Paul Goldfinger photograph. Central Park, New York City. Silver gelatin darkroom print. Blogfinger.net. Undated. Click on image to enlarge.
By Paul Goldfinger, MD, Editor, Blogfinger.net. Ocean Grove, NJ USA*
GLENN MILLER AND HIS ORCHESTRA : The song featured in the video below is “I Know Why and So Do You.”
It is from a 1941 movie called Sun Valley Serenade and it was a hit recording. On the record label, the song is described as a fox trot. Paula Kelly sings the romantic solo.
The name of the song is intriguing —“I Know Why and So Do You.” The language is one dimension removed from “I love you and you love me.” The singer seems awfully sure of herself.
The lyric in the song, “I’m in heaven when the music begins” refers to how emotional ballroom dancing can be. Well, OK, but that would have to be a marvelous dreamy slow-dance on a low-light dance floor. An exception would be a sensual tango.
Most big band arrangements usually begin with the orchestra and with the celebrity musician leader out front getting the earliest solo. Examples of that include Harry James (trumpet,) Benny Goodman. (clarinet) and Tommy Dorsey (trombone.)
Glenn Miller plays the trombone solo late in this movie arrangement, although an actor dubbed him in the film.
Later in the song a lovely vocalist takes the stage. She is an actress with Paula Kelly’s voice dubbed. She performs on the recording with the all-male quartet The Modernaires.
And a romantic movie plot line intertwines with the music in the film, where the actress roles her eyes while Paula Kelly’s solo is dubbed. It looks like she has a bird’s nest on her head as she claims to hear Gypsy violins. And the actor John Payne moves his lips for the male vocal. Milton Berle is seen smoking a cigar.
This music is heard but not seen in the 2018 soundtrack for the “Oscar” winning movie The Shape of Water which was set in 1962.
That movie won the “Best Score” during the 2018 “Academy Awards.” Alexandre Desplat created a wonderful array of music for that film. Most of the musical moments were original except for a few special pieces including “I Know Why and So Do You.”
The latter, the Glenn Miller version, was chosen to help out the romantic theme in this thriller film.
And now here is that same song as performed in the movie Sun Valley Serenade (1941) with Paula Kelly, The Modernaires , and the Glenn Miller Orchestra .
* In case you are wondering why I am adding “USA” to some of our blog posts is because every day we receive “hits” on Blogfinger from foreign fans, averaging 12 countries each day. And they may not know where we are. PG