The 40 songs:-
Memory (Cats); Love Me Tender;
Edelweiss; For He’s A Jolly Good
Fellow; The Star-Spangled Banner;
Danny Boy; Auld Lang Syne;
Hello Dolly!; Lili Marlene;
Somewhere Over the Rainbow; Yesterday;
White Christmas; Amazing Grace;
Home Sweet Home; Moon River;
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star;
Begin the Beguine; God Save the
King/Queen; I Don’t Know How
to Love Him; Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer; Galway Bay;
I Could Have danced All Night;
Blue Moon; You Made Me Love You;
Silent Night; Beyond the Blue
Horizon; Ave Maria; Now
is the Hour; Mad Dogs and Englishmen;
Falling in Love Again; Happy
Birthday; Candle in the Wind;
Waltzing Matilda; Send in the
Clowns; Greensleeves;
The Loveliest Night of the Year;
Bali Ha’i; You Don’t Have to
say You Love Me; It’s a Long
Way to Tipperary.
Ever wondered how a
song originated, the story behind it?
Ever wondered whether the music comes
before the lyrics or vice versa,
or speculated about the people or
things that might have influenced the
words? Well this intriguing little book
offers such information on forty of
the world’s best-loved songs.
Beginning with the
smash hit song ‘Memory’ from the musical
Cats with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
music - pity the rest of the Cats
music was so much less distinguished
- and lyrics by Trevor Nunn based on
T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of
Cats. We learn about how T.S. Eliot’s
poems came to be written and how Lloyd
Webber first considered his settings
as a concert song-cycle. Nunn was not
impressed with the idea and besides
there were legal considerations and
the Eliot estate was very fussy about
who and how the poems were to be set
to music. It was not until Eliot’s widow,
Valerie Eliot, heard and warmed to Lloyd
Webber’s evocative treatment of the
cat poems that the idea of a musical
with the notion of dancing cats gained
momentum. Valerie Eliot also passed
on the idea that, in death, cats would
travel up to "cat heaven"
and a few lines about a once-glamorous
cat called Grizabella who was forced
to face the loss of her looks. Grizabella
gradually became an important part of
the Cats story and Elaine Page,
the original stage Grizabella, sang
the heart rending song, ‘Memory’, as
the old cat recalled, at the end of
her life, all that had been so joyous
in her youth. Incidentally, we also
discover that an alternative set of
lyrics had been written by Tim Rice
but Nunn’s words were chosen.
At the other end of
the book is a very different song, ‘It’s
a Long Way to Tipperary’. Apparently
one night in 1912 a fishmonger and part-time
composer took on a bet that he could
write a song the next day and sing it
on stage that same night. The bet was
for five shillings, a not inconsiderable
sum in those days. On the way home he
overheard somebody giving directions,
"It’s a long way to …" and
that phrase stuck in his mind and, for
no accountable reason – he had never
been to Ireland, the word "Tipperary"
came in to his mind and a classic was
born. It became extremely popular amongst
the troops of the Great War.
In between there are
38 more intriguing stories. An Irish
woman, Jane Ross, who collected old-time
melodies and folk music, heard and was
entranced by a particularly lovely melody
and the famous lyricist Fred Weatherley,
took out a song lyric that he had never
used, from a drawer, and seamlessly
applied it to that tune to create ‘Danny
Boy’. Weatherley wrote the words for
‘The Holy City’ and the poignant First
World War song, ‘Roses of Picardy’ and
he had collaborated with the Italian
composer, Paolo Tosti in a series of
songs. Weatherley also wrote the lyrics
for a number of hit songs by Eric Coates.
‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ had an interesting
story on its way to becoming America’s
National Anthem in 1931. The tune was
composed by an English musician, John
Stafford Smith (1750-1836) who was a
choir member of the Chapel Royal and
later its organist. The tune was wedded
to words by a young American lawyer
and poet, Francis Scott Key who had
witnessed how the star-shaped Fort McHenry
in Baltimore had withstood an English
naval bombardment. It will be recalled
that the poem begins, "Oh, say,
can you see, By the dawn’s early light
…" The story of ‘Hello Dolly’ is
traced through a 19th century
farce A Day Well Spent through
Thornton Wilder’s play The Merchant
of Yonkers in which the action was
moved from Europe to the outskirts of
New York with the addition of a strong
woman in keeping with the times of women’s
emancipation. The play was none too
successful and it was not until Tyrone
Guthrie took an interest and suggested
a re-staging of The Merchant of Yonkers
with a considerably expanded role for
Dolly Levi plus a re-naming for the
play, as The Matchmaker, that
the project became successful. The musical
Hello Dolly and that song, belted
out, most famously in the film version,
by Barbra Streisand, followed. It was
first sung, in the stage premiere, in
1963 by Carol Channing, others who rejoiced
in it included: Mary Martin, Betty Grable,
Ethel Merman, Dorothy Lamour and Eve
Arden.
We also discover how
‘Love Me Tender’ came to be one of Elvis
Presley’s greatest hits, how Paul McCartney’s
‘Yesterday’ ‘evolved’ from scrambled
eggs, and what Marie Antoinette had
to do with ‘For He’s a Jolly Good fellow’!
An intriguing little
book that would make an ideal Christmas
stocking filler.
Ian Lace
