On this week's episode of Mark Steyn on the Town, we celebrate two musical centenaries, enjoy a cavalcade of Non-Stop Number Ones down the decades, and conclude our series of Sinatra Summer Stock with Oklahoma! In between come musical artistes from Bing to 10cc, and a very Marmitey song.
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~Thank you for your kind comments about last week's edition. Bob Loblaw Tweets:
Nobody cleanses one's musical palate better than the great Mark Steyn and his weekly On the Town broadcast on Serenade Radio... this week's episode was a lot of fun!... from niche 'crime jazz' to Frank Sinatra singing Porgy and Bess to 'Henry the VIII, I am'... Loved it!
By contrast, Gordon, a British Columbia member of The Mark Steyn Club, never made it beyond the accompanying graphic:
Music? What music? I can't get past the picture of the alluring Lola Albright consoling an ardent Peter Gunn (Craig Stevens). I think she's saying, Sorry Pete, I have my eyes on a new detective in town - Johnny Staccato. He's got that groovy Elmer Bernstein rhythm. Ya' know what I mean?'
Steve, a First Fortnight Founding Member from Manhattan, owes his presence on this earth to a crime-jazz classic:
From crime jazz to Porgy and Bess, this was heaven on earth. I can't thank you enough for this extraordinary podcast—words do sometimes fail. I love, LOVE crime jazz. Peter Gunn rules. And I'm only here on the planet Earth because one of the stars in the Naked City TV show introduced my parents the rest is New York City history. Someday we need to have a Steyn monument. DC doesn't deserve it. Maybe Saratoga, New York where we won our independence
Just a thought.
Fran Lavery enthuses:
I didn't mean to challenge you to top your On the Town showstopper selections last week (that'd be cheeky), but you gone and done it, didn't you, Mark?
What's both hot and cool and red, white and blue waving all over the place? Well, this genre of 'Crime Jazzzz, Crime Jazzzz.' So cool, these sounds, so hot, it sizzles. The Porgy and Bess numbers with Sinatra, Gershwin, mon bon homme, even the version of the French lyrics of the great Marilyn and Alan Bergman song writing team fits right in. Bravo!
From Alison Castellina:
A beautiful selection of songs and arrangements. This is probably one of my favourite 'On the Town' editions. Frank Sinatra's voice during the 1940s was really something...
NB The second song in the Cafe Continental section is stunning.
That would be Clara Bellar's lovely reading of "Je vivrai sans toi", Alison.
From Josh Passell, a First Weekend Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, it was Sinatra's improvised tag on "My Funny Valentine":
I love to the depths of my soul the way Gershwin's music stops time on the lyric:
Mornin' Time An' Evenin' Time An'
Summer Time An' Winter Time.
I don't know if Richard Rodgers ever registered his opinion of Frank's interpolation of the music of one genius, Gershwin, into the music of another, himself. I hope he had the grace to accept it as the highest possible compliment. That's what it sounds like. Magical.
Mr Rodgers had been dead a decade-and-a-half before Sinatra made that record, Josh. However, I once discussed it with his daughter Mary (bestselling author of Freaky Friday) and we agreed that Daddy would have strongly objected to it. For reasons, we touch on in today's show.
For Teresa Maupin it was our penultimate number that made the show:
Me and my middle school gal pals must have sung (shouted) Herman's Hermits 'I'm Henry the Eighth I am' hundreds of times. It was short, sweet, and so much fun! Loved your interview with Peter Noone on Song of the Week.
One more - from Gary Alexander on America's West Coast:
Your 'Crime Jazz' intro is a great genre. It could fill two or three hours, if your law-abiding listeners could take that trip to the dark side...I have a set of six 'crime film' CDs ranging from The Wild One (1953, music by Leith Stevens), to Crime in the Streets (1956, Franz Waxman), and I Want to Live (1958, Johnny Mandel), plus The Subterraneans (1960, Andre Previn) and a couple of French noirish films. I could list more...and so could you, but there aren't that many vocals in those films.
On Peter Gunn, I know you're sort of a rhyming purist, but I didn't mind pairing 'fingers' and 'swingers' in the opening (the lazy ear hears a rhyme). I just regret that Evans and Livingston didn't find a way to rhyme a trio of words in their text -- 'doorway' and 'your way' and 'Norway.' Instead. they split 'em all up, linked only by a quip about 'splittin' to Britain,' which is a clever rhyme and a hip image.
Well, they did rhyme them, Gary, they just took their time about it, rhyming across the sections - as Dorothy Fields did with "doorstep" and "your step" in "Sunny Side of the Street".
~On the Town is my weekly music show on Serenade Radio every Saturday at 5pm British Summer Time - that's 6pm in western and central Europe or 12 noon North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere in the world by clicking the button at top right here. We also post On the Town at SteynOnline every weekend as a bonus for Mark Steyn Club members. You can find all our previous shows here.
We do enjoy your comments on our weekend programming. Steyn Clubbers are welcome to leave them below. For more on The Mark Steyn Club, now in its ninth year, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership.
Mark Steyn on the Town can be heard on Serenade Radio at its regular times:
Saturday 5pm London time/12 noon New York
Sunday 5am London time/9pm Los Angeles