The Song Verse on the Back of a Milk Carton
If you were a songwriter in the first half of the twentieth century part of your songs have gone missing since you wrote them. Here is an example I found on a crushed milk carton in my mind just yesterday -- next to my own bad verse and “Lost in Space” reruns. I have heard this song all my life but I have never heard this part. Now I can‘t get it out of my freaking head. So I decided to torture you too:
When all the world
Is a hopeless jumble
And the raindrops tumble
All around
Heaven opens a magic lane
When all the clouds
Darken up the skyway
There’s a rainbow highway
To be found
Leading from your window pain
To a place behind the sun
Just a step beyond the rain...
What song is that from? You know it, really. No luck? Okay how about the next lines of the song:
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Ohhh, Judy, bluebirds, Toto, a tin man in need of a heart and a gay lion who wants it rough. You know it now, right? But that first bit wasn’t in the movie. No, it wasn't, but those are Yip Harburg’s lyrics for the first part of the song.
Here is another song, and it’s missing bit, professor music:
This day and age we are living in
Gives cause for apprehension
With speed and new invention
And things like third dimension
Yet we grow a trifle weary
For Mr. Einstein’s theory
So we must get down to earth at times
Relax, relieve the tension
No matter what the progress
Or what may yet be proved
The simple facts of life as such
They can not be removed...
What is the song? Nothing again -- right, unless you are Michael Feinstein or have all of his records, which I do. Here are the next lines -- and they will really help a lot:
You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by...
Wait, you know it now: Bogart, that unhealthy bar full of second-hand smoke, Bergman, Casablanca and Nazis. Ah, Nazis -- nothing is more romantic than Nazis. But that wasn’t in the movie either. Nope, it wasn’t, but that is how the uncut song goes. So what gives? Why have big hunks of our favorite songs gone missing?
Well, first why were those bits written in the first place? Most of the standards were written for Broadway musicals. At the time, the songwriters were worried that if someone was in a normal conversation on stage and the next moment they were singing their hearts out, people in the audience would find it funny or jarring. To make the transition from talking to singing smoother, the songwriter would compose an introduction to the song that was meant to be half-sung, half-spoken so that the audience would be eased into the song.
That was great for the stage, where most of the standards were introduced, but soon radio and records came along. On those, time is at a premium. If they don’t skip to the good part right away, people would turn the knob and artists wouldn’t make any money. So that half-talked, half-sung opening was often dropped for records. Interestingly enough, “Over the Rainbow” was written not for the stage but for a movie, yet Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen still wrote an intro -- that was not used, which is a clue to why the introduction disappeared from even the musical by the forties.
Musicals had gone from being a musical review (where any song would do at any part of the play) to an integrated musical (where the song actually moved the story along and the songs were not interchangeable). You couldn’t have the cowboys in Oklahoma sing “We’re off to see the wizard,” unless you were going for a big laugh. With the musicals being tighter, and the songs part of the plot, it seemed natural for Dorothy to lean against a haystack and wish for a better place (no transition necessary). I mean, wouldn't you? Look at that awful black and white barnyard, it probably reeks of movie cow poop. And monochromatic crap is the worst kind, trust me, I know. I have been on the wrong side of that rainbow.
That said, there are two nuggets I hope never appear on a musical milk carton. They are intros as good as the songs themselves. They are amazing. The first one is so good that Frank Sinatra recorded it all by itself without the song it was meant to introduce. Which is saying a lot, since the song is Hoagy Carmichael’s standard “Stardust”. Here is just the introduction. Carmichael's lyricist, Mitchell Parish, creates a dream-like word painting that really does stand on it‘s own:
And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we’re apart
You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by...
Here is another intro I love from the song “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry”:
The torch I carry is handsome
It’s worth it heartache in ransom
And when the twilight steals
I know how the lady in the harbor feels
A better expression of unrequited love you will never find.
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