I’ll be loving you, always

Today marks the 122nd anniversary of the birth of the great Irving Berlin. One of history’s great tunesmiths, Berlin wrote more than hundreds of songs, 19 musicals and the scores of 18 movies over the course of his lengthy career.

“[Berlin is] the greatest songwriter that has ever lived.” — George Gershwin

“Irving Berlin has no place in American music — he is American music.” — Jerome Kern

Here are some of our favorite Irving Berlin songs:

“What’ll I Do?” — The Nat “King” Cole Trio

“Say It Isn’t So” — Annette Hanshaw

“Marie” — Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra

“Puttin’ on the Ritz” — Leo Reisman and His Orchestra

Putting a polish on your day

Having our shoes shined is one of our favorite simple pleasures, and the reasons are many.

It’s a rare pleasure, this particular indulgence. We’ve invariably found those who perform the service to be congenial types, and it makes for a pleasant diversion from the day’s duties to take a break, perched on high and glancing at the sports pages, while an amiable gent fusses over one’s shoes (we’ve yet to meet a shoe shine gal, though she can count on our business when we do).

One definitely get one’s money’s worth with a shoe shine. We’ve rarely paid more than three bucks for this service (though we do fork over more when we step up for a shine at an airport), and the attendants are always conscientious and hard-working.

Compare the humble shoe shine to a professional shave at a barber shop. In NYC, you’ll pay twenty, thirty, even forty bucks for the latter, and while we’ve no doubt it’s a pleasure every bit the equal of the shoe shine, the price renders it an indulgence most of us can’t often allow ourselves.

But three bucks for a full ten minutes of a experienced professional’s services? That’s a bargain that’s hard to beat.

What’s more, the humble shoe shine presents one the opportunity to be a real sport — you can throw the attendant a five-spot and tell him or her to keep the change. Where else can one improve one’s karma — a 66% tip! — at such a reasonable rate? And even at the airport price of five or six bucks plus tip, a shoe shine is a relative bargain.

We live in a dressed-down era, of course, with many people wearing sneakers and hiking boots and other casual footwear. While there are still plenty of us who regularly patronize shoe shine stands, for most, it’s something they can only occasionally indulge in.

But we always enjoy the experience, and we highly recommend it to all members of the Cladrite Community.

It’s clear that Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz were fellow advocates for the shoe shine experience, given that they wrote a song celebrating the practice of paying for a polish for the 1932 Broadway musical “Flying Colors” (Fred Astaire also performed the song in the 1952 movie musical The Band Wagon):

A Shine On Your Shoes
When you feel as low
as the bottom of a well
and can’t get out of the mood,
do something to perk yourself up
and change your attitude.
Give a tug to your tie,
Put a crease in your pants,
but if you really want to feel fine,
give your shoes a shine.

When there’s a shine on your shoes,
there’s a melody in your heart
with a singable happy feeling.
A wonderful way to start
to face the world every day,
with a deedle-dum-dee-dah-dah,
a little melody that is making
the worrying world go by.

When you walk down the street
with a happy-go-lucky beat,
you’ll find a lot in what I’m repeating.

When there’s a shine on your shoes,
there’s a melody in your heart
What a wonderful way to start the day!

                      –Dietz & Schwartz

Here’s one of our favorite renditions of the song, recorded by Billy Banks and His Orchestra in 1932.

“When There’s a Shine on Your Shoes” — Billy Banks and His Orchestra

Lyrics that make you go Hmmm, pt. 3

In our ongoing perusals of song lyrics that reveal the past of our parents and grandparents to be not quite so wholesome as often assumed, we offer the following words from a song called “Good for You, Bad for Me.”

It was written for the musical comedy “Flying High” by the songwriting team of Ray Henderson (melody), Lew Brown (lyrics), and Buddy DeSylva (lyrics).

Good for you, bad for me
when you hold me tight on your knee.
Oh, it may be awfully good for you
but it’s so bad for me.

What you do, I’ll agree
is as thrilling as it can be.
And it may be awfully good for you,
but it’s so bad for me.

What a huckleberry yo.
Aren’t you tired of hearing no?
You keep saying you’ve got to,
but my momma said not to.

I’m a she, you’re a he,
But some things in life are not free.
So it won’t do you a bit of good,
and it’s so bad for me.

Here’s a 1930 recording of the song by Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, featuring vocals by The Three Girl Friends (a.k.a. The Three Waring Girls).

“Good for You, Bad for Me” — Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, feat. The Three Girl Friends

Spring is in on the air

The weather is beyond beautiful in New York City today, putting us in the mood to add some seasonally appropriate songs to the Cladrite Radio playlist.

We’re hard-pressed to pick a favorite among those we chose. Sarah Vaughan‘s 1946 performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s “It Might as Well Be Spring” from State Fair (1945), on which The Divine One accompanied by John Kirby and His Orchestra, is breathtaking. Honestly, it knocks us over.

But we also love Bing Crosby‘s 1946 rendition of “It’s Anybody’s Spring,” on which he’s backed up by J.S. Trotter and His Orchestra. The song, first sung by Crosby and Bob Hope in Road to Utopia (1946), features a sprightly arrangement of Jimmy Van Heusen‘s infectious melody, but Johnny Burke‘s lyrics are, we think, sublime (and we couldn’t agree more with their sentiments). It all adds up to one of our favorite Crosby sides, and we think it just might prove to be one of yours, too.

We’ve made the performance from the movie this week’s Cladrite Clip, but we think the Decca recording’s the primo rendition. Give it a listen, and see if it doesn’t give you a little, er, spring in your step.

Bing Crosby — “It’s Anybody’s Spring”

It’s Anybody’s Spring
You think that money is everything,
and yet it’s anybody’s spring.
Go make a fortune, become a king,
and still it’s anybody’s spring.

And if you flashed a bankroll,
do you suppose the brook would care?
Or that a rose would say,
“There goes a millionaire”?

It’s more than diamonds around a ring,
because it’s anybody’s spring.
You may be born with a silver spoon,
and yet, it’s everybody’s moon.

You couldn’t buy a ticket
to hear the first robin sing.
It’s free because
it’s anybody’s spring.
–Jimmy Van Heusen/Johnny Burke

Celebrating an American master

The great Samuel Barber was born a hundred years ago today.

The piece for which he is best known, Adagio for Strings, remains our favorite orchestral work. The Adagio began as the second movement in his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11, which was written in 1936.

It’s likely you’ve heard the piece before (it’s been used in many movies, among them Platoon (1986) and The Elephant Man (1980)), but here’s a choral version of it for your consideration, performed by The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, under the direction of Richard Marlow.

And here’s a discussion of Barber’s life and career, originally broadcast on radio station WHYY, between Barber’s biographer Barbara Heyman and David Ludwig, acting head of musical studies and member of the composition faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music, a conservatory in Philadelphia, Penn.