Ira recalls that the period of the tryouts was an unpleasant time of "recasting, rewriting, rehearsing, [and] recriminating -- [but] of rejoicing there was none" Jablonski , p. Adele's brother Fred Astaire, also one of the show's stars, called the time "agony. Wodehouse to work on the score for Rosalie , they saw an opportunity to save some of their trunk songs.
All that had been needed was a slightly revised lyric to make the song work for her alone rather than as the originally intended duet. That the inclusion of their soulful song in a show one reviewer described as "romance in fine feathers and gold and ermine all over everything" may not have mattered much to the very busy brothers Gershwin at the moment; but such a setting, more associated with the waning form of European operetta than with the jazzier milieu of the American musical theater of the late Twenties, might have significantly delayed its being appreciated and thusly held it back, for a significant period of time, from establishing itself as a great standard.
A convoluted path to success as a standard was not that unusual for songs of the era. Another powerful Gershwin song that required an even more daunting gestation before it got its wings was " The Man I love. It went from its inauspicious introducion in a half-filled theater in Philadelphia in a show momentarily titled Smarty , to being cut from that show later titled Funny Face that went on to become a big hit on Broadway without "How Long Has This Been Going On?
Even then it remained on life support. During the late Twenties, both on stage and in a few lackluster recordings, the song was still being performed at a quick tempo with tinkly arrangements quite unsuited to what Ira Gershwin intended: The earthshaking emotional result of a first kiss. Perhaps those early performers did not regard a first kiss as much more than a trivial experience of youth, but that was certainly not Ira's idea.
He had informed his lyric with the revelation of wonderment such a moment can provide. The song's problem lay embedded in those early performances that were either trivialized by Twenties flapper jazz accompaniment or bogged down by an overly romanticized operetta style. Alec Wilder, in , points out that "the song is marked 'moderato' [meaning a tempo a little quicker than slow] but every time I've heard it, it has been played or sung very, very slowly, and rightly so" Wilder, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, , p.
The performances Wilder had heard were jazz not operetta inflected slow tempo recordings, such as those by Lee Wiley and Peggy Lee with Benny Goodman , who over a decade after the song's Broadway debut in Rosalie finally got what was required to reveal the full power and depth of "How Long Has This Been Goin On?
Even then it lingered more or less unappreciated until it got the push it needed in the early 's -- a decade in search of songs in sync with a modern jazz sensibility. Ella Fitzgerald's "pensive" recording, on which she is accompanied by Ellis Larkins on piano this being the first and likely best of her six recordings of the song , spoke to this sensibility. Perhaps Ella had heard Wiley's and Lee's versions. In any case, after that the song emerged in the repertoires of jazz vocalists and instrumentalists on a regular basis, a place from which it has never retreated.
They are persistent cusses that know their own worth, refusing to disappear altogether, waiting to be given their due. It wasn't until Audrey Hepburn sang it in the movie Funny Face, after the song was already an established standard, that this happened. The lyric Hepburn sings is mostly the same as the original although altered a bit to make it better fit the the story in the movie. A line added for Hepburn, "Can one kiss do all of this?
Please complete or pause one video before starting another. Twiggy sings Ira Gershwin's second verse and first refrain. UK: Pavilion, A collection of essays on individual popular songs by very capable critics. As noted above, Adele Astaire's flapperesque voice was unsuited to a song devoted to the expression of such deep feelings.
Another reason for its early failure to evoke enthusiasm from the audience may have been the title itself, which continues to be a significant source of ambiguity often inclining listeners to jump to conclusions about the song's core meaning.
Before one realizes what Ira Gershwin was up to in his lyric, especially if one is hearing the song outside of its dramatic context, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the "this" is a romance or even more likely an affair that has been going on for a while; and the singer, having a powerful attachment to one of the parties, wants to know how long it's been going on, as if the wool has just been lifted from over her eyes.
Rhoda Koenig in her excellent essay on the song thought this after hearing it for the first time on a recording of Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall concert. She writes,. It didn't, however, take Koenig too long to discover that it wasn't about that at all. Ira Gershwin's intended antecedent for the "this" was not an illicit affair someone was having with the singer's significant other but the much more innocent, but no less ecstatic, response the singer was having to a first kiss.
Koenig realizes, as anyone who correctly interprets Gershwin's words should, that the singer has not discovered an elicit sexual encounter by her lover but is flabbergasted by "the wonder of love. As noted above, one piece of evidence to be considered in determining what the "this" is, is not available to someone listening to a recording of the song; in fact, it doesn't come from the lyric itself but rather from the dramatic context in which the song was originally intended to be presented.
The remainder of the evidence for what the antecedent of the "This" is does come from the lyric. The kiss has inspired a question much less prosaic than how long has some romance or affair been going on. Apparently this is more than just a first kiss with this partner. This is the first kiss, as the verse tells us -- other than those childhood kisses from "sisters, cousins and aunties" that evidently repulsed her and put her off any further kissing until the kiss in point.
Why didn't anyone tell me? Another revelation we might be inclined to contemplate is how could the producers of Funny Face have been "dunce" enough to cut this song, and even after Florenz Ziegfeld was smart enough to recognize some quality in it and put it in a show of his the next year, how could independent singers, who are always on the prowl for a good song, have missed it for another decade until Lee Wiley and Peggy Lee found it in and respectively.
And even after their remarkable performances, how could it have lingered virtually unnoticed for another decade until its status as a great American song, a standard, was canonized by recordings by Ella Fitzgerald and others beginning around How could so many music people have missed this song for all those years?
Maybe they just didn't pick up on what that "This" is. In any case, they haven't missed it since. Instead, he says, it is a song that is "malleable to a modern sensibility. Gioia gives two examples of modern interpretations to support these assertions: First he points out that the Ray Charles interpretation could make one think that the Gershwins had written the song with Charles in mind, and second, Brad Mehldau's live performance at the Village Vanguard from could persuade you that "this is an adventurous new millennium piano piece.
One reason for this may be that the first seven lines cut to the chase, to the song's emotional center by means of their sensuosity expressed through Ira's masterful use of the colloquial:. I could cry salty tears; Where have I been all these years? Little wow, Tell me now: How long has this been going on? The effect of the phrase "salty tears" is to make the listener feel with great immediacy the near overwhelming regret the singer has experienced. The verse reveals that the regret is for having "been blind" to and having "lost out" on the kind of feelings the kiss she just experienced could have opened up to her over "all these years.
For Rosenberg the phrase as a whole conveys "warmth and intimacy but is redeemed from sentimentality by its colloquiality and freshness. Argomento correlato Oscar Peterson. Argomento correlato. Downtown Montreal plaza to be named for Oscar Peterson.
Canadian Press. Oscar Peterson - Where Are You? Oscar Peterson - Sophisticated Lady - Remastered Legendary jazz musician Oscar Peterson featured in Heritage Minute.
Yorn King. Di tendenza Steven Gerrard. Di tendenza. Steven Gerrard - Premier League legend returns. Someday You'll Be Sorry. A Kiss to Build a Dream On.
Lover Come Back to Me. Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man. Volare Nel Blu, Dipinto di Blu. Cocktails for Two. I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'. Back Home Again In Indiana. Stompin' at the Savoy. That's My Desire. James Infirmary. When the Saints Go Marching In. Browse Lyrics. Our awesome collection of Promoted Songs ». Good Bye Dave. Have you ever.
0コメント