I Haven't Forgotten

Here I am: stuck in '38-'39. Well, I shouldn't say "stuck" – I mean, I'm thrilled to be planted at this point in the 20th century, surveying musically, with the aid of my CD collection, the waning years of the Great Depression. Today, I spun, among other platters, Disc 7 of Mosaic's magnificent Mildred Bailey set (out-of-print, as eventually become all things Mosaic), from which played, at the command of the mindless but benevolent random buttom, "Have You Forgotten So Soon," a treatment that I'm mad about of a now undeservedly forgotten ballad.

The song was put together by a distinguished lyricist team, Edward ("Body and Soul") Heyman and Sam ("My Old Flame") Coslow, and a considerably more obscure Tin Pan Alley composer, Abner ("On the Beach at Bali-Bali") Silver. I am touched by its plaintive, lilting melody and still more deeply affected by its picturesque and (like most everything else I adore) at once both timeless and capturing-the-period words. Who better to deliver this combination than the hip Rockin' Chair Lady, Mildred Bailey? Similar in tone to but more vivid in its details than 1940's "At Least You Could Say 'Hello,'" this 1938 offering presents an eternal question, posed yet today by hurt and disbelieving jilted lovers, against a backdrop of distinctly '30's images.

I first came across Mildred's 9/29/38 interpretation, in which she is accompanied by the band of her xylophone-playing husband, Red Norvo, and fell in love with both song and performance thereof and later reacted with equal enthusiasm to the Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra 9/22/38 take, featuring the sensitive vocal of the scandalously underrated Jack Leonard.

I couldn't find Mildred's version on youtube but came across TD's. Though Jeri Southern isn't a musical direction that I've taken, when, in scrolling down the list, I happened upon her record, on which I saw she is joined by Johnny Smith, a guitarist whose playing I greatly admire, I decided to veer off there and was rewarded by a probing exploration, which includes a verse I hadn't known. Jack and Mildred double up here and there and each has his/her own choruses . Jeri's reading, taken at a crawl, follows, in part, the Mildred lyrics. Wonder if it was La Bailey who introduced this later singer to the extremely beautiful, sentimental but not lachrymose song?

Have You Forgotten So Soon?
Music by Abner Silver,
Words by Edward Heyman and Sam Coslow

I find it difficult
To think that once you cared for me at all.
I can't believe
That you refuse to speak to me
Each time I call.

Have you forgotten so soon –
That lovely night in June;
Our graduation dance;
The glorious beginning
Of a beautiful romance;
All those gay diversions
We planned in advance –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten so soon –
The sun upon the sand;
The moon of yellow gold;
The things at Coney Island
That the fortune teller told;
Air-conditioned movies
That gave us a cold –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Don't you still remember
The Witches' Party
On Halloween?
And that grand December –
The whitest Christmas
We've ever seen.

Have you forgotten so soon –
That loving cup we made
Of old Italian wine;
That New Year's Eve at Tony's
When the gang sang "Auld Lang Syne";
All those nights in Heaven
That used to be mine –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten so soon –
My birthday party cake;
The sandwiches you made;
The kisses that I borrowed
And so eagerly repaid;
And the day we walked
In the Easter Parade –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Have you forgotten so soon –
The winding country lane;
A little wayside inn;
And sipping tea while list'ning to
A muted violin;
Thrilling to the old songs
By Irving Berlin –
Have you forgotten so soon?

Don't you still remember
The moonlight hayride,
The Beaux Arts Ball?
And that grand September –
The crimson woodland,
The waterfall.

Have you forgotten so soon –
The concert in the park;
The Army-Navy game;
The time I lost my money on
A horse that bore your name;
The day I snapped your picture
That's still in my frame –
Have you forgotten so soon?

I'll admit – this is a song that really starts the tears going with me.

Bigger than the Great Norvo ... and All of Us

After having consulted Whitney Balliet's American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz for a recent post, I didn't return the volume to its home in the bookshelf but instead kept it handy beside the computer. I was thumbing through the silver-covered paperback this evening. The title of the chapter on vibraharpist/xylophonist Red Norvo once again caught my eye – "The Music Is More Important." I've read this book many times, but, hey, you can't retain everything; I decided to peruse these few pages. Frequently Balliet's chapter titles in this book are taken from a statement made by the subject; such, as I imagined it would be, was the case here:

Red Norvo in the Balliet book:

The main thing is that jazz should be fun. After all, the music is more important than any of us musicians. I'm beginning to think it's not that way anymore, which is too bad. We've come into an age of geniuses, of big musicians swaggering down the sidewalk, and nobody has any fun anymore. I've never done anything musically unless I liked to do it. [...]

I strongly agree – the music is more important. Serving the music – the gerund, in this instance, having two intended meanings – is what matters most: Playing in service to the songs and offering these songs to an audience; therein lies the fun and the reward. While I can think of many instances in which a musician has taken mediocre (or worse) material and fashioned it into something beautiful, I regard this not as proof that the music is secondary to the performer thereof but, rather, as an act of selflessness on the instrumentalist's part. He/she looks at what is at hand and tries to find in it something of merit to emphasize; he/she promotes compositional substance over self. Bunny Berigan – still, sixty-six years after his death, an instantly recognizable, widely-admired virtuoso trumpeter – was a master at finding and exposing the one felicitous melodic twist in an otherwise humdrum piece. Playing music, as far as I'm concerned, is about songs and chords and melodies and lyrics; it's not about image and personal stature. I love Red's phrase, "... big musicians swaggering down the sidewalk." I believe that those who swagger, literally or, as in interviews, figuratively, are big only in self-conception. Red Norvo was a giant of his instruments – first the xylophone and then the vibraharp – but his facility and imagination were to him, clearly, not the end but the means. The music was more important. It remains so, I think.