Honestly, I thought I’d read that list thoroughly and with attention to detail. Not only do I find that I’d missed one of the great songs from a great show by a great composer, but I’d also completely forgotten that a song made famous in a film began life in a 1931 Broadway musical, Everybody’s Welcome (but, as the star said, nobody came).
“You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by
And when two lovers woo
They still say, "I love you"
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by”
Ah yes, the inverted syntax beloved of the period. Herman Hupfeld’s lyrics are slightly odd1 - there’s a reason you’ve never heard of him - but the strength of the song, considered apart from Casablanca, lies in the title phrase. I don’t think, however, that ‘As Time Goes By’ (#10) would have been included in the Top 100 apart from Casablanca. (“A case of do or die / The world will always welcome lovers” - not if the lovers in question are Romeo and Juliet, it won’t).
I had registered that the great composer in question charted at #57 with ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ from Oh. Kay! (1926), which should be known for the collaboration of George Gershwin and P.G. Wodehouse if nothing else. Wodehouse didn’t write the lyrics; that was the job of George’s brother Ira, he who greeted a Gershwin tune with the response “George, I don’t know how you’d write a lyric to that but it’s a fascinating rhythm” and who once checked into a hotel for the weekend to finish a song and came out the other side with the line “come to poppa, come to poppa, do.” We’ve all had weekends like that.
In this case, Ira being stricken with appendicitis, Howard Dietz at least contributed to what we now know as a torch song but which began life as scherzando. I’ve heard recordings so slow they might as well have been played backwards, so I would appreciate a little more fidelity to Gershwin’s intention. Too slow and it drags into self-pity, which should only be dispensed onstage in very small doses.
This being the 1920s, we begin with some inverted syntax:
“There's a saying old, says that love is blind
Still we're often told, "seek and ye shall find"
So I'm going to seek a certain lad I've had in mind”
Ah well, all credit otherwise to Gershwin-Dietz for successfully managing the internal and terminal rhymes without placing too much stress on the language.
”Looking everywhere, haven't found him yet
He's the big affair I cannot forget
Only man I ever think of with regret
I'd like to add his initial to my monogram
Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?
There's a somebody I'm longing to see
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me
I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood
I know I could always be good
To one who'll watch over me”
Somewhere, a feminist is complaining about this song. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess.
“Although he may not be the man some
Girls think of as handsome
To my heart he carries the key.”
I could happily live without the inverted syntax, but kudos for the subtle and natural rhyme of ‘man some / handsome.’
“Won't you tell him please to put on some speed
Follow my lead, oh, how I need
Someone to watch over me.”
As an expression of longing and the hope-beyond-hope that accompanies some experiences of love, this is almost peerless. It was introduced in Oh, Kay! by Gertrude Lawrence, Noel Coward’s friend who would achieve immortality in The King and I.
Song #8, the one I overlooked, is from one of the great musical dramas; so dramatic, in fact, that it has been snaffled by opera companies. (You may have noticed that opera companies have extended their territory beyond Candide or The Most Happy Fella to include mainstream musicals. Possibly this is to attract an audience).
To be fair, George Gershwin was a classical composer whose Rhapsody in Blue is one of the defining artistic creations of the twentieth century. Porgy and Bess was always considered a ‘folk opera’ with significance attached to both adjective and noun, the qualities of opera being applied to a formerly underappreciated demographic: the poor blacks of Charleston, South Carolina.
Everything I wrote about ‘Ol’ Man River’ regarding race can be applied to Porgy and Bess. The original novel, then play, and finally the libretto was by DuBose Heyward, a white South Carolinian; the score was by the son of a Jewish-Russian immigrant. “My people are American,” said Gershwin, “my time is today. Music must repeat the thought and aspirations of the times.” (Porgy and Bess saw the light of day in 1935 and was not a great success in its first run).
[Sidebar: the original Porgy and Bess, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown, were two transcendent superstars of theatre and of black culture and both have fascinating memories of the show. Duncan, one of the most handsome men with a voice to match who ever trod the boards of Broadway, learnt the role in Danish to play Copenhagen. He would sing, beautifully, the lead in Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars].
Much could be said, but much of the much belongs in my Friday writings so let’s stick to the material: the song in question, ‘Summertime,’ is one of the finest and most unusual openings in all of musical theatre. (It was particularly unusual when I saw it in New Haven, as I had a nosebleed seat and only saw the bottom half of the actress who was singing from a raised platform). The song doesn’t introduce the plot or really advance a character; it’s a lullaby, so can hardly be regarded as a rallying-cry to the onstage audience.
However, as Mark Steyn writes, “in its sheer sultry languor it transports us immediately to Catfish Row in Charleston: it's a perfect opening. And, by the time the chorus joins in, the song has infused the setting with a spiritual dimension: because Porgy And Bess is a "folk opera", Catfish Row is in its way a character in the drama, and the authors use this song as the community's leitmotif.”2
Summertime, and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'
So hush little baby, don't you cry”
It sounds natural to us now but, as Sondheim observed, the second word “is worth a great deal of attention. I would write "Summertime when" but that "and" sets up a tone, a whole poetic tone, not to mention a whole kind of diction that is going to be used in the play; an informal, uneducated diction and a stream of consciousness, as in many of the songs like "My Man's Gone Now". It's the exact right word, and that word is worth its weight in gold. "Summertime when the livin' is easy" is a boring line compared to "Summertime and".”
Sondheim is right, as he often is except when he’s being annoying like the man who claims Pericles as his favourite Shakespeare. The options are almost undistinguishable, grammatically; but the slightly more expansive tint of and, as though the speaker had yawned and stretched, achieves a miracle of scene-setting.
“One of these mornings, you're goin' to rise up singin'
And you'll spread your wings and you'll take the sky
But 'til that mornin', there's a-nothin' can harm you
With daddy and mommy standin' by”
It’s perfect parenting in four lines. And it’s perfect writing: one of these mornings is both popular usage (as we’d say ‘one of these days’) and also thrilled with a sense of specific expectation. In a morning such as this, you will leave the nest and become a member of the community in your own right. And, again, it’s easy to overlook Hayward’s genius because “rise up singin’” seems so natural, but that’s a demotic phrase most lyricists wouldn’t have conceived. (Actually, a generic lyricist of the period would probably have written ‘rise up singing is what you’re going to do’).
As a mild coincidence, both ‘Someone’ and ‘Summertime’ are lullabies. A list of ‘Best Musical-Theatre Lullabies’ seems unlikely, especially because it’s the least dramatic song-form, but they (along with ‘Baby Mine’) are undeniably great, moving songs.
To be really picky, ‘to woo’ requires one active and one passive partner - X woos Y - so only X would actually say ‘I love you.’