The 1927 musical Strike Up the Band was a flop, but it contained some of George and Ira Gershwin’s best songs. One of the lesser-known ones was “Homeward Bound”, sung by soldier boys at the end of a fictitious war in a satirical story. I am inordinately fond of it. As my last song this week, […]
Read MoreRoommates and lovers (who are sometimes both) are cooped up together these days, occasionally annoyed with one another. I include a song which may describe something like that by the Venetian singer-songwriter Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677). She was perhaps the most prolific composer of songs at that time and place. Many of them remain unpublished. We are […]
Read MoreImagine a world without the songs of Gabriel Fauré if you can. I can’t. He published mélodies over the course of 60 years, and leading up to the twentieth century, they became miracles of austere but sensuous beauty. They seem made for older people to understand. I don’t recall the first time I heard the […]
Read MoreI once said that one of my favorite singers was Fred Astaire. Steve Blier muttered, “that explains a lot”. You’ll have to ask him what it explained, but it might have been that I like things simple, unaffected, and with good diction. In the 1936 film Swing Time, Fred pretends that he can’t dance, so Ginger will spend […]
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