Apart from the wonderful music, the Gasbook contains some of the greatest poetry and rhyming couplets of the 20th century.
One of my favorites is "Our veranda will command a view of meadows green the kind of view that's simply got to be seen" - Folks Who Live on the Hill music Jerome Kern lyric Oscar Hammerstein II.
Anne DeVere Harper likes "My bones denounce the buckboard's bounce and the cactus hurts my toes" - Buttons and Bows - m. Jay Livingstone l. Ray Evans.
What's your favourite?
Lance.
35 comments :
I admire
-the audacity/corniness of drama/glamour/hammer as rhymes for Alabama in Frank Perkins' lyrics for 'Stars Fell on Alabama'
- the crazy modulation in the bridge on 'a fairyland no one can enter'
- the careless clunkiness of 'arms wound you tight'
from Kiss me Kate by Cole Porter
Mister Harris plutocrat
wants to give my cheek a pat
If a Harris pat means a Paris hat
whey hey!
(actually all the verses in this number are clever!!
Liz
Love is WRONG
it sings a hopeless SONG
it LONGS for bitter disappointment and Tears and Tears
it calls to all that used to be
while it yearn for someone who
was tender, but untrue.
From Bad and Beautiful. Music by David Raksin Words by Dory Previn.
"Gus Kahn's lyric for Matty Malneck - the wretching, defeatest moment in popular song:
Why did you lead me to think you could care?
You didn't need me, you had your share
Of slaves around you to hound you and swear
With deep emotion, devotion to you.
Goodbye to spring and all it meant for me
It can never bring the thing that used to be
For I must have you or no one
And so I'm through with love."
Your lips were like a red and ruby chalice, warmer than the summer night
The clouds were like an alabaster palace, rising to a snowy height
Each star its own aurora borealis, suddenly you held me tight
I could see the midnight sun.
Music by Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke. Words by Johnny Mercer.
From Joni Mitchell's A Strange Boy:
What a strange, strange boy
He sees the cars as sets of waves
Sequences of mass and space
He sees the damage in my face
We got high on travel and we got drunk on alcohol
And on love the strongest poison and medicine of all
See how that feeling comes and goes
Like the pull of moon on tides
Now I am surf rising
Now parched ribs of sand at his side
Dave - you beat me to it! Midnight Sun.
Dave Frishberg writes some lovely, witty and clever lyrics. From 'Dear Bix' -
"Bix old friend, will you ever learn to comprehend,
you're no ordinary, standard, B flat, run of the mill type guy". The rest of the song is just as good.
And from Johnny Mercer
"Ah the apple trees,
sunlit memories,
where the hammock swung.
On our backs we'd lie,
looking at the sky,
till the stars were strung,
only last July
when the world was young".
ReplyDelete
I get along without you very well
Of course I do
Except when soft rains fall
And drip from leaves, then I recall
The thrill of being sheltered in your arms
Of course, I do
But I get along without you very well
Music Hoagy Carmichael from a poem by Jane Brown Thompson
ReplyDelete
"...Those come what may places
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life,
To get the feel of life...
From jazz and cocktails."
Lush Life - Billy Strayhorn music and lyric.
My contribution is from the Dave Frishberg song "My Swan Song" which is the story of a songwriter losing his ability to come up with new songs and contains the following lines.
"Once I popped them out like waffles
the good ones and the awfuls,
a new one every day
But now I find I'm uninspired
my wig's no longer wired,
I've nothing left to say
But I'll say it anyway"
I reckon this is lyric writing at its very best
I miss u most of all my darling
when Autumn Leaves start to fall.
By Johnny Mercer.
oh so many greats...one line that always makes me smile is:-
"and now I even have to scratch my back myself"
Ella Fitzgerald, It Never Entered My Mind, Rodgers And Hart
I'll forget you, I will
While yet you are still burning inside my brain.
Romance is mush,
Stifling those who strive.
I'll live a lush life in some small dive...
And there I'll be, while I rot
With the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too..
Billy Strayhorn.
From 'You don't know , what love is..' Raye/De Paul
'You don't know how lips hurt
Until you've kissed and had to pay the cost
Until you've flipped your heart and you have lost
You don't know what love is'
One of my favourites is from Rogers and Hart, I Wish I Were In Love Again:
"When love congeals it soon reveals the faint aroma of performing seals"
And the follow on line Paul -
The double crossing of a pair of heels
A quadrupel rhyme!
Then there's another verse;
The endless waits, the broken dates,
the loving loving and the hateful hates
the conversation with the flying plates
Man Shakespeare had nothing on these guys!
Like a diamond cutter who's lost his nerve.....I misstruck and turned to dust,
from perfect jewel to broken trust.
(Speaking about hurting a loved one)
Long Ago and Far Away by Jesse Frederick.
Oh dear! So many. Let me think. Oh, wait. It's Dylan. "Well, I saw him Makin' love to you
You forgot to close the garage door"
& actually all the lyrics to Leopardskin Pillbox Hat
There's loads but I love the images conjured up by Cole Porter's 'You're The Top' eg 'you're a melody from a symphony by Strauss'.
And I love the rhyming of
'You told me you were through with me an'
told me love was so plebeian.'
from 'Cry Me A River'.
This is such a clever rhyme by Arthur Hamilton,
the sort of rhyme used by the poet Byron for amusing effect.
I have eyes for you to give you dirty looks
I have words that do not come from children's books
There's a trick with a knife I'm learning to do
And ev'rything I've got belongs to you.
Larry Hart
and
Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak
Are you small?
Hart again.
Your 'Lyrics & Rhymes' recalled a humorous memory.
Back in the 70's, banjo player Clive Gray and myself played in a band on board 'The Northumbrian', a floating bar and restaurant which was berthed at Friar's Goose in Gateshead.
The boat's night watchman was an elderly, down-at-heel, Irish itinerant named Dixie. Dixie usually spent his evenings in a nearby pub called The Ship and was always 'well served' when he came on board to begin his night duties.
One of the regular customers at that time, would occasionally join the band to sing 'You're in Kentucky sure as you're born' and when he sang the following lyrics Clive and myself would fall apart with laughter:
'If you wake at dawn amid glistening dew
And find old Dixie kissing you
You're in Kentucky sure as you're born'
(Words & music by George A Little, Haven Gillespie & Larry Shay)
The Northumbrian was owned by a syndicate which included 2 businessmen from South Shields who I believe were the 'head honchos' - Captain Frank McNulty, a boatyard owner and Bill Collwell, a retired police detective who also owned a newsagent's shop on The Nook at Marsden.
Bill and Frank were kind, generous men. They looked after and cared about Dixie who was essentially a homeless tramp.
I wonder if anyone in Gateshead remembers Dixie?
Ooh, just thought of another one, slightly outwith (just a bit to the left) of the GASbook, by one Tom Waits. The dark as a dark thing in a coalhole Uncle Vernon/Cemetery Polka
Uncle Vernon, Uncle Vernon
Independent as a hog on ice
He's a big shot down there at the slaughterhouse
He plays accordion for Mr. Weiss
Uncle Bittmore and Uncle William
Made a million during World War II
But they're tightwads and they're cheap skates
And they'll never give a dime to you
Jude
Ah so many to choose from but
"You go to my head, and you linger like a haunting refrain,And I find you spinning 'round in my brain,
Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne.
You go to my head, like a sip of sparkling Burgundy brew, And I find the very mention of you like the kicker in a Julip or two" Words and Music by Haven Gillespie and J.Fred Coots
Just off for a glass of wine - sparkling of course!
How did I miss this one out?
"Write to the Brown's just as soon as you're able,
they came around to call.
I burnt a hole in the dining room table.
now let me see, I guess that's all.
Nothing left for me to say
and so I'll close and by the way,
everybody's thinking of you
PS I love you."
OMG I'm getting all emotional as I type!
PS I Love You by, Music Gordon Jenkins and lyric Johnny Mercer - again!
and this:
Hey there cutes, put on your dancin' boots
and come dance with me
Come dance with me, what an evening for
Some Terpsichore
Composed by Jimmy Van Heusen, Lyrics by Sammy Khan
Liz
The first line of the verse of Stardust by Mitchell Parrish:-
And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadow of my heart.
The genius of Cole Porter in Kiss Me Kate with Brush Up Your Shakespeare, with my favourite lines
If she says your behavior is heinous
Kick her right in the Coriolanus
Brush up your Shakespeare
And they'll all kow tow.
They keep popping up - got out of bed to post this one!
Keep Betty Grable, Lamour and Turner
She makes my heart a charcoal burner
No angel can replace
My Nancy with the laughing face.
Music Jimmy Van Heusen. lyric Phil Silvers.
I should care, I should go around weeping
I should care, I should go without sleeping
Strangely enough, I sleep well
'cept for a dream or two
But then I count my sheep well
Funny how sheep can lull you to sleep
So I should care, I should let it upset me
I should care but it just doesn't get me
Maybe I won't find someone as lovely as you
But I should care and I do
Roly
'EARLY AUTUMN' MERCER'S POETRY INDEED. I ESPECIALLY LOVE when an early autumn WALKS THE LAND....it's so Johnny and Southern..not to mention DANCE PAVILION IN THE RAIN ALL SHUTTERED DOWN. SUCH VISUAL IMAGES...
other than the greats already mentioned: I THINK CAROLYN LEIGH IS BRILLIANT: "out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum" WOW. OR HER LYRIC FOR "HOW LITTLE WE KNOW" "how little we understand what touches off that tingle..that sudden explosion when two tingles intermingle"
OR ...IN WHEN IN ROME..."don't deplore my fondness for fundador..you know how a fundador can lead to a few" LEAVE IT TO CAROLYN LEIGH TO KNOW OF THE BUZZ FROM THIS LESSER KNOWN SPANISH BRANDY!!
HOW'S THAT??? I HOPE THEY STOCK FUNDADOR AT THE JAZZ PARTY BAR !!
un abrazo fuerte,
Daryl
Sorry for my late response. Just returned from a family holiday. So here is my spontaneous selection from the song Speak Low by Kurt Weil and Ogden Nash:
We're late, darling, we're late
The curtain descends, ev'rything ends too soon, too soon
I wait, darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me, speak love to me and soon?
It doesn't come with an unusual rhyme but I like the open end of the last line of the song.
are you SMART
very clever and Porter was an Ace at Lyrics
One lyric which tickled my funny bone And the band behind me (you could hear the muffled guffaws) was----
I'll hold out my hand
and my heart will be in it!!!!!
"For All We Know". Music Fred Coots, Lyric Sam M. Lewis.
I've mortgaged all my castles in the air..
Everything Happens to Me - Matt Dennis.
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