Dick Rodgers

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Falling In Love With Love…

Greetings from East Arlington, MA — just outside of Boston in the USA!

Today I am featuring a beautiful song with lyrics by Lorenz Hart and music by Richard Rodgers.

As this TIME Magazine cover attests, they were a very potent musical and cultural force in the early-middle 20th century.

And I am very happy that a recent movie — BLUE MOON (made by the wonderful director Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke as Larry Hart) — has renewed interest in Hart’s life and musical legacy.

Here’s a link to a great article in The Hollywood Reporter about making the film if you are curious.

It turns out that BLUE MOON was a decade-long labor of love which was filmed on a beautifully re-created version of Sardi’s — a famous bar/restaurant in Manhattan’s theatre district.

Reading the article brought tears to my eyes.

You can also click here to read a blog post I wrote about Larry Hart exactly ten years ago if you are even more curious.

And I once wrote a blog post about two of his and Rodgers’ hit songs — “You Took Advantage Of Me” and “I Could Write A Book” — which you can read by clicking here.

Not mentioned in the BLUE MOON movie is how devoted Hart was to his mother — with whom he lived his entire life.

Hart’s mother died around the same time that OKLAHOMA (the first musical his decades-long collaborator Rodgers created with another lyricist — their mutual friend Oscar Hammerstein II) opened on Broadway.

So he was grieving this huge familial loss simultaneously with the at-least-partial loss of his friendship AND professional relationship with Rodgers.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

And I had forgotten (until I re-read my blog post from ten years ago) that Mr. Hart had also begun a collaboration about underground freedom fighters in France with a composer who had recently escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe.

So, as an American-born Jew whose parents had emigrated to NYC in the late 19th century from Germany, he also may have also been feeling a significant amount of grief, rage, despair, terror, and “there but for the grace of G-d” empathy for the millions of Jews still remaining in Europe.

And let’s not forget that American Nazis were holding huge rallies at places like Madison Square Garden during this time as well!

Yet another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

I don’t know how much it was public knowledge that LGBTQ folks were being sent to Nazi death camps, but I am guessing that theater people — such as composer Kurt Weill, who had managed to escape from Berlin to Paris to Manhattan — had plenty of heart-breaking anecdotes to share about the fates of their previous artistic partners who happened to be LGBTQ and/or Jewish and/or Roma.

All of this was also not mentioned in BLUE MOON. although Mr. Hawke and Mr. Linklater and some of the other actors such as Andrew Scott apparently did a lot of research before they began filming the movie — so I am guessing that they had most/all of this information influencing the subtexts of their acting performances.

And another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

There are certainly some powerful parallels with what was happening leading up to Larry’s death in 1943 and what is currently unfolding here in the USA.

One thing I wrote about in my blog post from ten years ago — and which BLUE MOON does explore — is the paradox of Larry Hart (a somewhat closeted gay man) falling in love with and proposing to women.

And the song “Falling In Love With Love” may illuminate some of Hart’s thoughts and feeling on this topic/phenomenon/tendency.

What do YOU think?

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his exquisite piano playing and comprehensive production skills.

Thank you to John Childress (and his collaborator at the time named Laurel, I think…) for taking this photo many years ago when I still had plenty of hair.

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for his lovely graphic design work.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to another one of my blog posts.

You can click here to stream “Falling In Love With Love” on Pandora, YouTube, Apple Music, etc. if the spirit moves you.

And you are also always welcome to visit my website: WillSings.com.

There’s all sorts of info and music there — and you could join my email list of you are so inclined.

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Mulligan Stew

Image by ivabalk from Pixabay

Today’s song is a sassy tour de force with lyrics by Lorenz Hart and music by Richard Rodgers.

I love the introductory verse, which mentions “Mulligan Stew,” the “Beaux Arts Ball,” and “Noël Cad” a.k.a. Noël Coward.

Many songs from the 20s, 30s and 40s include references to specific people, places, products and events — thus functioning as historic 20th century time capsules for 21st century listeners.

A) Mulligan Stew, I learned from Wikipedia, is an Irish-inspired recipe for a soup or stew made from whatever food items one can round up.

It was also known as “Hobo Stew” during the early part of the 20th century in the USA.

I feel a special affinity for Mulligan Stew, because it appears to be very similar to the endless soup I like to make during the winter months.

Image by u_0bpc2hin from Pixabay

I start with cut up carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions — plus a frozen chicken thigh — and boil all the ingredients until the chicken is cooked and the carrots are starting to lose their crunch.

Then I add some cut-up garlic, fresh ginger, salt, pepper and whatever additional spices — curry powder? thyme? turmeric? one of Trader Joe’s multi-spice blends? — call out to me from the shelf.

Then I eat it for about a week — refrigerating it each night and adding more water plus additional ingredients — leeks? parsnips? kale? mushrooms? squash? rice? tomatoes? okra? tofu? canned beans? frozen artichoke hearts? leftover Chinese food? — on a daily basis before cooking it some more.

Yum!

B) Noël Coward, as you may already know, was a multi-hyphenate powerhouse — an actor-playwright-composer-director-singer from England who died in 1973 after a long and very successful career.

Image by -Rita-👩‍🍳 und 📷 mit ❤ from Pixabay

I have only learned and performed one of his songs — “If Love Were All” — which was part of Judy Garland’s repertoire.

But I have a Noël Coward songbook in my basement music library which probably deserves more attention in the future.

C) Wikipedia tells us that “The Beaux-Arts Ball… is the annual costume ball traditionally given by the students of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the spring…on the rue Bonaparte overlooking the Seine… Its reputation for high style, nudity, wild antics, and cross-dressing encouraged imitators in American cities. In 1931, in New York, famous architects dressed up as their buildings and today, many American architecture schools hold similar costume balls.”

I am guessing that the one in New York in 1931 is the Beaux Arts Ball to which Larry Hart is referring in his lyrics.

They sound like very creative and somewhat outrageous events!

Image by rautsonakshik0 from Pixabay

I am happy to share that my streaming numbers have been rising on Spotify and on Pandora (which are the only two music streaming platforms I currently monitor) — so a BIG THANK YOU to anyone and everyone who have given one of my songs a listen!

I have become more and more of a Pandora fan in recent months, even though their music is only accessible in the USA (and not globally like Spotify).

I use their free option, which means that I have to listen to ads every few songs — which I often mute.

And I use a similar free option on Spotify and YouTube Music.

Even though Pandora’s parent company, SiriusXM, has been laying off large numbers of staff in recent months, the core group of people at Pandora who offer customer service and training to independent musicians like me has — so far — remained intact.

What I particularly love about Pandora is that they do not use chatbots to communicate with independent musicians like me.

Image by jyleen21 from Pixabay

Real live Pandora staff offer free training sessions via Zoom each month to encourage musicians to take advantage of their free promotional strategies which can help songs find new listeners.

I tried one strategy — creating a featured track — and the song I featured received hundreds more streams as a result.

Of course, you probably remember that all of the music streaming companies pay only fractions of a cent per stream to recording artists and songwriters like me…

But I have released 58 songs during the past 4 years, and many of these songs have each been streamed over 1000 times on Spotify and Pandora — although less often on YouTube, Apple, Amazon, and other digital music platforms…

And all of those fractions of cents DO have the potential to add up to something substantial.

So I remain hopeful that my persistence will pay off as the months and years go by — as long as we have a functioning internet, a functioning economy and a functioning democracy…

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing his beautiful Schimmel piano on this recording and for being very patient while we mixed and mastered it.

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for his elegant graphic design.

Thank you to Larry Hart and Dick Rodgers for their extraordinary songwriting partnership.

Thank you to the talented and generous photographers at Pixabay.

And a final thank you to YOU for making it to the end of another one of my blog posts!

You are always welcome to click here and listen to “The Lady Is A Tramp” on various streaming platforms.