Somewhere Over the Rainbow—Murfin Home Confinement Music Festival 2020

Somewhere Over the Rainbow sung by Judy Garland with Harold Arlen on piano for a 1940 San Francisco concert.

We are celebrating the birthday of L. Frank Baum, the creator of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz and his surprising prairie populist and feminist credentials in a blog post earlier today.  His children’s book series is still well beloved but his creation is best remembered for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz which is revered as one of the great classics of American film and for a song Judy Garland sang early in the movie which became her theme song.

The song was composed by Harold Arlen for the MGM musical fantasy with lyrics by Yip Harburg.  Arlen’s music perfectly captured both wistful longing and hope.  Harburg’ words, however, came closer to reflecting Baum’s idealistic radicalism than anything else in the film.  It resonated perfectly with a nation just emerging from a grim decade of the Great Depression.  Harburg, who had collaborated successfully with several composers, was known for the social commentary of his lyrics, and his left/liberal sensibilities. He championed racial and gender equality, labor movement, and was also an ardent critic of organized religion.  Baum would have heartily approved of it all.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow collaborators Yip Harburg (left) and Harold Arlen.

Although he was never a member of the Communist Party and critical of its authoritarianism, Harburg he was a member of the Socialist Party, and joked that Yip referred to the Young People’s Socialist League, the Yipsels.  He was also involved with other radical, pro-labor and civil rights groups.  His best known Broadway show, Finian's Rainbow in 1947 was probably the first Broadway musical with a racially integrated chorus line, and featured his When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich. In 1950 he was hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was blackballed in the entertainment industry for a while.  He was better able to return to work on the stage than in Hollywood.

He died of a heart attack while driving on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, on March 5, 1981 at the age of 84.

Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale sang Over the Rainbow as a tornado threatened in the opening black-and-white sequence of The Wizard of Oz in 1939.

As for the song, it was the hands down winner of the 1940 Academy Award for Best Original Song.  Garland’s original recording—not the same version as in the film—was ranked the #1 recording of the 20th century in a poll conducted by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  The American Film Institute named it the best movie song on the AFI’s 100 Years...100 Songs list.  Garland sang the song at almost all of her concert performances and countless times on radio and TV broadcasts. 

Last year’s acclaimed late-life bio flic Judy   sang a gut wrenching version for a scene of Garland’s final Talk of the Town concert in London in 1969.  Zellweger reaped numerous awards including the Oscar for Best Actress for the performance.

Despite Garland’s almost total identification with the song, today the version most searched for on Google is the 1993 recording by Hawaiian ukulele player with a falsetto voice, Israel Kamakawiwoʻole.

Rain Drops Keep Fallin’ on My Head—Murfin Home Confinement Music Festival 2020

                               Rain Drops Keep Fallin' on my Head  sung by B.J. Thomas.                                    

Yesterday sunshine.  Today rain.  That’s life in a nutshell with or without Coronavirus confinement.  Today’s song, Rain Drops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, shares one thing with yesterday’s We’ll Sing in the Sunshine—a nearly insanely catchy tune.

Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head was written by the power duo of Hal David and Burt Bacharach for the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which starred Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Katherine Ross. It won an Oscar for Best Original Song and David and Bacharach also won for Best Original Score.  

Rain Drops Keep Fallin' on My Head  played on the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid soundtrack while Paul Newman and Katherine Ross cavorted on a bicycle.

After a number of singers turned down an offer to sing the song on the soundtrack including Ray Stevens and Bob Dylan B.J. Thomas, a pop/country crossover artist with roots in Christian music got the assignment.  The offer came on the heels of two hits—The Eyes of a New York Woman and Hooked on a Feeling.  The meticulously picky Bacharach rejected Thomas’s first six takes.  The film version featured a separate vaudeville-style instrumental break in double time while Newman and Ross performed bicycle stunts—an iconic scene from an iconic movie...

The single by Thomas reached was a separate recording from the soundtrack.  It reached #1 on charts in the United States, Canada, Norway, and reached #38 in the UK Singles Chart. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks in January 1970 and was also the first American #1 hit of the 1970s.

In 2004, it finished at # 23 on AFI’s 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. In 2008, the single was ranked 85th on Billboard’s Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs and placed 95th in the 55th Anniversary edition of the All-Time Hot 100 list in 2013.  Billboard Magazine also ranked the song 15th on its Top 50 Movie Songs of All Time list in 2014.

B.J. Thomas in 1972.

The success of the song was so overwhelming that in 1970 just about every top artists in emerging adult contemporary genre recorded it including David and Bacharach’s go-to voice Dionne Warwick, Bobby Gentry, Peggy Lee, Engelbert Humperdinck, Dean Martin, Johnny Mathis, Perry Como, and Andy Williams.

But it is always B.J. Thomas’s voice we hear when this earworm gets into our heads.

                                                                                                                                             

Remembering Oscar’s Songs

Fist Best Song winner

Well, the big 86th Annual Academy Awards are set for this Sunday, a holy day for movie lovers and the perfect opportunity for the cynics and terminally ironic to ridicule the spectacle that they can hardly tear their eyes away from.  The usual hoopla is in full bloom from TV specials to slick magazine spreads and endless promotions on the plethora of entertainment news shows.

Most of the attention, of course, focuses on the expanded nine film Best Picture field that contains the docu-comedy American Hustle (virtually no chance since comedies are not considered prestige and win less often westerns);  the really serious, important film of the year 12 Years a Slave which has prestige written all over it;  a damn fine adventure yarn with political overtones, Captain Phillips (too much a popcorn favorite);   The Wolf of Wall Street this year’s Scorsese snub;  Philomena an extremely earnest film with a distinguished British  star (a category Academy voters find hard to resist; Gravity, a dazzling technical achievement staring a Hollywood darling smashing typecasting (no space operas however sophisticated need apply); Dallas Buyer’s Club, a quirky flick that flew under the radar until cashing in for an armload of Golden Globes; the even quirkier Nebraska with this year’s Indie buzz; Her quirky and indie cubed AND a comedy (see snowball’s chance in hell.)

Yes, it is an interesting race.  And look, I just got caught up in the popular game of handicapping the race.  So you know I’m hooked.  Of course there are lots of other races.  And I am curious how Tom Hanks, Hollywood favorite good guy with to outstanding performances under his belt, escaped a Best Actor not, even though Captain Phillips made it into the best picture sweepstakes.

But I don’t want to talk about any of that this time.  After all Best Picture awards are notorious for missing the real best picture and pinning the rose on camp spectacle like The Greatest Show on Earth.  Don’t get me started.

I want to talk about the Best Song category, which has a much better, at least until recent years, track record.

The Academy Award for Best Song was first awarded in 1934, seven years after the Hollywood festival of self-congratulations first began.  Reading over a list of the winners for the first several decades is a tour of some of the enduring classics of popular music.  Almost every one became a standard, one of those songs that are always fresh and open to new performers and interpretations.    Even in years when another song may have been, in retrospect, more deserving it was only because of the depth and strength of cinematic tunes.

Since 1989 the award, for better or worse has been dominated by animated films, which were often virtually the only musicals being made.  Some of those songs were fine, others as interchangeable as black socks.  Some years the Academy, whose musical tastes were suspected of being “square” would suddenly embrace something daring, again with mixed results.  Some of these songs were also so deeply tied to the content of the movie that they could have no independent life, no real chance to become a standard.  Who is going to be covering It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp in 20 years?

A few years ago Randy Newman, the always-the-bridesmaid, almost-never-the-bride of the Oscars walked away with the statuette for We Belong Together from Toy Story 3.  The twenty time nominee had previously brought home only one award.  It sounded exactly like a Randy Newman song—almost any Randy Newman song.  But the competition was even less memorable.  The audience at home was more apt to be humming the bump music for the commercials than any of the nominees.

Too bad.  Here is hoping the movie songs can regain their former glory.  This year there are two animated entries—this year’s hipster hope Happy from Despicable Me by Pharrell Williams, the dude in the big hat who got the Golden globe and the Disney anthem du jour Let It Go.  Then there is the wistful, whispered The Moon Song from Her and Ordinary Love from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, the “dysfunctional love song” by Bono and the boys from U2.  If Academy voters run true to form, the Disney ditty gets it.  If they are stretching their hip muscles, then Williams takes it home.  Forget The Moon Song—most voters did not stay awake through it.  But I am betting that the cultural steamroller that is Bono and the reflected glory of Nelson Mandela takes it home.  

The question is will you be singing any of these songs in the shower twenty years from now?

Here are all of the previous award winners.

 

1934 - The Continental -THE GAY DIVORCEE - Herb Magidson, Con Conrad

1935 - Lullaby of Broadway - GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935 - Harry Warren, Al Dubin

1936 - The Way You Look Tonight - SWING TIME - Dorothy Fields, Jerome Kern

1937 - Sweet Leilani -WAIKIKI WEDDING - Harry Owens

1938 - Thanks for the Memory - THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938 - Ralph Rainger, Leo Robin

1939 - Over the Rainbow -THE WIZARD OF OZ - E. Y. Harburg, Harold Arlen

1940 - When You Wish upon a Star - PINOCCHIO - Ned Washington, Leigh Harline

1941 - The Last Time I Saw Paris - LADY BE GOOD - Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern

1942 - White Christmas - HOLIDAY INN - Irving Berlin

1943 - You'll Never Know - HELLO, FRISCO, HELLO - Harry Warren, Mack Gordon

1944 - Swinging on a Star - GOING MY WAY - Johnny Burke, James Van Heusen

1945 - It Might As Well Be Spring - STATE FAIR - Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II

1946 - On The Atchison, Topeka & The Santa Fe - THE HARVEY GIRLS - Harry Warren, Johnny Mercer

1947 - Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah - SONG OF THE SOUTH - Ray Gilbert, Allie Wrubel

1948 - Buttons and Bows - THE PALEFACE - Ray Evans, Jay Livingston

1949 - Baby, It's Cold Outside - NEPTUNE'S DAUGHTER - Frank Loesser

1950 - Mona Lisa - CAPTAIN CAREY, U.S.A. - Ray Evans, Jay Livingston

1951 - In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening - HERE COMES THE GROOM - Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael

1952 - High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’) - HIGH NOON - Ned Washington, Dimitri Tiomkin

1953 - Secret Love - CALAMITY JANE - Paul Francis Webster, Sammy Fain

1954 - Three Coins in the Fountain - THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN - Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn

1955 - Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING - Paul Francis Webster, Sammy Fain

1956 - Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera) - THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH - Jay Livingston, Ray Evans

1957 - All The Way - THE JOKER IS WILD - Sammy Cahn, James Van Heusen

1958 – Gigi - GIGI - Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner

1959 - High Hopes - A HOLE IN THE HEAD - Sammy Cahn, James Van Heusen

1960 - Never On Sunday - NEVER ON SUNDAY - Manos Hadjidakis

1961 - Moon River - BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S - Johnny Mercer, Henry Mancini

1962 - Days of Wine and Roses - DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES - Johnny Mercer, Henry Mancini

1963 - Call Me Irresponsible – PAPA’S DELICATE CONDITION - Sammy Cahn, James Van Heusen

1964 - Chim Chim Cher-ee - MARY POPPINS - Robert B. Sherman, Richard M. Sherman

1965 - The Shadow of Your Smile - THE SANDPIPER - Johnny Mandel, Paul Francis Webster

1966 - Born Free - BORN FREE - Don Black, John Barry

1967 - Talk to the Animals - DOCTOR DOLITTLE - Leslie Bricusse

1968 - The Windmills Of Your Mind - THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR - Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, Michel Legrand

1969 - Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head - BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID - Burt Bacharach, Hal David

1970 - For All We Know - LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS - Robb Royer [aka: Robb Wilson], Fred Karlin, James Griffin [aka Arthur James]

1971 - Theme from Shaft - SHAFT - Isaac Hayes

1972 - The Morning After - THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE - Joel Hirschhorn, Al Kasha

1973 - The Way We Were - THE WAY WE WERE - Alan Bergman, Marvin Hamlisch, Marilyn Bergman

1974 - We May Never Love Like This Again - THE TOWERING INFERNO - Joel Hirschhorn, Al Kasha

1975 – I’m Easy - NASHVILLE - Keith Carradine

1976 - Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born) - A STAR IS BORN- Barbra Streisand, Paul Williams

1977 - You Light Up My Life - YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE - Joseph Brooks

1978 - Last Dance - THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY - Paul Jabara

1979 - It Goes Like It Goes - NORMA RAE - Norman Gimbel, David Shire

1980 – Fame - FAME - Michael Gore, Dean Pitchford

1981 - Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) - ARTHUR - Peter Allen, Burt Bacharach, Christopher Cross, Carole Bayer Sager

1982 - Up Where We Belong - AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN - Will Jennings, Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie

1983 - Flashdance-What A Feeling - FLASHDANCE - Irene Cara, Keith Forsey, Giorgio Moroder

1984 - I Just Called to Say I Love You - THE WOMAN IN RED - Stevie Wonder

1985 - Say You, Say Me - WHITE NIGHTS - Lionel Richie

1986 - Take My Breath Away - TOP GUN - Giorgio Moroder, Tom Whitlock

1987 - (I've Had) The Time of My Life - DIRTY DANCING - John DeNicola, Donald Markowitz, Franke Previte

1988 - Let the River Run - WORKING GIRL - Carly Simon

1989 - Under the Sea - THE LITTLE MERMAID - Howard Ashman, Alan Menken

1990 - Sooner Or Later (I Always Get My Man) - DICK TRACY - Stephen Sondheim

1991 - Beauty and the Beast - BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - Howard Ashman, Alan Menken

1992 - A Whole New World - ALADDIN - Alan Menken, Tim Rice

1993 - Streets of Philadelphia - PHILADELPHIA - Bruce Springsteen

1994 - Can You Feel The Love Tonight - THE LION KING - Elton John, Tim Rice

1995 - Colors of the Wind - POCAHONTAS - Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz

1996 - You Must Love Me - EVITA - Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice

1997 - My Heart Will Go On - TITANIC - James Horner, Will Jennings

1998 - When You Believe - THE PRINCE OF EGYPT - Stephen Schwartz

1999 - You'll Be In My Heart - TARZAN - Phil Collins

2000 - Things Have Changed - WONDER BOYS - Bob Dylan

2001 - If I Don't Have You - MONSTERS INC - Randy Newman

2002 - Lose Yourself - 8 MILE - Eminem, Jeff Bass, Luis Resto

2003 - Into the West - LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING - Fran Walsh, Howard Shore, Annie Lennox

2004 - Al Otro Lado Del Río - THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES - Jorge Drexler

2005 - It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp - HUSTLE AND FLOW - Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman, Paul Beauregard

2006 - I Need to Wake Up - AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH - Melissa Etheridge

2007 - Falling Slowly - ONCE - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

2008 - Jai Ho – SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE - Ar Rachman, Gulzar

2009 - The Weary Kind- CRAZY HEART - Ryan Bingham and T-Bone Burnett

2010 - We Belong Together-TOY STORY 4-Music and lyrics: Randy Newman

2011- Man or Muppet- THE MUPPETS Music and lyrics: Bret McKenzie

2012- Skyfall- SKYFALL-Music and lyrics by Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth