Here’s some more pop music from the 50s.
This beautiful song was written by Billy Youmans, Billy Rose, and Edward Eliscu in 1929, and has been recorded many times by people as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Sonny Rollins, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and The Supremes.
My favorite version is a jazz rendition by Billy Eckstine, but it’s not available on YouTube (you can hear a 30-second snippet here). But the underrated Perry Como (who, by the way, started life as a barber near my father’s hometown of Uniontown, Pennsylvania) recorded a creditable version in 1951 (if the video doesn’t work, go here):
The original lyrics were different from those above, and expressed the racism of the time. The original second verse included the lines, “a darkie’s born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.” (Darkie is an archaic and derogatory American term for “black”.) You can hear those words at 3:03 in this early version by Frank Sinatra, recorded with Tommy Dorsey in 1941. Como changed the lyrics to “a young one’s born,” while Eckstine, who was half black, sang “a man is born.”
A menage of three takes: Como’s later live recording, Mario Lanza’s gutsy version, and a recording by Roy Hamilton—with an introduction by Elvis, of all people—can be found here.
Oh, and Canonsburg immortalized its favorite son with a statue (be sure to read the inscription).
h/t: Hempenstein
Here’s the incomparable SCTV troupe’s parody of Perry Como’s “relaxed” style:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z84AYN6_iUY&w=420&h=315%5D
Ah, nuts! I wanted to embed the video in my comment; the link still works, anyway. How do you embed videos?
I agree that Perry Como is underrated. He was always a favorite of my mom, and we always watched his Christmas specials on TV. I recently re-discovered him, and his version of “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now” is on my current favorites playlist. I have always thought that, although he has a wonderful tone and terrific control, he had some horrible song choices, such as “Hot-Diggity, Dog-Diggity”, that have not stood the test of time. Those tend to be the ones I hear on the radio.
“Hot-Diggity, Dog-Ziggity” may not have stood the test of time, but Emmanuel Chabrier’s España (1883) has.
That’s Vincent Youmans.
Thanks for the nostalgia, and I only remember the phrase ‘a man’s…’, so thanks for the historical bit – I’ll have a good time with this over coffee. Now if the cat is the sacred animal, I call coffee ‘the sacred bean’.
If I correctly recall, Elvis quoted the song’s lyrics as part of his remarks as one of the honorees at a JayCees (sp.?) awards ceremony (in D.C., 1971?).
Elvis was once asked who his favorite singers were and/or what he liked to listen to. His list included, “Anything by Mario Lanza.”
The first time I heard Lanza was in the mid- to late-70’s, when I saw the movie “That’s Entertainment” at my university student center, which featured his and Kathryn Grayson’s “Be My Love” (Sammy Cahn – Nicholas Brodsky). I sat there jaw-dropped, and found myself along with others applauding Lanza.
I had never heard “Without a Song” (if I correctly recall from a 1927 Broadway production entitled “Great Day”) until I heard Lanza sing it. Just the title holds forth that something wonderful is afoot. And the orchestral scoring and performance is similarly magnificent, and typical of the high technical quality, preparation and care taken in making Lanza’s RCA Victor recordings. Not much in the way of multi-tracking, “punching in/out,” and certainly no “limiters” and “compressors,” back in that day.