prefer Hanes.” It’s not known if the agency made any kind of arrangement with either Anita Loos or Irving Berlin, who were both still alive. Joey Levine, best known as a songwriter and singer with The Ohio Express rock band, is credited with the song; it is entirely separate from the previous songs by Berlin, Gensler, and Jule Styne, but to my ears, at least, it definitely sounds as if Mr. Levine had heard the Berlin song and used it as a template.

Here’s Daniel Weinstein on the differences between “Blondes” and “Hanes”:

I did compare the two, and the only similarity is the rhythm and placement of the title phrase. Melodically and harmonically, they are not similar. Berlin cleverly uses the same two notes in his melody of the A section while moving the underlying chords down a half step each of the first 3 bars. Thus, that repeated melody notes starts as the “6” of the first chord, then becomes the “7” of the second chord and the “Major 7” of the third chord. The jingle starts with the melody on the “5” of the underlying chord, moving to the “6” and then back to the 5, then moves the melody up a whole step under different chords.I suspect the writer of the 1970’s jingle was probably not familiar with the Berlin song but happened upon the similarity of the title phrase rhythm by chance.

Lastly, our favorite clarinetist, Dan Levinson, made a contribution to this discussion using ChatGPT, as he relates below:

ChatGPT came up with this in about a tenth of a second when I told it to write a poem about the three songs called “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (I provided the composers’ names), and told it to include something about the commercial jingle “Gentlemen Prefer Hanes” by Joey Levine:

A curious puzzle for music fans,
A fact that surprises and stretches spans:
Four different writers, in years gone by,
Chose one title beneath the sky.

Lewis Gensler and Buddy DeSylva,
Working together with musical fervor,
Penned a song called Gentlemen Prefer Blondes—
A title that still beyond time responds.

Then Irving Berlin, that master of rhyme,
Used the same title in his own time.
And Jule Styne, too, with melody fond,
Had a song named Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Three separate songs, four writers in all,
Answering somehow the very same call.
One title repeated, yet each one unique,
A musical coincidence scholars might seek.

But the tale takes a turn in commercial terrain,
Where Joey Levine joined in the refrain.
With advertising wit and marketing brains,
He sang of Gentlemen Prefer Hanes.

So Blondes became Hanes, and Broadway met sales,
As song titles wandered on unexpected trails.
From DeSylva and Gensler to Berlin and Styne,
Then Levine’s catchy jingle—a neat little line.

Thanks as always to Team Slouching: Rob “On the Job” Lester, Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Waldman, Dan Fortune, Daniel Weinstein, Nick Rossi, Jeff Leibowitz, and Dan Levinson!

Coming Very Soon—Your Next Favorite Substack: “The Adventures of Bill Boggs.” Yes! (Watch this space for details!)

(Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | "By Request"
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Mary Lou Williams Songbook with Dr. Michael Garber
(SSS #195 2026-04-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

April in My Heart: Songs About April
(SSS #194 2026-04-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

April Fool’s Day Special: Classic Parodies with Spike Jones & Co.
(SSS #193 2026-04-04) - 3/31/26, 3.49 PM
Listen: + Playlist:

THE NAT KING COLE BIRTHDAY SPECIAL:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 2 (SSS #192 2026-03-28)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 1 (SSS #191 2026-03-21)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14) SPECIAL BONUS MINI-EPISODE
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald's Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”
Music & Lyric by Irving Berlin
Introduced in London and first recorded by Joyce Barbour in R.S.V.P. (1926)
Introduced in America by Groucho Marx (as “Henry W. Schlemmer”) and chorus girls in The Cocoanuts (“Summer Edition”) (1926)
From Robert Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin: “Published. Copyrighted June 28, 1926. Previously registered for copyright as an unpublished song May 20,1926. Inspired by the Anita Loos novel of the same name.” (Thanks, Bob!)

Very special thanks to Dan Levinson and Peter Mintun for the basic research for this Substack.

(Above is one of the commercials from the long-running “Gentlemen Prefer Hanes” campaign. I will talk more about those in part 2.)

Many red-blooded young men of my generation grew up with this song—or, to be more technically correct, a variation on this song—on a TV commercial, which effectively taught us how to leer at a lady’s legs. (We needed instruction in this matter. Very helpful.)

It’s kind of a mystery how—or even if—Joey Levine, then a musical director at an advertising agency, knew about this 1926 number by Irving Berlin. “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” had been heard for roughly two months on Broadway in 1926, and there are three 78 RPM recordings that had not been reissued since 1927. (And, like most of the score, it was dropped from the Paramount Pictures early talkie adaptation.)

In 1925 and ‘26, Anita Loos’s “Lorelei Lee” stories—which were both funny and sexy—were a sensation, first in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar (circulation went up 400 per cent, it is said) and then in book form. Irving Berlin was always keen to stay on top of a pop culture trend. Indeed, the whole book of the show, about shady land practices, booms and busts in jazz age Florida, was torn from the day’s headlines. (This was also the subject matter for Stephen Sondheim’s Road Show 80 years later.) Elsewhere, in the score of The Cocoanuts, Berlin wrote one song, “The Monkey Doodle-Doo,” describing the contemporary practice of aging swains trying to revitalize their romantic lives by injecting monkey glands, kind of the Viagra of its day. He also wrote two different songs—for the same score—about the Charleston dance craze, “They’re Blaming the Charleston” and “Everyone in the World Is Doing the Charleston.”

In the mid-1920s, Berlin and Loos would have known each other from the Algonquin Round Table and elsewhere. I imagine that he would have asked for her permission to borrow her book title, which was more fully known as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady.

The Cocoanuts (1925) was also the breakthrough “book” show for the four Marx Brothers, who had come up through the ranks of vaudeville before making a hit on Broadway in the 1924 revue I’ll Say She Is. With a book by George S. Kaufman and a score by Berlin, the Brothers had certainly arrived in the world of “legit” theater in a big way.

After out-of-town tryouts in Boston and Philadelphia (at the Forrest Theatre) in the fall of 1925, The Cocoanuts opened at the Lyric Theatre in New York on December 8, 1925. Although only a tiny handful of songs from the show made it into the 1929 movie version of The Cocoanuts, this was a very full and rich score; Berlin really went to town, writing dozens of songs. The show ran for 375 performances; in June 1926, the producers announced a revitalized “Summer Edition” of The Cocoanuts, for which Berlin added yet four more new songs. This edition ran until August, and then the whole production came back to Broadway less than a year later for a two-week “return engagement” at the Century Theatre in May 1927.

“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” was added in the “Summer Edition.” However, Berlin apparently wrote it in fall 1925, possibly with The Cocoanuts in mind, or possibly as an independent song. The song made its way to London, where it was inserted into a revue titled R.S.V.P., which opened at the Vaudeville Theatre (still standing on The Strand) on February 23rd, 1926. It was sung by the soprano Joyce Barbour and recorded shortly thereafter for (British) Columbia Records. (That 1926 single has been reissued several times, notably on the 1972 Parlophone LP, Revue 1919-1929 Original Artistes.)

“Blondes” then went into The Cocoanuts in June. More’s the pity that we do not have either a cinematic or audio document of Groucho Marx performing the song with the Cocoanuts chorus girls; we can only speculate that it must have been quite a number. It is not included in the Victor Light Opera Company’s four-minute, 12-inch 78 RPM medley of songs from the show, not least because it apparently had not yet been written when that recording was made. In July 1926, the famous tenor / baritone duo, the Happiness Boys, Billy Jones, and Ernest Hare, recorded Berlin’s song on a longish-playing Edison disc. (As far as I can tell, this is the only vintage American recording of the song.)

Not long after the “Summer Edition” closed in New York, the major dance band version was made in London. Waxed on August 17, 1926, this snappy-peppy rendition featured the highly esteemed bandleader Jack Hylton (the Paul Whiteman of Europe) singing with his own orchestra. There’s also an eloquent trombone solo on the verse and a Fletcher Henderson-esque clarinet trio. (Around the same time, pianist Billy Mayerl included “Blondes” in a medley for British Vocalion.) Having never seen the Jack Hylton original British 78, I wonder if the label identifies the song as coming from R.S.V.P. or The Cocoanuts. (The French HMV pressing, shown above, apparently doesn’t mention either show.)

The West End production of The Cocoanuts opened at the Garrick Theatre in March of 1928. Almost unbelievably, the Marx Brothers somehow were not in this; apparently they were touring in the USA and getting ready for their next show, Animal Crackers, which opened on Broadway in October. According to London Musical Shows on Record, the British Cocoanuts featured Fred Duprez, Leonard Henry, Pat Kendall, Terry Kendall, Max and Harry Nesbitt, and Enid Stamp-Taylor, and “this cast made no new recordings.” (courtesy sheetmusicsinger.com)

Lyrics:

Verse

Girls with golden hair
Seem to have a flair
That makes a kind old gentleman respond.
Since the world began,
Ev’ry gentleman
Is just a man who’s gentle to a blonde.

Chorus 1

The most neglected girls in town
Are those with hair of black or brown
’Cause gentlemen prefer blondes.
The redheads and the sweet brunettes
Make very lovely household pets,
But gentlemen prefer blondes.
A curly head of yellow
Without any sense
Can always make a fellow
Pay all the expense.
A girlie with a golden crop
Can take the Scotchman out to shop
’Cause gentlemen prefer blondes.

Chorus 2

A girl with Mary Pickford curls
Will live to see her string of pearls
’Cause gentlemen prefer blondes.
It takes a fair-haired Mary Ann
To catch a Cinderella man
’Cause gentlemen prefer blondes.
Those golden heads that flutter
With so many faults
Make men of eggs and butter
Go down to their vaults.
If you don’t think it means a lot,
Just see what Peggy Hopkins got,
’Cause gentlemen prefer blondes.

Chorus 3

A married redhead or brunette
Will soon discover with regret
That gentlemen prefer blondes.
The hair she finds on hubby’s sleeve
When he comes home makes her believe
That gentlemen prefer blondes.
A girl with golden tresses
Who touched up her hair
Is wearing all the dresses
The wife ought to wear.
Peroxide on a lady’s dome
Will help to keep her husband home
’Cause gentlemen prefer blondes.

PS: Peggy Hopkins Joyce was the most famous (or infamous) gold-digger of the era, an attractive blonde who married a succession of incredibly and increasingly wealthy men—a jazz age Kardashian. She also enjoyed a brief film career, appearing opposite W. C. Fields in the classic gonzo comedy International House (1934). Wiki lists a half-dozen other songs (although not this one), mostly by Cole Porter, that reference her. (Maybe someday KT Sullivan will give us a show called The Peggy Hopkins Joyce Songbook.)

We’ll end part one with the only modern age recording (that we know of) of the Berlin song. This was produced by the indefatigable historian Chip Deffaa, sung by Carl Kissin:

Coming in Part Two:

1926 “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” - Buddy DeSylva & Lewis Gensler, from Queen High
1949 “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” - Leo Robin & Jule Styne, from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
1949 “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” - a country & western song by Eddie Noack
c1974 “Gentlemen Prefer Hanes” - the advertising campaign, jingle by Joey Levine

Thanks as always to Team Slouching: Rob “On the Job” Lester, Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Waldman, Dan Fortune, Daniel Weinstein, Nick Rossi, Jeff Leibowitz, and Dan Levinson!

Coming Very Soon—Your Next Favorite Substack: “The Adventures of Bill Boggs.” Yes! (Watch this space for details!)

(Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | "By Request"
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Mary Lou Williams Songbook with Dr. Michael Garber
(SSS #195 2026-04-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

April in My Heart: Songs About April
(SSS #194 2026-04-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

April Fool’s Day Special: Classic Parodies with Spike Jones & Co.
(SSS #193 2026-04-04) - 3/31/26, 3.49 PM
Listen: + Playlist:

THE NAT KING COLE BIRTHDAY SPECIAL:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 2 (SSS #192 2026-03-28)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 1 (SSS #191 2026-03-21)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14) SPECIAL BONUS MINI-EPISODE
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald's Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In his autobiography, Fred Astaire remembers how “Ukulele Ike stopped the show every night with “Fascinating Rhythm,’” in the 1924 Broadway show Lady, Be Good!. We have no film footage of that, alas, but we can watch Edwards stopping the show with “Singin’ in the Rain” in The Hollywood Revue. This is in spite of how the 1929 release was very literally an all-star affair, and virtually every member of the cast was someone more familiar to motion picture-goers than Edwards.

A quick look at the cast list for Hollywood Revue reveals that most of the players were stars under contract to the studio, including Joan Crawford and John Gilbert, relatively few of whom had anything like musical talent. Ms. Crawford could, famously, dance a mean Charleston, and there was also Charles King, a fine operetta-style tenor in the traditional mold, but the only cast member who had starred on Broadway and was a major recording star was Edwards. So, naturally, his song would almost certainly be the most memorable.

Once Ukulele Ike put “Singin’ in the Rain” on the map, the song became a kind of mantra for the MGM studio. Between 1929 and 1952, it’s heard in at least four subsequent Metro productions, most notably sung by the young Judy Garland in Little Nelly Kelly (1940).

Most of us have grown up with the 1952 Singin’ in the Rain, produced by Freed and using the songs of Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, most written in the early days of movie musicals. Therefore, we’re most accustomed to hearing the song essentially as a medium fast dance number—the same tempo as a soft shoe number, designed more for charm than to exhibit virtuosity, at a speed similar to, say, Ray Bolger doing “The Old Soft Shoe” in Three to Make Ready (1946).

But the original number, as sung on screen and recorded by Edwards, was much faster, much as apparently everything in the 1920s was much faster. In subsequent retrospectives like That’s Entertainment, the original 1929 production number is held up essentially as an object of ridicule, a chance for us to sneer at the primitivism of the first movie musicals and their very basic, theatrical-style staging. Even so, I have always found the original number very charming, not least for Edwards and his combination of sly hipness and complete sincerity. In fact, it was fairly state-of-the-art for 1929, whether on stage or screen.

The number commences vaudeville-style, with three little girls (I think they’re girls) in rain slickers holding a sign announcing the number, spelled this time “Singing in the Rain” with a g instead of an apostrophe, and the word ukulele misspelled. Presently, the curtains open as we hear the orchestra making wind and storm effects, and we see Edwards, wearing a rain slicker, standing beneath a prop tree, a massive rain effect all around him.

Edwards sings the first chorus brilliantly, accompanied only by his own ukulele. (Note: the lyrics given below are taken from the published 1929 sheet music. Edwards may make slight variations in his performances, like “Feelin’” for “Feeling.”)

I’m singin’ in the rain, just singin’ in the rain
What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again
I’m laughing at clouds so dark up above
The sun’s in my heart and I’m ready for love.

Let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place
Come on with the rain, I’ve a smile on my face
I walk down the lane with a happy refrain
Just singin’, singin’ in the rain

Then he proceeds to the verse, or, rather, what we usually describe as the verse. As performed by Edwards on both his 1929 Columbia Records 78 release and on screen in The Hollywood Revue, this section comes after the first chorus. Sometimes performers will do that as a personal option, as Bing Crosby often did, but in this case the sheet music is organized that way, with the so-called verse coming after the first chorus. As Edwards sings this section, he starts with just his own ukulele, and the orchestra comes in gradually behind him:

Why am I smilin’ and why do I sing?
Why does December seem sunny as Spring?
Why do I get up each morning to start
Happy and het up* with joy in my heart?
Why is each new task a trifle to do?
Because I am living a life full of you.

(* “Het up” is archaic 1920s slang for “overly excited.”)

For his second and jazzier chorus, Edwards is fully accompanied by the very jazzy-sounding orchestra playing most heterophonically, sounding like a big New Orleans style (or Dixieland) group; as he sings off-camera, 12 female dancers execute moves onstage. Then, the male vocal group known as the Rounders, also off-camera, sing a full double time chorus, while a mixed (male and female) chorus of dancers does their stuff on the sound stage, enhanced by strobe lighting effects apparently meant to simulate lightning. Incidentally, in the second chorus of the published sheet music, a fourth stave is introduced, describes in the music as “optional rain effect.”

Next, enter the Brox Sisters, who were perhaps the most celebrated female trio of the 1920s, having been a hit in earlier editions of Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue. (They would also make a notable appearance in another early talkie revue, Universal’s The King of Jazz, and consisted of Patricia, Lorayne, and Bobbe Brox, the last of whom married songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen. The three sisters, who apparently are wearing a single raincoat (kinky, that), sing a special arrangement that includes a lot of additional lyrics, as follows:

Pitter-patter pitter-pat,
pitter-patter-pitter-pat.
Pitter-patter pitter-pat,
pitter-patter-pitter-pat.
We are not afraid of thunder.
All the time we wonder,
Why is each new task a trifle to do?
Because we are living a life full of you.
I’m singing in the rain.
Yeah, singing in the rain.
What a glorious feeling,
I’m happy again.
I’m laughing at clouds,
So dark up above.
The sun’s in my heart,
And I’m ready for love.
Let the stormy clouds chase
everyone from the place.
Come on with your rain,
I have a smile on my face.
I’ll walk down the lane,
with a happy refrain,
and singin’,
just singin’ in the rain.

Why am I smiling and why do I sing?
Why does December seem sunny as Spring?
Why do I get up each morning to start
Happy and het up with joy in my heart?
Why is each new task a trifle to do?
Because I’m living a life full of you.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter rain,
pitter-patter, singin’ in the rain.

And that’s not the end. We get yet a fourth segment: the full contingent of female dancers in translucent raincoats, standing in front of a light that reveals their girlish figures, half are on a staircase and half are dancing on the floor. On the soundtrack, we hear the full MGM orchestra and chorus, and, if you listen closely, you can hear Cliff Edwards doing his famous “eefing” as a kind of obligato to the main melody. (This audio should be somehow remixed or re-equalized, with Edwards’s vocal made louder and more audible.) You can also see Edwards standing to the left of the chorus, eefing away, ukulele in hand.

(Above: More “Rain”: the very snappy-peppy rendition by the great British bandleader Jack Hylton from September, 1929. This is followed by Nacio Herb Brown playing and singing his own most famous song at the famed Carousel of American Music concert in San Francisco, September 24, 1940.)

When director / choreographers Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen slowed down the song for the 1952 classic movie, they seem to have immediately realized that the original verse no longer fit for the slower, more intimate and romantic number that they had in mind. To that end, they eliminated said verse and Roger Edens was called upon to come up with a new introduction, which is the one that’s been associated with the song ever since.

Incidentally, I once got caught between two widows regarding that introduction and that verse to “Singin’ in the Rain.” At some point I will write out the whole story, but the relatively quick version is: I was at a rehearsal with Tony Bennett and Lena Horne. (Yes, sometimes it does not suck to be me.) The two legends, who had worked together extensively in the early 1970s, were asked to duet on “Singin’ in the Rain,” which began with the pianist, Bobby Tucker, playing the 1952 vamp. Me, being an incorrigible big mouth, I had to say, “Oh yes, the famous vamp by Roger Edens.” Ms. Horne, aka Mrs. Lennie Hayton, shot me a nasty look and said, “No! It’s the famous vamp by Lennie Hayton!

I slouched, corrected, and remained so until many years later, when I related this incident to Patricia Ward Kelly, the widow of the legendary Gene Kelly. Mrs. Kelly then informed me in no uncertain terms that this vamp was most definitely composed by Roger Edens and not by Lennie Hayton. (Lennie Hayton was indeed the credited musical director for the film, and Edens for vocal arrangements, but I am willing to believe that Mrs. Kelly, who is a tireless researcher and scholar, was correct and Mrs. Hayton was at least slightly misinformed, though Lennie, who was one of the most beloved men in Hollywood, should get some credit, at least, for virtually everything in the film.)

No matter who wrote the 1952 introduction, that vamp has become iconic; the contemporary singer Stella Cole uses it as the intro to her performance. Bryce Edwards (who, like Ms. Cole, is 26) is virtually the only artist born in the last hundred years to use the actual 1929 verse by Freed and Brown. And inspired by Cliff who also recorded it with a studio group, he scats and “eefs” in a chase chorus with trumpeter and co-star Mike Davis. This rather brilliant performance posits how Cliff Edwards would have done it with Red Nichols and the Hot Combination. (They are sure to do it at Birdland on Sunday, June 7 at 5:30PM, so you should be there.)

Final note: in the original Hollywood Revue of 1929, we end with a reprise of “Singin’ in the Rain,” sung by the full company and a huge chorus, all in rain slickers and hats, set in front of a gigantic backdrop of Noah’s ark. (Nothing says rain like Noah’s ark.) We see the entire cast, including the vivacious Joan Crawford, Bessie Love, Marie Dressler, Cliff Edwards (of course) and, soon enough, even Buster Keaton, who keeps his mouth shut but looks rather detached.

In the 1952 classic, Gene Kelly concludes his masterpiece title number with a marvelous pantomime bit, in which his Terpsichorean ode to joy is interrupted by the sudden scowling presence of a disapproving police officer; it’s a direct homage to that selfsame Buster Keaton, and the way Keaton ends his no-less-masterful baseball routine in his own classic, The Cameraman (1928).

Bonus : more singin’ in the rain: First, Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby, from a CBS Radio transcription circa 1955, with Ms. Clooney singing the 1929 verse. Lena Horne sings it on her 1965 album Lena in Hollywood (arranged and conducted by Ray Ellis), in which she’s one of the only artists to actually use it as a verse, meaning before the first chorus. However, Mrs. Hayton completely skips it in her second recording of the song, on her 2005 Seasons Of A Life. (Both versions are included in the video below.)

And there is yet a third verse / introduction! This is also almost certainly by Roger Edens. It’s the one that Judy Garland sings in Little Nelly Kelly (1940) and which Michael Feinstein reprises on The MGM Album (1989).

Thanks as always to Team Slouching: Rob “On the Job” Lester, Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Waldman, Dan Fortune, Daniel Weinstein, Nick Rossi, Jeff Leibowitz, and Dan Levinson!

Coming Very Soon—Your Next Favorite Substack: “The Adventures of Bill Boggs.” Yes! (Watch this space for details!)

(Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | "By Request"
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Mary Lou Williams Songbook with Dr. Michael Garber
(SSS #195 2026-04-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

April in My Heart: Songs About April
(SSS #194 2026-04-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

April Fool’s Day Special: Classic Parodies with Spike Jones & Co.
(SSS #193 2026-04-04) - 3/31/26, 3.49 PM
Listen: + Playlist:

THE NAT KING COLE BIRTHDAY SPECIAL:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 2 (SSS #192 2026-03-28)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 1 (SSS #191 2026-03-21)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14) SPECIAL BONUS MINI-EPISODE
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald's Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Cliff Edwards is hardly forgotten—just ask Donald Fagen. Still, he isn’t as widely acknowledged as he should be as a major pioneer and trendsetter of jazz and American pop music. There are at least three reasons why everyone should know his name:

Edwards was one of the most popular and widely-known performers of the jazz age, which is enough in itself. Ukulele Ike, as he was billed, was also the first star vocalist to use a stringed instrument in the guitar family as both a musical and a visual trademark, so in that sense he can be viewed as a legitimate precursor to Elvis Presley and all the guitar-playing superstars of the past century. He widely popularized the ukulele during the roaring 1920s, and, thanks to Edwards, we see ukuleles in virtually every subsequent depiction of the Jazz Age, as in all those John Held Jr. cartoons depicting flappers and sheiks with raccoon coats and ukes. In the age of F. Scott Fitzgerald, every Tom, Dick, and Harry had to have a uke. And he is a big part of the reason that virtually every piece of sheet music published in the mid-1920s features chord symbols for ukulele.

Edwards was also the first widely popular singer to make wide use of an early form of scat singing. And though he wasn’t as much of an influence on later generations as the younger Louis Armstrong, he nevertheless set a clear precedent for the great vocal improvisers to come. Even before Armstrong both perfected and popularized modern scatting, dozens of artists were adopting Edwards’s signatures, the ukuleles and the “eefing,” as he referred to his wordless singing. Where Edwards recorded for the Pathé / Perfect family of labels and then Columbia Records, other labels were promoting their answers to Ukulele Ike. There was Johnny Marvin, who was also billed as “Honey Duke and His Uke,” on Harmony, and the Grey Gull labels (Radiex etc.) and Harold Sandelman, aka “Banjo Buddy,” a singer-player on Brunswick, who made one of the first recordings of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave.”

Finally, Edwards introduced at least three mega-standard songs that everybody knows: “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” and the song that won an Academy Award, recorded by Edwards in character for the greatest animated film of all time—the Citizen Kane of cartoons—Walt Disney’s 1940 masterpiece Pinocchio. It was, of course, “When You Wish Upon a Star”; he was the singing and speaking voice of Jiminy Cricket, and this number by Ned Washington and Leigh Harline won the Academy Award. (He also introduced “Let’s Misbehave” to American audiences.)

We’ve already written extensively about the great Cliff Edwards in a number of Substack (you can read that here) and New York Sun stories, as well as in at least two books. This week, two young friends of mine, the fine trumpeter Mike Davis and the singer/multi-instrumentalist Bryce Edwards are at Birdland (Sunday, June 7 at 5:30PM) celebrating the collaboration of Cliff Edwards with the equally iconic 1920s trumpet bandleader superstar Red Nichols.

Although Edwards and Nichols worked together well before this particular song, today I want to focus on one of the standards most closely associated with him: “Singin’ in the Rain.” He introduced it to the larger world in MGM’s Hollywood Revue of 1929 - although, as it turns out, it wasn’t written for him –- more on that shortly.

Like Al Jolson, Cliff Edwards was close to the top of the showbiz ladder when talking pictures became all the rage in the late 1920s. Hollywood Revue was already his third film appearance, following two pictures very typical of the era, the World War One romance Marianne and the higher education comedy So This Is College—all three of these released in 1929. (It was a busy year.)

And this is a story for a future Substack, but, whether by coincidence or design, musical forces were already aligning themselves with the Hollywood power structure as early as 1925 and ’26. In those years, a new theater was being built at 6126 Hollywood Boulevard. The owners borrowed the name from Irving Berlin’s Music Box on West 45th Street in New York’s theater district, which had opened in 1921. The Los Angeles Music Box opened in the fall of 1926, just around the time that the Warner Bros. were producing their first talkie shorts and other projects, and began presenting a series of revues designed to compete with Broadway.

It’s important to note that songwriters Arthur Freed (words) and Nacio Herb Brown (music) were already veterans of Tin Pan Alley whose careers go back at least as far as that WW1 era. In 1921, they wrote their first song together, “When Buddha Smiles.” This and another number, “Take Me in Your Arms” (not the more famous later song of that title) were written with a third collaborator, the actor and songwriter Charles W. Dill (writing under the pseudonym “King Zany”), and while “Buddha” was a major hit—it was widely recorded at the time and subsequently became a traditional jazz standard—Freed and Brown did not work together again for about six years.

At the start of 1926, Arthur Freed was in Chicago, where he wrote both the words and music for an ambitious musical show titled Pair o’ Fools, which had a book by John Emerson and Anita Loos. The behind-the-scenes talent (specifically Freed and Loos) is considerably better known 100 years later than the stars, the vaudeville comedy team C. William Kolb and Max M. Dill—playing the titular pair o’ fools—who also produced. (C. William Kolb became better known as Clarence Kolb, famous for playing a judge in Adam’s Rib and

Pair o’ Fools opened at Studebaker Theater in Chicago on January 25, 1926, and while it’s not known how long it ran there, within a month it was playing in San Francisco. According to the Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1926:

“Arthur Freed, composer of the music and lyrics of Kolb and Dill’s new show A Pair o’ Fools which is making such a hit in San Francisco, is working on a new musical comedy which will be produced in Los Angeles. Great secrecy surrounds this new play and Freed will not even tell the name of it.”

This “new” play doesn’t seem to have ever materialized, but by 1927 both Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown were in Los Angeles, where they were involved in two stage revues. Freed produced at least one such revue at the Orange Grove, titled Arthur Freed’s Orange Grove Theater Revue, for which he’s credited with writing the words and music to one song, “In Our Orange Grove.” (Freed was also involved in some non-musical productions, such as Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms and the W. Somerset Maugham-inspired Rain; the latter opened at the Orange Grove around November 1, 1926. In fact, Freed seems to have produced Rain around the same time he was writing “Singin’ in the Rain.”) Freed was also working at this time as an assistant director for the studio later known as Paramount Pictures .

Carter DeHaven’s Music Box Theatre (which still exists, and is currently known as the Fonda Theatre) opened on Hollywood Boulevard on October 20, 1926, with a revue titled Fancies. DeHaven was a silent film actor and stage producer, although he’s best known to subsequent generations as the father of everybody’s favorite Summer Stock starlet, Gloria DeHaven. Fancies was clearly DeHaven’s answer to The Ziegfeld Follies, the George White Scandals, and Earl Carroll’s Vanities.

At some point, the show underwent a name change: as late as November 21, 1926, the Los Angeles Times continues to give the title as Fancies. (This clipping also mentions that the run is entering its sixth week.) One week later, on November 28, the paper refers to the production as The Music Box Revue. When the next edition of the revue opened, on February 2, 1927, DeHaven was now officially calling it The Music Box Revue. The production was still clearly an attempt to compete with the all-star productions back east on Broadway; at different points in the run, it featured such theatrical luminaries as Fanny Brice, Lupino Lane, Eddie Cantor, tenor Morton Downey (Senior, thank you very much), and future Hollywood leading lady Nancy Carroll.

Freed and Brown, working mostly separately, would write about five songs for The Music Box Revue, among them “We Don’t Know Why -- But,” “Who’s Who with You,” “Loose Ankles” (apparently not the 1930 song recorded by Andy Kirk), and the intriguingly titled, “A Hollywood Relief.” The only song they wrote together was “Singin’ in the Rain,” which was introduced by Doris Eaton Travis, who was already a Ziegfeld alumna, and whose additional claim to fame was living to 106 before her death in 2010, and thus becoming the last surviving Ziegfeld girl.

You could say that The Music Box Revue was the first big Hollywood musical, even though it was a theatrical production rather than a film, but more about that show in a future Substack. No one outside of Hollywood Boulevard would hear “Singin’ in the Rain” for another two years, but clearly this was the song that firmly convinced Freed and Brown that they should be a permanent words-and-music partnership; I like to think that Freed’s acumen as both a songwriter and a producer was enough for him to realize they had a great song there.

And, like I say, I also like to think that Freed and Brown wanted to be in Hollywood because they knew that motion pictures were about to start talking and, eventually, singing and dancing. Sometime around 1927 Freed had become friendly with the “scenario writer” (as authors of silent film screenplays were called) Ralph Spence and, as Hugh Fordin writes in The World of Entertainment, Spence introduced the pair to Irving Thalberg, already the major player at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Freed and Brown had been busy, and they already had movie musicals on their mind. As he later told Fordin, “Actually we wrote ‘The Broadway Melody,” ‘The Wedding of the Painted Doll’ and ‘You Were Meant for Me” before we met Thalberg.” The boy genius producer was then working on MGM’s first important all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing musical picture. This was to be a backstage story, which Freed described as inspired by the story of the Duncan Sisters, and which was then being written by Edmund Goulding, who eventually became famous as a director (and also a songwriter). The original idea was to call it Whoopee, but then they got wind of a typically big Ziegfeld show that was about to open on Broadway with that title. (Whoopee, starring Eddie Cantor, would be one of the big hits of the late 1920s, opening on December 4, 1928, at the New Amsterdam Theatre and running for 407 performances.)

In light of that development, Thalberg decided to use all three of these Freed-Brown songs for his production, and he took the name of one of them, “The Broadway Melody,” as the title of the film. On December 12, The Los Angeles Times announced that MGM was hosting a special “luncheon dassant” at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Arthur and Herb were present, as was a dance band. The whole point was to introduce two new songs about to be heard in the forthcoming Broadway Melody: “The Wedding of the Painted Doll” and “I’ll Make You Love Me.” (The latter either was not used in the film or perhaps the reporter was thinking of “You Were Meant for Me.”)

The Broadway Melody, which would lead to three more movies taking that title (1936, 1938, and 1940), had its premiere on February 4, 1929. The next project would be The Hollywood Revue, for which they would write one new number: the WW1-style production number, “Tommy Atkins on Parade.” They would also re-use two existing songs, “You Were Meant For Me,” reprised from The Broadway Melody, and “Singin’ in the Rain,” from the Music Box Revue two years earlier.

To be continued very shortly in part 2! (Next time we will delve deep into the mystery of the three different verses and introductions for “Singin’ in the Rain.”) Keep watching this space. And super special thanks this week to the the two Robs, Lester and Waldman.

Thanks as always to Team Slouching: Rob “On the Job” Lester, Elizabeth Zimmer, Dan Fortune, Daniel Weinstein, Nick Rossi, Jeff Leibowitz, and Dan Levinson!

Coming Very Soon—Your Next Favorite Substack: “The Adventures of Bill Boggs.” Yes! (Watch this space for details!)

(Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

200th Episode Special! Friedwald’s Favorites & Wilsci’s Winners
(SSS #200 2026-06-06)
Listen: + Playlist:

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | "By Request"
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Mary Lou Williams Songbook with Dr. Michael Garber
(SSS #195 2026-04-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

April in My Heart: Songs About April
(SSS #194 2026-04-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

April Fool’s Day Special: Classic Parodies with Spike Jones & Co.
(SSS #193 2026-04-04) - 3/31/26, 3.49 PM
Listen: + Playlist:

THE NAT KING COLE BIRTHDAY SPECIAL:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 2 (SSS #192 2026-03-28)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 1 (SSS #191 2026-03-21)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14) SPECIAL BONUS MINI-EPISODE
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald's Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

For this new edition of “Stupid Band Tricks” (aka, “Still Stupid After All These Years”), I’m working with a select few of those goofy band names and using them as the inspiration for a series of AI-generated cartoons. (Yes, I know that’s cheating. I’m grateful to brilliant illustrator friends like the ingenious Arlen Schumer for coming up with the amazing logos I use for Slouching Towards Birdland and Clip Joint, but I don’t want to keep asking for favors!)

This is kind of an experiment to see what the various AI / Large Language Models will generate when receiving these specific prompts. I have to admit I am impressed with what they have come up with! The first cartoon usually was generated by myself, using Google Gemini (the free platform, which apparently generates cartoons through something called “Nano Banana 2” ), while the second was done by my buddy Michael Kraus (dubbed “Contentious” by deejay Jonathan Schwartz many years ago) using the paid platform of ChatGPT. Here’s what they produced:

(Prompt): The Art Farmers

This is a jazz ensemble inspired by the name of the legendary modern jazz trumpeter, Art Farmer (best remembered as co-leader of the Jazztet with the equally great Benny Golson). The idea was to take his name literally, to have a band of artists, specifically painters, in the classic Belle Époque tradition, with smocks, easels, and berets, who are also farmers wearing overalls with hoes, rakes, and other farming implements. This is what the two LLMs came up with: first Gemini, then ChatGPT.

(Prompt): Hobo a Go-Go (Heaux Beau a Go-Go)

Remember when Tom Lehrer, introducing his beloved song about “National Brotherhood Week,” made a gag reference to “National Make Fun of the Handicapped Week,” and informed us as an aside, “of course, Jerry Lewis and Frank Fontaine are in charge of that, as you know?” Well, if there ever was such a thing as “National Make Fun of the Homeless Week,” then the only entertainer who could be in charge of that would be the one and only Red Skelton, who, for years, performed the character of a comic tramp known as Freddie Freeloader. (And yes, the name of that character also served as the title for a famous jazz instrumental by Miles Davis.)

Inspired by Skelton, I came up with this next entry: a rock band dressed as vaudeville hobos, in the style of Freddie Freeloader as well as Judy Garland and Fred Astaire on the bum as “A Couple of Swells” in Easter Parade (1948). Of course!

(Prompt): Uncle Sam and his Rulers of Delivery

In 1925, Bessie Smith made her classic recording of one of the all-time great works by W. C. Handy, the Father of the Blues. “Yellow Dog Blues” had been originally published as “Yellow Dog Rag” a decade earlier and, though far from the debut recording of this American classic, is surely the definitive reading. (At least until Nat King Cole, and that was a generation later.)

The one curious aspect of the Bessie Smith version is how she mangles one of Handy’s most famous lines. The lyric as written is “everywhere that Uncle Sam has Rural Free Delivery,” which as everybody, including Miss Smith, knew well in 1925, was the government’s means of providing mail service for small towns and rural areas that weren’t even towns. However, Smith sings the line as, “Everywhere Uncle Sam is the ruler or delivery.” I actually like her version better! Anyhow, inspired by that, we came up with these two cartoons for an Uncle Sam-inspired Dixieland band. (In the ChatGPT image, by total coincidence, the banjo player somehow looks a little like Kevin Spacey and the drummer looks a lot like Barry Hansen, aka “Dr. Demento.”)

(Prompt): The Four Skins.

I confess I borrowed this from the 1968 camp classic Myra Breckinridge, starring our buddy, the late and much-missed Rex Reed. The name is used for a club of sorts in the film, but we have it here as a 1950s-style doo-wop quartet, from a period when everything was the Four Something-or-Others. Why not a foursome of bald guys?

I had no problem putting this to Gemini. However, when Michael ran it through ChatGPT, he first received the following response: “We’re so sorry, but the prompt may violate our content policies. If you think we got it wrong, please retry or edit your prompt.”

In other words, it wasn’t the sexual or anatomical innuendo that fazed the LLM — it was the idea of representing so-called skinheads, a fashion statement associated with neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Not one to be put off, “Contentious” tried again and this is the result.

(Prompt): The Shiksa Sisters

This one is just a goofy-sounding name for a 1950s-style girl group, like the McGuire Sisters. (I could have gone back to the Boswells in the 1930s or the Andrews in the 1940s, but somehow The Shiksas seemed to belong to this era.)

By the way, if any artists / singers / musicians reading this are interested in actually using any of these names for a real working band, or even to do a single performance, you have my permission in advance!

(Prompt): The Giants of Jazz & The Microtones

A band of the tallest jazz musicians (6’5” and upwards—I myself would be too short to be in it, even if I could play!) playing today. Including but not limited to:

Charlie Caranicas, trumpet
Paul Brodhead (aka “Tall Whiteman”), trombone
Dan Levinson, clarinet
Wayne Escoffery, tenor saxophone
Jon Weber, piano
Westen Borghesi, banjo
Phil Kessler or Ritt Henn, bass
And, lastly, I am still trying to think of a very tall drummer. (Suggestions welcome.)

And The Direct Converse, The Microtones, a band of some of the shortest musicians around, whose theme music would be a certain classic song by Randy Newman.

Thanks as always to Team Slouching: Rob “On the Job” Lester, Elizabeth Zimmer, Dan Fortune, Daniel Weinstein, Nick Rossi, Jeff Leibowitz, and Dan Levinson!

Coming Very Soon—Your Next Favorite Substack: “The Adventures of Bill Boggs.” Yes! (Watch this space for details!)

(Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer, Rob Lester, & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!) Special Thanks again to Daniel Weinstein, Jordan Taylor, & Rob Waldman.)

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz—and jazz-adjacent—singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here. Here is the running list of recent shows.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

Miles Davis @ 100 | “Miles Ahead”
(SSS #202 2026-05-30 )
Listen: + Playlist:

Bobby Darin @ 90 | "By Request"
(SSS #201 2026-05-23)
Listen: + Playlist:

Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing University:
A Special video Session: Sinatra in the Sixties (click to view)
With Seton Hawkins & Will Friedwald (Thursday April 2, 2026)

Bing Crosby Birthday Special—Ultimate Broadway Songbook
(SSS #199 2026-05-16)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington—Then and Now
(SSS #198 2026-05-09)
Listen: + Playlist:

TONY BENNETT REMEMBERED ON NY1
a video interview with Stephanie Simon and Will Friedwald 2023-07-23
Click Here

Cinco de Mayo:
The Ernesto Lecuona (and Margarita Lecuona) Songbook
(SSS #197 2026-05-02)
Listen: + Playlist:

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Burke, & Jule Styne Songbook(s) (SSS #196 2026-04-25)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Mary Lou Williams Songbook with Dr. Michael Garber
(SSS #195 2026-04-18)
Listen: + Playlist:

April in My Heart: Songs About April
(SSS #194 2026-04-11)
Listen: + Playlist:

April Fool’s Day Special: Classic Parodies with Spike Jones & Co.
(SSS #193 2026-04-04) - 3/31/26, 3.49 PM
Listen: + Playlist:

THE NAT KING COLE BIRTHDAY SPECIAL:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 2 (SSS #192 2026-03-28)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Nat Pack (All The King’s Men) 1 (SSS #191 2026-03-21)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14)
Listen: + Playlist:

The Irene Higginbotham Songbook (Women’s History Month)
{with special guest, Dr. Michael Garber, author Songs She Wrote}
(SSS #190 2026-03-14) SPECIAL BONUS MINI-EPISODE
Listen: + Playlist:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

Note to friends: a lot of you respond to my Substack posts here directly to me via email. It’s actually a lot more beneficial to me if you go to the Substack web page and put your responses down as a “comment.” This helps me “drive traffic” and all that other social media stuff. If you look a tiny bit down from this text, you will see three buttons, one of which is “comment.” Just hit that one, hey. Thanks!

Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald's Substack) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.