August 2002

Philly Jazz
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By Donald True Van Deusen

Earlier this year, Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney--two of the most memorable singers of the past half century-- died. . On July 20th, Evelyn Simms, one of the finest singers in Philadelphia, or anywhere, also died. The lyrics these ladies sang that touched the heartstrings of my generation are those of the masters of the great American song book of the 20th Century. People such as Lorenz Hart, Johnny Mercer, Dorothy Fields, Mitchell Parish and Billy Strayhorn.

Sometimes the verse to the song, seldom sung in this age of five- second attention spans, is what really got you. One such song from 1912, often used as a joke in films (some drunk asking the band to play Melancholy Baby by George Norton) had a heartbreaking verse : "Come sweetheart mine, Don't sit and pine, Tell me of the cares that make you feel so blue, What have I done, Answer me, hon, Have I ever said and unkind word to you, My love is true, And just for you, I'd do almost anything at any time, Dear when you sigh, Or when you cry, Something seems to grip this very heart of mine....Come to me my melancholy baby, cuddle up and don't be blue." And when you are down on your luck, but still trying to win the girl, what better song than Dorothy Fields depression era ditty where she notes, "Gee, but it¹s tough to be broke, kid, It's not a joke, kid, it's a curse, My luck is changing, it's gotten, From simply rotten to something worse...Now though I see what our end is, All I can spend is, just my time, I can't give you anything but love, baby..."

Johnny Mercer seems to have written half the popular songs of our times, but the touching lyrics to one song--I Wonder What Became of Me--somehow disappeared. You may remember--"But i can't be gay, For along the way, Something went astray. And I can't explain, It's the same champagne, It's a sight to see, But I wonder what became of me."

And when heartbreak is really with you, try Billy Strayhorn's ultimate torch song, Lush Life, as he tells us, "I used to visit all the very gay places, Those come-what-may places, Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life, To get the feel of life...Then you came along, with your siren song, To tempt me to madness...." The reference to those very gay places, had a double edged meaning for the tortured not so straight Strayhorn.

Few songs relayed the heart break of love more tellingly than Lorenz Hart's It Never Entered My Mind..."Once I laughed when I heard you saying that I¹d be playing solitaire, uneasy in my easy chair, it never entered my mind....You have what I lack myself and now I even have to scratch my back my self..."

No one wrote about love more tellingly than Cole Porter but Noel Coward took one of his most famous numbers and turned it into a hilarious treatment of how, "teenagers squeezed into jeans do it, perhaps, we¹ll live to see machines do it, let¹s do it, let¹s fall in love." The most telling lyrics covering lost love was written by a husband and wife team under the name Paul James that said it all for the end of romance--"I thought I'd found the man of my dreams, Now it seems, This is how the story ends, He's goin¹ to turn me down and say, 'Can¹t We Be Friends?'" One of the loveliest lyrics of all time, Star Dust, was by Mitchell Parish in 1929 to a song by Hoagy Carmichael written in 1927 that really did not become the all time hit it became until words were added. It is pure poetry. "And now the purple dusk of twilight time, Steals across the meadows of my heart, High up in the sky the little stars climb, Always reminding me that we¹re apart. You wandered down the lane and far away, Leaving a song that will not die, Love is now the star dust of yesterday, the music of the years gone by. Sometimes, I wonder why I spend the lonely night, Dreaming of a song, The melody, haunts my reverie...." These songs all give us, in the words of Duke Ellington, "something to live for."