(PIANO INTRO)
I've always been as long as I can remember
completely and utterly obsessed with songs.
In love with the idea of songs,
what you can say in songs.
The really great writers
can convey so many feelings in a song,
put across so many emotions
and tell so many stories
in just three minutes.
For me, the best songs ever written
are part of what is called the Great American Songbook.
You'd be amazed how many of them you know.
This is the music that flourished on America's east coast
in the '20s and '30s
when the art of songwriting reached its peak.
Songs written by the likes of Cole Porter,
Fats Waller and George Gershwin.
It didn't matter what colour you were,
the song transcended
through the music.
They combined new rhythms, new harmonies
and clever lyrics.
# We'll bathe in Brighton, the fish we'll frighten
# When you are in your bathing suit...
And the very best of these songs
are the ones which explore that most powerful of all human emotions...
love.
They are expressions of desire,
beauty, aspiring to love,
the flush of first love.
These songs go on for time immemorial.
They are written by people who mapped every single contour
of the human heart.
And because they dealt with eternal truths
that's why they are timeless.
This has got to be
one of the world's most magical cities.
Who doesn't get the romance of New York?
I absolutely love this place.
The very first time I came to Manhattan
I was 29 years old. I was working on Radio One
and it was to interview the Rolling Stones.
That was an incredible trip.
Every time I come here is an amazing experience.
When I am in this bustling, crazy place,
I can't help but hear the soundtrack of '20s New York in my head.
Back then, this booming city was sprouting skyscrapers everywhere.
People with sounds from every continent were mixing together
to produce the world's greatest love songs.
I've chosen six of my favourites
which I believe
capture the essence of this wonderful genre
perfectly expressing
that most universal human emotion.
I'm sure you've been there. I have.
Falling in love,
that feeling of being in love
and also having a broken heart, falling out of love.
So these, in a sense,
are the songs of our lives.
The song that most beautifully captures this city's romantic spirit
is an often-recorded classic.
# We'll have Manhattan
# The Bronx and Staten Island too
# It's lovely going through
# The zoo... #
Listen to Ella Fitzgerald, loving the witty lyrics
in this delightfully sunny version of Manhattan.
# The subway charms us so
# When balmy breezes blow... #
The words tell a story
of a young couple who are so in love
that New York becomes a glorious playground.
# The great big city is a wondrous toy
# Made for a girl and boy
# We'll turn Manhattan
# Into our isle of joy #
The great and beautiful thing about that song
is that it turns everything into an isle of joy.
The humdrum, the hustle and bustle,
of the city,
just the ordinary stuff that goes on,
when you are in love, all that seems marvellous.
It turns the whole city into a paradise.
I mean, that line...
# The subway charms us so
# Where balmy breezes blow
# To and fro...
Balmy breeze in the subway?
That's just a blast of dirty dust in your face.
But it becomes...
something so incredibly special.
And that is the nature of love.
Once I was in a love affair but it was never gonna happen.
It was folly, and I held out
that New York and Manhattan
was the place that we could
live out and fulfil our dreams.
And that song Manhattan really said it all for me.
But we didn't.
And life moved on.
And everyone is happy.
(HOOTER)
Why don't you go where you're looking?
In this early film version you can see it performed
just as audiences originally did
as what seems to us a rather hammy musical number on a theatre stage.
# A great success # Well, more or less
# Our future babies will take to... #
When they wrote Manhattan in 1925,
composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Lorenz Hart
didn't hold out much hope for its success.
They'd struggled for years to hit the big time.
The producers kept dismissing their lyrics
as far too clever for popular taste.
# I'd like to take a sail on Jamaica Bay with you
# And fair Canarsie's lakes
# We'll view #
Yet Manhattan's complex lyrics
were exactly what wowed audiences
and launched the pair on a stellar career
penning over 500 songs for both stage and screen.
# ..turn Manhattan into an isle of joy
# Boy #
But how do Lorenz Hart's groundbreaking rhymes hold up today?
One man who really knows about rhyme is Baba Brinkman,
a rap artist who specialises in literature.
He's given hip-hop treatment to everything from Chaucer
to Charles Darwin.
# I could even use this rhyme as a remedy
# Cos there's so much variation in the styles in this industry
# Differential survival when the people listening
# Decide what they are into and what really isn't interesting #
These lyrics by Lorenz Hart in Manhattan,
they were seen as revolutionary at the time.
As a rapper, what do you make of them now?
A lot of hip-hop is about trying to find a surprising rhyme
that no-one would naturally think of.
And the song really grabs your attention
right from the start with that.
There's an example where he says, "I want to go on Jamaica Bay with you
and then, "On Canarsie Lake we'll view".
That's like a seven syllable pattern
that seems to be not something you see in a lot of songs of the time.
But it's something that rappers do all the time now.
It's got to be a little bit of a forebearer to hip-hop in that way.
It's the multi-syllable rhyming patterns
that create the unexpected rhymes.
So if you were to show this lyric to Eminem
what do you think he'd make of it?
He'd recognise it as an innovation.
He'd probably try to flip some of the lyrics from the song
as a rap.
I'll do that. Go on then.
You can rock the beat with this.
In honour of Lorenz Hart.
Lorenz Hart, early hip-hop artist.
So we'll see how we can flip the verses from Manhattan.
Oy?
That's a New York expression.
There you go. It's hip-hop after all.
In the 1920s
relatively few people owned a radio.
Nobody had television.
Movies till the decade's end were silent.
So the best place to hear all the latest songs
was in the theatre.
And the pulsating heart of American theatre was New York's Broadway.
Broadway was where people came for their kicks and their entertainment.
And they still do.
And it was a magnet for the extraordinary men and women
who wrote these sublime songs.
On Broadway a new kind of music was evolving
that mirrored the changing world.
And especially the changing rules of love.
Old traditions of chaperones and arranged marriages
were disappearing fast.
The 1920s was a time of... a new sexual freedom and licence
and also exploration.
After the war,
the jazz age, everything was shaken up,
and everything changed.
There was a writer called Elinor Glyn
who was actually seen as a bit of a dangerous liberal by some people.
But she wrote this book The Philosophy Of Love.
It's very tame now
but it warns of some of the dangers
implicit and explicit in the jazz age.
Here's a little passage.
"Our man is back from the war
and he has seen hundreds probably of "Jazz girls".
The jolly, noisy, smoking, slangy Jazz-band creature
only engages his most trivial attention.
He's not very likely to desire such a girl as a companion for life."
Unlike her parents' generation,
Jazz girl had more freedom to express her true feelings.
Not just the flap of fun and frivolity.
But also a yearning for true love.
That new emotional honesty was memorably set to music
by brothers George and Ira Gershwin.
In this song
we hear a jazz-age woman
longing to find her soul mate.
Sophie Tucker's early recording of The Man I love
is full of heartache.
# Some day he'll come along
# The man I love
# And he'll be big and strong
# The man I love
# And when he comes my way
# I'll do my best to make him stay... #
The Man I Love was written for Broadway in the 1920s.
And it's got a wonderfully bluesy quality.
It's a torch song. Listen to those bluesy chords
that George Gershwin wrote.
# Some day he'll come along
# The man I love
That change there from major to minor, it's just gorgeous.
# Pa-pa-pa-pa
# Pam-pa-pa-pa
The blues wasn't just about being sad.
It was a particular song form with African harmonies
that had evolved from the slave chants.
# ..this day
In this early talky featuring Bessie Smith,
the Empress of the Blues,
she pours her heart out
in a song style then mostly associated with African Americans.
But those sounds were beginning to reach a much wider audience.
In The Man I Love
George Gershwin took those bitter-sweet blues chords
to Broadway theatres, and, later, to film.
# He'll look at me and smile
# I'll understand
In this classic film noir,
chain-smoking lounge singer Ida Lupino
draws out its sultry bluesiness.
# And so all else above
# I'm waiting for the man...
# That I love #
It's interesting that Gershwin
and many of the songwriters who put jazz and blues into their music
were Jewish.
Perhaps they drew on similarities between traditional Jewish music,
lamenting exile, and the music of slaves
longing for distant African homelands.
Like so many New Yorkers, the Gershwins were an immigrant family.
They came from eastern Europe in the 1890s,
eventually settling in Manhattan's Jewish quarter
on the lower east side.
It looks a little different now
but it's still possible to find the Gershwin family home.
Ah, here we are.
253 is where George and Ira Gershwin lived
for four or five years when they were teenagers.
Those railings would have been there.
They would have come out every morning,
right here in the heart of the Jewish Rialto
the Jewish district.
And they would have seen something like this,
hustle, bustle, very, very busy.
Lots of markets, lots of people, lots of stimulation.
(CHOIR VOCALISES)
Young George Gershwin was immersed in a cacophony of sounds.
Traditional Jewish music sung in the synagogues...
(JEWISH MUSIC)
Yiddish theatre staging their own popular musicals.
The sounds and rhythms of jazz spreading everywhere
and not least, the noises of the city itself.
Gershwin was largely self taught
and he wrote music in all kinds of styles
for all kinds of instruments.
This is a roll for a pianola
which is this amazing musical contraption here.
I'm going to have to load it in
and then pedal like Billy-o.
Like a cross trainer.
And we'll be able to hear it.
It's one of the very first pieces of music that George Gershwin wrote
and he was 19 years old.
I'm just gonna load it up.
Right, here we go.
Gershwin began with this simple ragtime piece.
But within just seven years
he'd composed his orchestral masterpiece Rhapsody In Blue.
He teamed up with brother Ira to write their first Broadway musical
Lady Be Good.
It's this show that gave birth to my favourite Gershwin song.
# One day he'll come along
# The man I love... #
There is a heartbreaking vulnerability
in Judy Garland's radio broadcast of this song.
Particularly poignant because it was wartime.
# And when he comes my way... #
Singer Michael Feinstein was a close friend of Ira Gershwin
and knows more about Gershwin recordings than anyone.
If you asked George Gershwin what his favourite song was
he would tell you it was The Man I Love.
It's one of the greatest songs in popular music.
The Man I Love has a certain resonance
that is so special to so many people.
The Gershwin sound is iconic in that song
because it's all about the da-da-da-da-da-dee.
Da-da-da-dee.
That is called a blue note. Some day he'll come along...
On the scale of a piano, that note, it's a flatted seven.
Gershwin used it over and over again as in Rhapsody In Blue.
(VOCALISES) There's so many songs where he uses that note
and the thing that is amazing is that he repeats it
time and time again in so many different songs
and it always sounds fresh and different.
What intrigues me is the passion in the music.
So what did George know about the complexities of love?
George was gregarious.
He was catnip to women.
Charismatic? Very charismatic.
And certainly the most eligible bachelor on Broadway.
If you were at a party and both the Gershwins were there,
George would be at the piano with showgirls on both sides of him.
But when it comes to George's personal life,
there is much mystery surrounding it.
He went into psychoanalysis for many, many years
but could not form a lasting relationship.
The closest thing he had was with Kay Swift.
A very talented composer.
And they were together for ten years.
Off and on.
But Kay Swift was married
and she was not Jewish.
Eventually Kay got divorced, expecting George to marry her.
And he didn't.
So I think that George had...
hang-ups.
And I think he sought to have the same joy in life
that he had in his music
and it didn't happen.
George didn't end up with the woman he loved.
But instead, left us a fantastic legacy of haunting music.
All these great songs are ripe for multiple interpretations.
No wonder so many of today's singers, whatever their style or background,
can't resist them.
Pop icon Annie Lennox
is one of the latest with her aptly-named album Nostalgia.
# So hush little baby
# Don't you cry
The songs have longevity.
They last forever.
There's a certain kind of calibre that is lasting and classic
and people keep referring to it
because its achievement is so particularly great
that it's a standard, like a gold standard.
You're right. The music and the words is just so perfectly married.
As a songwriter yourself, you must think,
"Oh, they nailed it."
Sweet. I just think, ooh, sweet, you know.
It's the articulation of the heart.
I think a lot of these songs really are about...
they are expressions of the human condition
and they go on for time immemorial.
We all feel...
desire,
loss, sometimes despair.
Beauty, aspiring to love.
The flush of first love.
All these kind of subtle things,
it's like a whole, how do you say, a spectrum.
It is.
But it's in three minutes. And there it is.
So it is like a fabulous...
It's like a 1930s cocktail. It's all mixed up
and poured into this exquisite glass and then you get to drink it.
Back in the 1920s,
New York songwriters knew exactly where to go
when they wanted fresh inspiration.
Harlem was the city's most happening district.
It had become a focus for the jazz culture of black America.
White people came here from other parts of town
and they called it "slumming it in Harlem".
Musicians like George Gershwin and others
and they found illicit alcohol,
forbidden sex...
..and amazing music.
There was one song in particular,
a love song,
that was thought of as Harlem's theme tune
because its playfulness summed up the Harlem spirit.
# No-one to talk with
# All by myself
# No-one to walk with
# But I'm happy on the shelf
# Ain't misbehavin'
# I'm saving my love for you #
Ain't Misbehavin'.
This could be a song about fidelity
and really saving yourself for one person
or...
with a twinkle in the eye and a tongue in cheek,
it can mean something quite different.
# No one to talk with, all by myself
# No one to walk with, but I'm happy on the elevation of the shelf
# Ain't misbehavin'
# Saving my love for you
# And you, especially you, yeah... #
This is Thomas Waller, nicknamed "Fats",
the man who composed the music.
# I'm through with flirting... #
There is a delicious irony hearing him sing "I'm through with flirting".
After all, Fats was one of Harlem's most notorious philanderers.
He certainly knew how to turn on the charm.
Fats Waller's cheeky song reflects
the risque club scene where he shot to fame.
Floor shows were raunchy and daring,
the music irrepressible.
There is little left now of that legendary scene.
But singer and local resident Michael Mwenso
is showing me where it all happened.
So, this is Fats Waller world, eh?
This is definitely one of the places he would have spent some time in.
It was originally a movie theatre.
Big bands would play upstairs.
Great Benny Carter would play. Bessie Smith played here.
The great Billie Holiday played a lot of times
early on in her career. Really?
Yeah. This was the place.
The syncopated music rocking joints like the Alhambra
lured many Broadway stars uptown
to see the outrageous action for themselves.
From Al Jolson to Fred Astaire, Mae West to Judy Garland,
they all came.
They would say that as soon as 12 o'clock would come, midnight,
you would see vans and truckloads of people coming from downtown.
Because this would be the place.
The amount of speakeasys,
house rent parties, clubs, bars...
House rent parties? House rent parties.
If you didn't have enough money to pay the rent
and you are gonna get kicked out, you'd have a house party
to raise money. You'd have a band playing.
So if you had somebody like Fats Waller at your rent party
you are laughing.
You had someone like Fats Waller at your party
you'd be thanking high God.
You'd be, "OK, I can pay my rent for the next two years."
It would be a mistake to underestimate Fats Waller.
He was such a larger-than-life character
in every sense,
that it's easy to overlook his musical brilliance.
He was master of a jaunty piano style known as "Stride".
You can hear it in the catchy melody of Ain't Misbehavin'.
The melody he is writing, that's genius.
It's like you doing call and response to yourself.
Like you go, "Hello, what's your name?"
"How are you doing?"
He's doing it all in the same thing.
(VOCALISES) That's the call.
Now the response. (VOCALISES)
Now the call.
(VOCALISES)
Response. (VOCALISES)
I love that bit because it cascades back down again.
(VOCALISES)
Here's Fats
in the film Stormy Weather from '43.
Here we go.
In Stormy Weather, which unusually for the time
focussed on life in black America, Fats' cameo steals the show.
# No one to talk with
# All by myself
# No one to walk with
He's got an innocent look on his...
He's playing the characters.
But you know he's not innocent.
He's almost giving you...
# For you
I love when he does that. # For you, for you
He's saving his kisses for lots of different people. That's right.
# Ain't misbehavin'
# Saving my love for you #
Do you know my favourite bit of his performances?
I'm saving my love for you...
and you...and you
and you. He's got to be bisexual.
Multisexual. You can be anybody.
Part of the joy of these great American love songs
is their sheer variety.
Sure, they can be cheeky, witty or melancholy.
They can also be unashamedly sentimental
in the most wonderful way.
# Some day when I'm awfully low
# And the world is cold... #
I think this song is one of the most romantic ever written.
# You and the way you look tonight
The Way You Look Tonight was written for Fred Astaire
to serenade Ginger Rogers in this hit comedy.
# With your smile so warm
Fred is not the world's greatest singer
but his charm wins through.
# ..but to love you... #
The wonderful thing about this comic set-up
is that while he says,
"I love you the way you look tonight"
she's in the middle of washing her hair.
So her hair is covered in shampoo.
But that's the truth of the song
because the song is really saying, I love you the way you look tonight
and that is however you look, whatever you look like.
# Just the way you look tonight #
The Way You Look Tonight
perfectly captures the romance of the early talkies.
The musical styles of Harlem and Broadway
were now reaching a far wider audience
through films like Swing Time.
This was the '30s
and depression-era Americans
were desperate for a bit of escapist fantasy.
The Way You Look Tonight was written my composer Jerome Kern
and lyricist Dorothy Fields.
Fields, who grew up in a showbiz family
battled male prejudice to become
the first successful woman in the songwriting business.
In the following decades she wrote the lyrics to dozens of songs
including the '60s hit Big Spender.
But for me,
The Way You Look Tonight
is her crowning achievement.
# And that laugh that wrinkles your nose
# Touches my foolish heart... #
It's been recorded by singers as diverse as Billie Holiday,
and Bryan Ferry. But one of my favourite versions
is Michael Buble's cool bossa nova.
# That breathless charm
# Won't you please arrange it?
# Cos I love you
# Just the way you look tonight... #
The lyrics capture that exquisite feeling
when you are so besotted with someone
that everything else fades away.
I'm lucky to be meeting Dorothy Fields' son,
musician David Lahm.
I love all these songs that we are looking at, but this one...
it changes the way I feel. It makes me feel...
It changes my biochemistry.
If I hear it, I get love coursing through my entire body.
What is the magic? What makes this... this song so special?
It affects different people in different ways.
From a practical point of view
the fact that it's only one octave in range
makes it easy to sing.
And the fact that it was in a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie,
that wasn't a bad thing either.
And the song I think was bubbling along
with a decent kind of productivity...
I'm speaking now as the beneficiary of the royalties that it earns.
Until about 1991.
And then Steve Martin did the movie Father Of The Bride.
# And your cheeks so soft
This tender scene, where Steve Martin's character
finally comes to terms with his daughter's nuptials
has established the song as a wedding favourite.
# Just the way you look tonight... #
The words are so beautiful.
"And that smile that wrinkles your nose
captures my foolish heart."
It's just magical.
My mother had a very conversational way of writing lyrics.
And I think that that gives it an immediacy.
It's easy to relate to.
But also you're not necessarily talking about
Naomi Campbell or Marilyn Monroe.
You're not talking about the world's most beautiful woman.
You're just talking about... The one that you love.
Do you think it's your mother's greatest lyric?
That's...
No, I...
Excuse me? Do you know the song The Way You Look Tonight?
Yes. # One day when I'm...
# ...old and grey #
# When all the world is cold
# I will get a glow just thinking... # Of you
# And the way... # You look
# Tonight # Beautiful, isn't it? Yes.
What is beautiful about that song?
The lyrics.
All right, is that his?
No, it's his mother's.
What was your mother's name? Dorothy Fields.
Oh, of course. Of course.
Very famous woman.
I agree with you. What is the best thing about that song? The lyrics.
Yes. Thank you very much. You're welcome.
Really nice to meet you.
What's the best thing about that song? The lyric.
Yeah. We have it from an unbiased source.
Truth is we can talk about this song till the cows come home.
But really the only way to experience its full power
is to sing it.
# Lovely
# Never never change
# Keep that breathless charm
# Won't you please arrange it?
# Cos I love
# Just the way you look...
# Tonight #
# Just the way you look
# Tonight #
(PIANO FLOURISH)
It's not a bad song.
Of course, love isn't always blissful and trouble free.
Sometimes the most intense passion is repressed and frustrated.
And I think nobody expressed frustrated passion
better than the songwriter Cole Porter.
A sparkling socialite with a secret double life.
# Like the beat, beat, beat...
Written in 1932,
Cole Porter's Night And Day
has one of the most unusual introductions.
# Tick, tick, tock...
The same hypnotic note sung 35 times.
# ..against the wall
# Like the drip, drip, drip of the raindrops
Pulsating tom-toms on Ella Fitzgerald's version
reinforce the sense
there is something unsettled going on beneath the surface.
Very much like Cole Porter himself.
# Night and day
# You are the one
And yet to outward appearances,
everything was elegant sophistication.
The Waldorf Astoria, Park Avenue.
Famous hotel for the rich and famous.
Cole Porter lived here.
Lived here for more than 30 years.
Think of the bill.
In there there is something incredibly special
that I want to show you.
Cole Porter hosted many dazzling parties at the Waldorf
and wrote some of his greatest songs here.
And in the hotel lobby
there is an extraordinary survivor
from that whirlwind of glamour and creativity.
Cole Porter's own piano.
For me, this is...
quite a moment.
This is greater than Hendrix's guitar.
Paul McCartney's Hofner bass.
# Night and day
# You are the one...
# Whether near to me or far
# No matter, darling, where you are
# I think of you
# Night and day #
It's so lovely.
Played by a plonker.
Imagine Cole Porter playing it on this piano.
Such a beautiful song.
But there is so much more to it than sweet romance.
BILLIE HOLIDAY: # Night and day
You can hear it in the earthiness of Billie Holiday's version.
# There's an oh, such a hungry yearning
# Burning inside of me... #
"Such a hungry yearning burning inside of me."
Even U2 had a go at conveying that passion.
# Under the hide of me
# There's such a hungry yearning
# Burning inside of me... #
To the outside world,
Cole Porter seemed to have it all.
Fame, money, talent,
a glamorous wife.
Privately,
he struggled to deal with his homosexuality.
In those days, it was not only socially unacceptable,
but also illegal.
So the lovers he did have
were kept strictly hidden.
# Night and day
# Under the hide of me
There are very few people left who knew Cole Porter.
# Burning, burning...
Singer Marti Stevens did.
# And its torment won't be through
# Till you let me spend my life
# Making love to you
# Day and night
# Night and day #
At the age of 81,
she still performs his music
with more passion than many artists half her age.
That sequence of Night And Day,
the boom-boom-boom...
That's like any obsession.
Haven't you ever been in love?
And haunted by something...
..that can drive you absolutely mad
when you are trying to think of something else.
The drip, drip, drip of the raindrops.
The beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom.
Yeah. He's described it very well.
Marti knew Cole Porter during his later years.
She saw plenty of his glamorous side
and explored Europe and the Middle East together.
We used to have all the china, all the silver, all the crystal.
And there we were, out in the desert in Petra.
And he had a little card table
and his marvellous valet, Paul Silvain,
used to serve him breakfast.
He'd be there with his orange juice.
It was just so.
Perfection.
Cole, when he was accused of being a snob, said...
"I'm not a snob.
I just like the very best of everything."
God knows, he was more fun than a wicked wagonload of Winkies.
You go to Cole to get a walk on the wild side.
But he was a repressed man.
I thought so. I mean I never delved into that
because passion is passion wherever you have it.
You can't help who you fall in love with.
Ain't that the truth.
It's through his music that Marti believes
she's seen a hidden intensity of that other Cole.
Never more so than in Night And Day.
You know the word which just leaps out from that song?
Torment.
That's what he had. All the time.
Sure he was torn.
He had torment and he had pain.
And... Pain in the heart?
I think very often
because he fell in love quite frequently.
I think Cole was the most passionate of all of them. I really do.
# Making love to... #
Perhaps if Cole Porter had lived 50 years later,
he'd have been a happier man.
But would he have left us such an extraordinary musical legacy?
Such clever, complex songs about love.
# Night and day #
The great American love song
captured every stage of love.
The hope, the thrill,
the romance,
but also of course
the pain of breaking up.
# There was a moon
# Out in space
The Night We Called It A Day
was written for Frank Sinatra in 1942,
But this later version is his best.
# You kissed me and went on your way
# The night we called it a day... #
Sinatra's trademark long, haunting phrases
evoke what it feels like to have loved and lost.
# Like a minor lament
# In my ears
He recorded this version
the year his tempestuous marriage to Ava Gardner finally ended in divorce.
And you can hear it in his voice.
# The night we called it a day
This is an unbearably heartbreaking song.
An end-of-relationship song.
And the reason it hits home...
..is that...
so many of us have had those moments.
When to go on in a relationship has just been...
futile.
As much as you do love each other,
sometimes it becomes just utterly hopeless
and it's going nowhere.
But the passion and love is still there.
The words by lyricist Matt Dennis
are poetry of a sublime simplicity.
# The moon went down... #
"The moon went down.
The stars were gone.
And the sun didn't rise with the dawn."
# ..the sun didn't rise with the dawn... #
So even though you wake up and it's dawn and it's sunrise,
it's not there, the sun is not there.
Everything is grey.
Everything is bleak.
Everything is...
depressing.
But the bleakness in the song has such a stark beauty.
1942.
The year the song was written
marked the beginning of the end of this golden age of songwriting.
From now on the great composers and lyricists
began to be eclipsed by singers. Stars like Frank Sinatra.
Worshipped by their teenage fans.
While the songwriters slipped into relative obscurity.
Tom Adair's bitter-sweet melody for The Night We Called It A Day...
..beautifully matches Matt Dennis's poetic words.
Yet their names are all but forgotten today.
Hey. Hey.
What a song, isn't it? So beautiful.
It's just one of the most
heartbreaking end-of-relationship songs, isn't it?
# Kissed me then went on your way
And there's that line in it, "There wasn't a thing left to say."
But it says...everything.
It's like a three-act play in...
..one line, isn't it? It is.
That was beautiful. Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
It's not that these wonderful songs disappeared.
They simply got pushed out of the spotlight
as rock and roll took centre stage in the 1950s.
And yet however much musical styles have come and gone,
these songs have kept coming back.
People have said these are period pieces
but they seem to have not only an emotional relevance,
they seem to have a complete musical relevance, don't they?
When they are done well, they seem so fresh.
Yeah, absolutely.
I feel one can perform them now
and they don't have to sound as if they are preserved in aspic.
They really are very, very open to contemporary presentation.
And to sound like actually what they are addressing,
the human condition, ourselves.
Same old story, nothing has changed really.
The human beings of the 21st century are still grappling with
the issues emotionally...
Slightly different maybe in a different kind of way,
but still at the core of it
it's the same theme.
So do you think people still in 50 years' time, 100 years' time
are gonna be singing Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart?
I don't see any reason why not.
# The moon went down, stars were gone
# But the sun didn't rise with the dawn
# There wasn't a thing left to say
# The night we called it a day #
There wasn't a thing left to say.
Well, there's always going to be things to say about
the great mysteries of love.
But I don't think they will ever be expressed so poignantly,
so perfectly,
so beautifully
as in these songs.
They've been with us for a long time.
And they are going to be with us for a lot longer.
subtitles by Deluxe