[Dixielandjazz] Harold Arlen

[Ric Giorgi]

Hi Steve, if they did "write them like that" now, would you play them?

Cheers

Ric Giorgi

-----Original Message-----
From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com
[mailto:dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com] On Behalf Of Steve barbone
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 11:23 AM
To: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Harold Arlen

Bill Haesler <bhaesler at bigpond.net.au> wrote: (polite snip)

> 'They don't write 'em any more like old what's-his-name.' . . .

> Of Harold Arlen's prodigious output Peggy Lee could hardly
> have asked "Is that all there is?" . . .

> Arlen, who died in 1986, wrote more than 400 songs but is best known for
> the The Wizard of Oz score, along with Stormy Weather, That Old Black
Magic,
> One For My Baby (And One More for the Road), It's Only a Paper Moon, Let's
> Fall in Love, I've Got the World on a String, The Man That Got Away, Come
> Rain or Come Shine, Blues in the Night, and Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive.
> Born Hyman Arluck in Buffalo, in the state of New York, Arlen was the son
> of a cantor who was, in Arlen's words, "the most delicious improviser I
ever
> heard". . . 

Our band plays many of Arlen's songs in Dixieland or Small Band Swing
fashion. They are wonderful. Yet every once in a while some blue haired old
lady, or some know it all bald old man will come up and hurumph haughtily:
"I didn't know that song was 'jazz'"

Oh my, how we want to be rude in kind, but still forebear, smile sweetly and
remembering Eddie Condon, say only; "It is the way we play it."

They sure as hell don't write them like that any more.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
 
> 
> 'They don't write 'em any more like old what's-his-name.'
> January 12, 2005
> 
> [Photo cation] Of Harold Arlen's prodigious output Peggy Lee could hardly
> have asked "Is that all there is?"
> Photo: The New York Times
> You might not have heard of him, but you will have heard his tunes, writes
> Valerie Lawson.
> 
> We all hope that somewhere, over the rainbow, the dreams that we dare to
> dream "really do come true".
> The wistful yet optimistic ballad Over the Rainbow is still one of the
> world's most-loved songs, 66 years after its debut on the brink of World
War
> II.
> Recently voted the No.1 song of the 20th century by the American Film
> Institute, the song made famous by Judy Garland was already in first place
> in previous polls of popular songs taken by the United States National
> Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America.
> The melody comes to mind with ease, but few can recall quite so easily the
> name of the composer. Next month that may change with the centenary of
> Harold Arlen's birth and a host of galas and documentaries honouring the
> composer, whose score for The Wizard of Oz included the almost as catchy
> Follow the Yellow Brick Road, We're Off to See the Wizard and If I Only
Had
> a Brain.
> The BBC will screen a four-part documentary on Arlen next month, while a
> centennial celebration will be held at Carnegie Hall on February 14. Arlen
> was born on February 15, 1905.
> More than 80 events will mark the centenary year, including a tribute at
> the Hollywood Bowl and a benefit concert at the Coliseum in London.
> Arlen, who died in 1986, wrote more than 400 songs but is best known for
> the The Wizard of Oz score, along with Stormy Weather, That Old Black
Magic,
> One For My Baby (And One More for the Road), It's Only a Paper Moon, Let's
> Fall in Love, I've Got the World on a String, The Man That Got Away, Come
> Rain or Come Shine, Blues in the Night, and Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive.
> Born Hyman Arluck in Buffalo, in the state of New York, Arlen was the son
> of a cantor who was, in Arlen's words, "the most delicious improviser I
ever
> heard".
> As a child, Arlen sang in his father's choir before he became a singer,
> pianist and orchestrator.
> He worked with more than 20 lyricists, among them Johnny Mercer and E.Y.
> Harburg, the lyricist for The Wizard of Oz.
> The first lyricist in Arlen's life was Ted Koehler, whom he met in 1929.
> The result was the hit song Get Happy and an invitation to work at the
> Cotton Club in Harlem.
> The composer Alec Wilder devotes a chapter to Arlen in his book American
> Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900-1950. Wilder praises Arlen's
> "astonishing melodic gift" and the way in which he thought "in terms of
> instruments, both aggregate and singly ... he more than any of his
> contemporaries plunged himself into the heartbeat of the popular music of
> his youth, the dance band."
> The Sydney jazz writer John Clare says that Arlen was deeply influenced by
> the music of the Cotton Club, and even the dance routines he saw there.
> "His fantastic melodic gift was tied to a very strong feeling of the
> rhythms of jazz and blues," Clare says. "He managed to convey the feeling
of
> the blues but made them [his songs] more melodically flexible.
> "This took the blues feeling to an even larger audience. Stormy Weather is
> not really blues, and Blues in the Night isn't really blues, but they're
> drenched in blues feeling."
> Arlen was less celebrated than the other great songwriters of the first
> half of the 20th century, among them Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George
> Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers. But he was able to laugh at his
> own lack of fame.
> On the official Arlen website is the following anecdote, taken from the
> book Harold Arlen: Happy with the Blues, by Edward Jablonski.
> One day, in a cab in Manhattan, Arlen heard the driver whistling Stormy
> Weather.
> "Do you know who wrote that song?" he asked the driver.
> "Sure. Irving Berlin."
> "Wrong," Arlen told him, "but I'll give you two more guesses."
> The cabbie thought hard, explaining that the name of the composer was on
> the tip of his tongue.
> Arlen prompted him: "Richard Rodgers?"
> "That is the name I was thinking of," the driver said. "But he's not the
> one."
> "How about Cole Porter?"
> "That's who!"
> "No, you're wrong again," Arlen told him. "I wrote the song."
> The driver, still thinking, finally asked, "Who are you?"
> "Harold Arlen."
> At this, the driver turned around in his seat and asked: "Who?"
> [End of article.]


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