Sunday, May 11, 2014

I Won't Dance

Lesson #2 from Fred Astaire's masterclass: "You Don't Need To Have A Great, Or Even Good, Voice To Be A Great Singer".  For Lesson #1 see Puttin' On The Ritz and for a particularly relevant related post see Putin On The Ritz.

Originally written for a Broadway show by Jerome Kern (music) and Oscar Hammerstein and Otto Harbach (lyrics) the lyrics were rewritten by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh for the 1935 film Roberta starring Astaire and Ginger Rogers (along with Irene Dunn and Randolph Scott).  In the film Fred and Ginger perform it as a duet but the version below is all Astaire (you can find the movie version here which features an entertaining piano solo by Fred to kick it off).

Kern, Fields and McHugh had quite the songwriting resumes.  Kern was responsible for Ol' Man River, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and The Way You Look Tonight (the last co-written with Fields) while Fields and McHugh also teamed up to write On The Sunny Side Of The Street and I Can't Give You Anything But Love.

As an extra bonus, listen carefully to the lyrics and discover how the prescient Astaire lays the groundwork for a successful product liability defense decades down the road.

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