If you can read this, you can read anything

Someday
When I’m awfully low
And the world is cold
I will feel a glow
Just thinking of you
And the way you look
Tonight

Lyrics by Dorothy Field. I’ve broken the lines according to my poetic logic.

There is something incredibly appealing about many of the lyrics in the Great American Songbook, that collection of tunes often also referred to as Standards. One feels that the audience for this music—and it’s definitely the mass market audience—is treated as if it has brains in its head.

When an ass in Astrakhan can… (baby you can can-can too).

Okay, it’s not poetry for a lush Kern tune, but it’s pretty damned clever of Mr. Porter, who was more often than not pretty damned clever. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it… Then again, he did have some awfully good poetry in him:
Do you love me, as I love you
Are you my life to be, my dream come true
Or will this dream of mine fade out of sight
Like the moon growing dim, on the rim of the hill
In the chill, still, of the night

Dim/rim, hill/chill/still – pretty busy internally there.

Of course, there are those who expect rhymed words not to be spelled identically.

Old Man Sunshine, listen, you,
Never tell me dreams come true,
Just try it, and I'll start a riot

You/true, try it/riot. That’s Ira, “But Not for Me.” His brother (a fairly decent songsmith in his own right) wrote the music that goes along with it. Favorite line:
When every happy plot,
Ends in a marriage knot,
And there's no knot for me.

Then there’s those references lyricists simply expected people to understand.
I hope and I pray
For a Hester to win just one more A
Meredith Willson. All right, perhaps less Great American Songbook, but listen to “The Music Man,” which may be one of the most perfect scores ever written for the stage. It’s also one of the smartest, while never showing off about it. I love Sondheim, but he can’t do that, at least not by himself. On the other hand, when someone else is at the keyboard:
Once my clothes were shabby
Tailors called me, "Cabbie"
Got so rough I took a vow
Said this bum'll
Be Beau Brummel
Or
Time together with time to spare,
Time to learn, time to care,
Some day!
Maybe he never should have learned to play the piano.

I guess I’m in a mellow mood today, for some bizarre reason. I’ve sent off all my Legion requests to the gods and gurus of the northeast, I spent last night updating the how-to-judge document, I woke up at 3:30 a.m. thinking it was morning because the moon was so bright and my head spun with Bump for about two hours, I’ve started Pinker’s Words and Rules about which I’m sure I’ll have more to say soon, I discovered that Yahoo has updated the groups sites, I’ve been trying to figure out some way to get on more roller coasters after the Cyclone and the Coasterradio.com Pennsylvania roadtrip, and I’ve even created a new graphic for my tentative new set of podcasts. So as I say, where did this mellow mood come from?

I like New York in June.
How about you?
I like a Gershwin tune.
How about you?
I like a fireside when a storm is due.
I like potato chips, moonlight and motor trips.
How about you?
Later in the song, and Franklin Roosevelt’s looks give me a thrill. People often update that. Sinatra says James Durante’s looks, but then again, Sinatra never was one for a canonical approach to his material. If Sinatra did it his way, that was the new canon, I guess. I was watching some movie recently and they played “In the Wee Small Hours” but instead of it being Sinatra, it was orchestrated exactly the same way with someone else pretending to be Sinatra. Can’t be done, and it ruined the whole movie for me. If you can’t get the rights, play a different song, or if you must play it, play it a different way. Jeesh. Did they think there’s anyone in the universe who wouldn’t know the difference?

I own more Sinatra albums than you can shake a stick at. I want to buy Lenine. And that guy who’s name I forget (but I’ve bookmarked it). And more Peyroux. And Keb Mo. And Johann Strauss (#2). I think I’m beginning to understand Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, but maybe not.

I think it all goes back to that waking up at 3:30 last night. What I really need is a nap!