[Dixielandjazz] American Songbook Society

[Stephen G Barbone]

Not about Dixieland, however the American Songbook is surely OKOM,  
especially since many of the tunes have been, and are still played as  
Dixieland. Those living in the NYC area might consider joining this  
group. Sounds like lots of fun and the price is right.
Note that they too are seeking younger members. <grin>
Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


NY Times - November 3, 2008 - By Lily Koppel
Toe-Tapping Guardians of American Songbook

There are not many organizations in New York that stage singing  
performances as part of their regular meetings — especially not a  
performance by someone like Marni Nixon.

Ms. Nixon may not be a familiar name to everyone. But anyone who has  
seen “West Side Story” or “My Fair Lady,” two of Hollywood’s classic  
musicals, has certainly heard her: Ms. Nixon provided the singing  
voices for Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn in those films.

So Ms. Nixon, who has built her reputation in popular, opera and  
classical music, was a fitting guest at the most recent gathering of  
this particular group — the New York Sheet Music Society.

The society’s mission is to keep the great American songbook alive, to  
pass along the artistry, lyrics and melodies of the country’s rich  
treasury of musicians like the Gershwin brothers, Porter, Arlen,  
Mercer, Rodgers, Hart and Hammerstein.

“Alas, the list is virtually endless!” said Elliott Ames, a member of  
the society’s board, who wore a tie patterned with musical bars from  
“Rhapsody in Blue.” “The meetings are alive with music.”

The society began in 1980 with a small but dedicated group that met to  
exchange sheet music and stories.

Many of the society’s members are performers and songwriters or are  
related to musical luminaries and, as Mr. Ames puts it, “fervent in  
their desire to protect our musical heritage.”

Every meeting of the society, which has about 400 members, opens with  
a flea market, where sheet music, old recordings and memorabilia are  
traded and members share news about upcoming performances. It was at  
the group’s first meeting of the season last month, held in the  
theater of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians on West  
48th Street, when Ms. Nixon sang “I Could Have Danced All Night” and  
“Wouldn’t It Be Lovely” from “My Fair Lady,” as well as “Getting to  
Know You” from the “The King and I.”

“I never knew about it before,” Ms. Nixon, 78, said. “I think it’s  
spectacular; it’s major nowadays that people preserve this music.” Ms.  
Nixon, who performs, teaches singing out of her Upper West Side  
apartment, and bought the two-bedroom apartment above hers to hold her  
collection of sheet music and memorabilia.

The society’s president, Linda Amiel Burns, was raised in Manhattan  
surrounded by songwriters. Her father, Jack J. Amiel, owned the Turf  
and Jack Dempsey’s, two restaurants, both long gone, where many  
songwriters passed the time. Both were in the Brill Building, on  
Broadway at 49th Street, which was originally built as an office  
building for brokers and bankers but was rented out to music  
publishers during the Depression.

To promote their new songs, publishers would send down sheet music to  
try to pique the interest of those gathered in “the songwriters  
corner” at the Turf, where the walls were decorated with sheet music.  
“Ella Fitzgerald loved the cheesecake; she used to come in all the  
time,” Ms. Amiel Burns said.

“My father used to drill me,” she recalled. “ ‘Linda, that songwriter  
at that table is Ruby Bloom; what did he write? That one is Sammy  
Cahn; what did he write?’ I loved those guys. I was the little  
princess at the Turf.”

Mr. Amiel, who was from Greece, shared a similar immigrant story with  
many of the songwriters who were first- and second-generation Jewish  
newcomers trying to make it in New York. Ms. Amiel Burns has a trove  
of items that reflect a life surrounded by music. She still has the  
lyrics from “Tea for Two” that the songwriter Irving Caesar, a member  
of the society, wrote out for her. She treasures a photograph of her  
with Cahn, a lyricist who won four Academy Awards, and Jule Styne, who  
wrote the scores for “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and “Gypsy.”

Over a recent lunch at the Friars Club in Manhattan, Ms. Amiel Burns  
pulled out a stack of sheet music from her collection, many signed by  
their composers and lyricists. “These covers are such great art,” she  
said.

“The Streets of Old New York,” shows a master of ceremonies drawing  
back a theater curtain to reveal a Manhattan street scene. Some of the  
other titles include “She Read the New York Papers Every Day” and “I  
Don’t Want a Home in the Country (City Life’s the Only Life for Me).”

“These sheets are the history of New York,” said Ms. Amiel Burns, who  
also runs the Singing Experience, a performance workshop, where after  
four classes, she said, her students are ready for the city’s  
cabarets. There are songs about the Flatiron Building, Tin Pan Alley  
and Broadway. Others are about falling in love, feeling lonely on a  
cloudy day and finding happiness when all hope seems lost. They wrote  
a few songs about pianos: “Ain’t My Baby Grand,” “Which? Grand Baby or  
a Baby Grand,” “I’ve Got a Grand Baby With a Baby Grand” and “Movin’  
Man Don’t Take My Baby Grand.”

Following in her father’s footsteps, Ms. Amiel Burns opened the  
Symphony Cafe in 1988 on Eighth Avenue at 56th Street, which displayed  
items from the Songwriters Hall of Fame, including a top hat given to  
Fred Astaire by Cole Porter, Jimmy Durante’s fedora, the ruby slippers  
Judy Garland had made for the songwriter Harold Arlen and one of Elvis  
Presley’s guitar picks. The cafe closed in 1993.

The society’s sheet music collection is vast — just how vast is  
difficult to determine, partly because members keep their own personal  
collection.

Sandy Lowe Marrone, a vice president of the society, has an  
overflowing archive of 200,000 sheets dating to the 1800s in her home  
in Cinnaminson, N.J., which she organizes by theme and provides to  
collectors and movie producers.

When asked the average age of its members, Ms. Amiel Burns joked,  
“Death.” She corrected herself, “Excellent long-term memory.”

“So many guys are gone,” she said. Members who have died include  
Burton Lane, who discovered Ms. Garland; Mitchell Parish, who wrote  
“Stardust”; and Johnny Marks, who wrote “Rudolph the Red-Nosed  
Reindeer.”

Among current members are Charles Strouse, who wrote the score for  
“Bye Bye Birdie”; Karen Lynn Gorney, whose father, Jay Gorney, along  
with Yip Harburg, wrote “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”; and Ervin  
Drake, who wrote “It Was a Very Good Year,” which was recorded by  
Frank Sinatra.

“We need younger members!” Ms. Amiel Burns said. A yearly membership  
costs $50, which includes a singing performance at each of the  
society’s nine scheduled meetings, as well as monthly newsletters; it  
makes the club, in Ms. Amiel Burn’s view, “the best deal in New York.”

“It’s about nostalgia and keeping this music alive,” she added. “We  
remember these songs because of the lyrics — they tell a story in  
their harmony, melody — and because they say, ‘I love you.’ ”