LOVE IS HERE TO STAY by George & Ira Gershwin. This great classic of the American song book was penned for the movie The Goldwyn Follies in 1938. It was the last composition of George, the lyrics being added after his untimely death by brother Ira. The parody by the magnificent Allan Sherman (1924-73) comes…
DON’T GET AROUND MUCH ANYMORE (Lyrics by Bob Russel, Music by Duke Ellington) This was written by Ellington as a big band instrumental number in 1940. The lyrics were added two years later and the Ink Spots had a Number One hit with it the year after that. It’s been recorded many times, of course,…
IF YOU WERE THE ONLY GIRL IN THE WORLD Lyrics by Clifford Grey, music by Nat. D Ayer The song was published in 1916 and introduced on 19 April 1916 at the premiere of the musical / revue The Bing Boys Are Here at the The Alhambra, Leicester Square. It was a duet sung by its…
’TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) written in 1823. Moore was an American Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature, as well as Divinity and Biblical Learning, at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in New York City. Located on land donated by the “Bard of Chelsea” himself, the seminary…
SUMMER IS ICUMEN IN Medieval (Middle English) lyrics (c.1250) Svmer is icumen in Lhude sing cuccu! Groweþ sed and bloweþ med and springþ þe wde nu. Sing cuccu! Awe bleteþ after lomb, lhouþ after calue cu, Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ. Murie sing cuccu! Cuccu, cuccu, Wel singes þu cuccu. ne swik þu nauer nu!…
THOMAS MOORE (1779-1852) Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron’s memoirs after his death Oh! Ever Thus, From Childhood’s Hour Oh! ever thus, from childhood’s hour,…
Puttin’ On The Ritz Irving Berlin Berlin wrote these ingeniously syncopated lyrics as a stand-alone song in 1927 (published 1929). It was recorded, most famously, by Fred Astaire (see the parody, below, in which he is mentioned) in 1930. When the song was used in the 1946 film ‘Blue Skies’, Berlin rewrote the lyrics changing…
THE STORY OF HIAWATHA Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855) Longfellow’s epic poem, written in trochaic tetrameter, has been much parodied. It begins thus: Should you ask me, whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the…
Felicia Hemans (1793-1835) makes her second appearance in this series having already given us ‘Casabianca’ (‘The boy stood on the buring deck’). This poem of hers is now only famous because of Noel Coward’s superb parody but Hemans’s verse has the distinction of being the source of our use of the phrase ‘stately home’. The…
‘Willow, Titwillow’ from The Mikado W S Gilbert There have been many parodies of the ‘Tit Willow’ song, sung by Ko-Ko in Act 2 of Gilbert & Sullivan’s light opera. In fact Gilbert himself may have consciously (or unconsciously) been parodying the lines of the poet Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718): …