Editor’s note: Click here to read “Give My Regards to Broadway”: Part One.
Q. Which comes first, the music or the words?
A. First comes the contract.
This little saw is attributed to various songwriters, but it reminds us that different writers and collaborators had their own ways of writing. With Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Rodgers would compose a melody and Hart would create lyrics to fit it. With Rodgers and Hammerstein, the words came first, and Rodgers, the most adaptable of composers, would set them to music.
With many songwriters, finding a title would inspire the creativity. If somebody said “Baby, it’s cold outside” within earshot of Frank Loesser, there’d soon be a song. Leonard Bernstein sometimes assumed he’d written Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics for “West Side Story.”
The process of writing took strange directions too. At cocktail parties, Hart would go off in a corner with a pad and pencil and write a new song while the pianist was playing a different one.
Alan Jay Lerner said he needed a week or more to write a new lyric, while for speed, Arthur Dietz was the envy of everyone. Dietz wrote “The Bandwagon” for Fred Astaire and his sister, Adele; it was the first musical my parents ever saw. As I recall the story, a friend once asked Dietz how fast he could write a lyric. Dietz said, “Gimme a tune.” The friend then hummed the famous tango called “Jalousie.” Within ten seconds Dietz came back with:
Cyd Charisse
Is sitting on my mantelpiece.
She’s quite a shock there.
I’d planned to put a clock there.
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* * *
The mention of Alan Jay Lerner is important because he wrote the book and lyrics for three of the best-loved Broadway musicals ever: “Brigadoon,” “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot.” His songs from these shows are so well-known that there’s no need to quote them here. Instead, I would point you to a lovely piece from a less well-known Lerner show, “Carmelina.”
That old urge is saying
It’s time to go straying
Where no one but April can find me.
To try and recover
The heart of a lover
That I left lying somewhere behind me.
Just one more walk around the garden
One more stroll along the shore.
One more memory I can dream upon
Until I dream no more.
For one more time perhaps the dawn will wait
And one more prayer it’s not too late
To gather one more rose
Before I say goodbye and close the garden gate.
No writer who devotes a life to Broadway (or Hollywood) can expect to have one hundred per cent hits. And that includes Alan Jay Lerner. His last big musical closed on opening night. It was titled “Dance a Little Closer,” and with just a hint of Manhattan schadenfreude it became known as “Close a Little Faster. ” It had several pleasant songs, but too many things were wrong. Some wags suggested that Lerner was exhibiting fatigue, which they could understand. Over his life he had . . . hold on . . . eight wives. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to his own song from “Camelot” as memorably sung by Richard Burton.
“How to handle a woman?
There’s a way,” said the wise old man,
“A way known by ev’ry woman
Since the whole rigmarole began.”
“Do I flatter her?” I begged him answer.
“Do I threaten or cajole or plead?
Do I brood or play the gay romancer?”
Said he, smiling: “No indeed”.
How to handle a woman?
Mark me well, I will tell you, sir:
The way to handle a woman
Is to love her…simply love her…
Merely love her…love her…love her.”
* * *
Having America’s most famous composer in the family is truly special. When that composer has an older brother who is one of the great Broadway lyricists, well, there’s no other way to describe it but (drum roll): Meet the Gershwins!
Ira Gershwin was brother George’s collaborator, providing the words for more than a dozen shows and such famous songs as: “I Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” The Man I Love,” and “Someone to Watch Over Me.” His lyrics were ingenious and his rhyming skills remarkable, with a marvelous mix of slang and sentimentality when it was needed. Ira at his best wrote lines like:
Although he may not be the man some
Girls think of as handsome,
To my heart he carries the key.
Or this:
Who cares
If the sky cares to fall in the sea?
Who cares what banks fail in Yonkers
Long as you’ve got a kiss that conquers?
With a fraternal composer in the house it’s not surprising that Ira liked to write about music. These excerpts come from a saucy but enthusiastic piece called “By Strauss.”
Away with the music of Broadway!
Be off with your Irving Berlin!
Oh, I’d give no quarter
To Kern or Cole Porter,
And Gershwin keeps pounding on tin
How can I be civil
When hearing this drivel?
It’s only for night-clubbing souses
Oh, give me the free-‘n’-easy
Waltz, that is Vienneasy —
And, go tell the band
If they want a hand
The waltz must be Strauss’s.
When I want a melody
Lilting through the house
Then I want a melody
By Strauss
It laughs, it sings, the world is in rhyme
Swinging in three-quarter time
Let the Danube flow along
And “The Fledermaus!”
Keep the wine and give me song —
By Strauss.
The pinnacle of the Gershwin brothers’ collaboration came with the creation of America’s greatest opera, Porgy and Bess. Ira wrote many of the lyrics and the author of the story, Dubose Heyward, wrote the rest. Together they provided an emotional expansion to the traditional song form.
George Gershwin died at thirty-eight, but Ira went on to write with other composers such as: “Long Ago and Far Away” with Jerome Kern and “The Man That Got Away” with Harold Arlen. Who can forget Judy Garland singing:
The night is bitter,
The stars have lost their glitter;
The winds grow colder
And suddenly you’re older —
And all because of the man that got away.
If you think that some songwriters are shallow, you should know that Ira’s library next to his bedroom contained 2,500 volumes of reference, history and literature. He was the first lyricist to win a Pulitzer Prize.
* * *
The poetry of Sheldon Harnick has graced these columns before, but Harnick’s true fame came when his collaboration with composer Jerry Bock produced “Fiddler on the Roof, ” “Fiorello, ” and what is sometimes described as the perfect musical, “She Loves Me. ” Or at least I would describe it that way. It is probably my favorite Broadway show.
Here is a sprightly example of Harnick’s writing called “The Ballad of the Shape of Things.” Sprightly is a fair word. He’ll turn ninety-nine this month.
Completely round is the perfect pearl
The oyster manufactures;
Completely round is the steering wheel
That leads to compound fractures.
Completely round is the golden fruit
That hangs from the orange tree.
Yes, the circle shape is quite renowned,
And sad to say, it can be found
In the low down, dirty runaround
My true love gave to me.
Yes, my true love gave to me.
Completely square is the velvet box
He said my ring would be in.
Completely square is the envelope
He said farewell to me in.
Completely square is the handkerchief
I flourish constantly,
As I dry my eyes of the tears I shed,
And blow my nose that turned bright red;
Completely square is my true love’s head:
He will not marry me.
No, he will not marry me.
Rectangular is the hotel door
My true love tried to sneak through.
Rectangular is the transom
Over which I had to peek through.
Rectangular is the hotel room I entered angrily.
And rectangular is the wooden box,
Where lies my love ‘neath the golden phlox.
They say he died from the chicken pox,
In part I must agree:
One chick too many had he!
Jerry Herman was born just off Broadway in New York City and had musical theater in his blood from an early age. He learned his craft in musical summer camps and became equally adept at music, always hummable, and lyrics, usually memorable. His philosophy: “If I had a choice of being the most brilliant and sophisticated writer that ever came down the pike, or of being the simple melodic songwriter that I am, I would still have chosen the latter.” The show-stopping results: “Hello, Dolly,” ” Mame,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “Milk and Honey,” and his favorite, “Mack and Mabel.”
Herman was not erudite, but his lyrics were optimistic, easy to remember and fit their tunes perfectly. Here is a good example from “Mame”:
Open a new window
Open a new door
Travel a new highway
That’s never been tried before
Before you find you’re a dull fellow
Punching the same clock
Walking the same tight rope
As everyone on the block
The fellow you ought to be is three dimensional
Soaking up life
Down to your toes
Whenever they say you’re slightly unconventional
Just put your thumb
Up to your nose
And show ’em how to
Dance to a new rhythm
Whistle a new song
Toast with a new vintage
The fizz doesn’t fizz too long
There’s only one way to make the bubbles stay
Simply travel a new high way
Dance to a new rhythm
Open a new window
Ev’ry day!
But there can be surprises, as in this Jerry Herman piece about Paris from “Dear World.” It’s called ”The Spring of Next Year.” You might be hard-pressed to assign this lyric to Herman. It carries quite a clout.
There will be a sweet taste in the air
From industrial waste in the air;
And your eyelids will smart from the sting
Of the smog in the spring of next year.
There will be a black slick on the Seine,
And the sludge will be thick on the Seine;
And your eardrums will thrill to the ring of the axe
In the spring of next year.
Ahh, the apple trees blooming,
As they’re crushed into pulp;
There’ll be smokestacks consuming
Each available gulp
That’s inhalable.
But the moment most thrilling begins
When the pneumatic drilling begins;
It’s a song that all Paris will sing
In the bountiful spring of next year.
You’ll be watching the statues corrode,
We’ll be hearing the fountains explode;
It’s a song that the hatchets will ring
And the derricks will ding
And all Paris will sing
In the bountiful spring of next year.
Little known fact: Jerry Herman at one time attended the Parsons School of Design. Later, in between shows, he became a specialist in redecorating and flipping houses. More than three dozen of them plus a firehouse! Guess he liked playing to full houses.
* * *
VIDEO. Our performances are from the Royal Albert Hall in London. The conductor is John Wilson.
First up is “The Lusty Month of May” from “Camelot.” Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Music by Frederick Loewe.
Next, from the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess,” is an excerpt from the duet, ”Bess You Is My Woman Now.”
Then, “Little Tin Box “ from “Fiorello.” Words by Sheldon Harnick. Music by Jerry Bock.
We close with a danceable Jerry Herman song: “Tap Your Troubles Away” from “Mack and Mabel.”
When the wolf’s at the door
There’s a bluebird in store
If you glide cross the floor
Till your ankles get sore
Just tap your troubles away!
Or as the Berkshire Edge likes to tell its columnists, “Type Your Troubles Away.”
