Conversations at the Piano

When I put my Rhapsody Music playlist together for today’s featured selection, Let Yourself Go, something surprising struck me. Although the list was among the shortest ones I ever had for a particular song, it was one of the most enjoyable and energizing. I suppose you could draw an analogy with life too: quality is much more powerful than quantity. The great thing here is that I didn’t have to apply Pareto’s 80 – 20 principle to this playlist (80% of the inspiration comes from 20% of the performances). Instead, I simply enjoyed the variety of ALL the high quality versions.

You might be wondering why this somewhat surprising scenario came about. Let Yourself Go follows the format of many of Irving Berlin’s other songs. He composed it in 1936 for the film Follow the Fleet with Ginger Rogers presenting its premiere. In addition to Rogers’ esteemed dance and singing partner, Fred Astaire, the film included appearances by Betty Grable and Lucille Ball. Although Let Yourself Go has definitely stood the test of time, its popularity has certainly been upstaged by its film song partner Let’s Face the Music and Dance (which I featured in my February 12^th post).

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Despite the fact that this post features They Say It’s Wonderful by Irving Berlin, I can’t get George Gershwin’s ‘S Wonderful out of my head. No surprises here though. Lately I’ve been listening to and watching videos of Diana Krall and her excellent quartet. Her version of ‘S Wonderful in a Bossa nova style is clearly influenced by the fact that she loves to Joao Gilberto’s performance of this tune.

It’s a bit ironic to be connecting these two songs since Gershwin’s tune preceded Berlin’s by 19 years. In addition, the fact that Ethel Merman introduced They Say It’s Wonderful in the musical Annie Get Your Gun seems to be far removed from the reason WHY the two songs are linked in my mind through the Bossa nova style. Nevertheless, one of the mysteries of music is how it influences and inspires us.

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At least in my mind, Irving Berlin’s 1935 hit song, Cheek to Cheek is one of his most popular compositions. According to the Wikipedia article, the open lines of this standard: “Heaven, I’m in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak…” are quickly recognized by listeners. As a result of Fred Astaire’s recording of Cheek to Cheek, it was named number one song of 1935.

It’s not surprising that Astaire helped bring the tune to popularity. After all, it was composed for the film Top Hat in which he starred with Ginger Rogers. Because of the film, Cheek to Cheek was named runner up for the 1936 Academy Award for best song. So for more than 75 years, this well-known standard has been part of the American Popular Songbook repertoire. Needless to say, it has been performed in jazz, cabaret and popular styles by a wide variety of vocalists and instrumentalists.

In some ways, this is surprising. Not because of its popularity or quality, but because of its form. As I mentioned at the outset of this Irving Berlin blog post series, I was hesitant at first to tackle the tunes of this great composer. One reason I was apprehensive was because of his extended song structures. Since he wrote his own lyrics, he was free to expand the sections and length of his song forms if the words warranted this.

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The other day I was telling a musician friend that I have been paying attention to Irving Berlin’s lyrics more that I have for any other composer or lyricist in the past. There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, I was unfamiliar with MANY of Berlin’s songs. Sure I knew a few, but that was a drop in the bucket based on the composer’s catalog of 1500 (some say 3000) compositions.

Another reason is that after listening to the Irving Berlin CDs by pianists Beegie Adair, Oscar Peterson and Ralph Sharon, I still couldn’t absorb, differentiate and recognize the tunes. Sure I heard Ella Fitzgerald’s and Frank Sinatra’s vocal versions on Rhapsody Music, but that wasn’t enough. I needed more of an immersion. So I purchased recordings by jazz vocalists Tony Bennett and Susannah McCorkle.

These two became my main musical diet on daily drive to teach at my piano studio in Natick, MA or my Hudson, MA piano studio. Needless to say, Tony’s and Susanna’s inspired interpretations of Irving Berlin’s songs quickly helped me to identify individual songs and start memorizing their wonderful lyrics.

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For some reason, while I was practicing It Only Happens When I Dance with You with a samba flavor, I was intuitively inspired to segue into Easter Parade keeping it in the same Latin rhythm style. Can you imagine my surprise when I sat down to write this post and discovered that these two songs were both in the 1948 film Easter Parade? This movie featured none other than the incomparable Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. In fact, there are several other songs by Irving Berlin that were included in this production; one or more will undoubtedly appear in future posts.

This rather serendipitous course of musical events often happens in life. In fact, as I look back on nearly five decades of performing and teaching music, I can think of many of these. As my father used to say, “It’s God’s timing.” After all, what’s the likelihood that my entire beguine bass piano accompaniment teaching approach evolved because I heard pianist Jimmy Lyon play at the Copley Plaza Hotel during the one week he substituted for Dave McKenna back in the 1980s?

Back to the Berlin songs……….

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