This photograph was taken in January 1995. I happened to be in D.C. during the week when the new (104th) Congress took over on Jan 3. The Republicans had big mid-term election gains. They brought their “Contract With America” with them. Bill Clinton was President.
It was a bleak day, and I recall wondering what that might portend.
Now the 117th Congress has convened, and a new president will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021, at noon in front of the Capitol. Despite the recent mob assault, that building stands tall and strong, and hopefully the American people will surmount the difficulties and the foggy days which surely will be present.
In medicine, we always say that the patient comes first and “first do no harm.”
I always thought that in the end, politics will take a back seat to what is best for the nation. But now, I’m not so sure.
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 sang romantic the female 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.
Most big band arrangements usually begin with the orchestra, with the celebrity musician leader often getting the earliest solo. Examples of that include Harry James (trumpet,) Benny Goodman. (clarinet) and Tommy Dorsey (trombone.) Glenn Miller plays the trombone solo in this song, although an actor dubbed him in the movie. There also are some fine tenor sax and clarinet solos.
Later in the arrangement a lovely vocalist takes the stage. It 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 this music in the film, where an 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 has a bit part holding 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 movie. 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 Glenn Miller’s Orchestra .
Editor’s Note: We are initiating a series of black and white photographs taken this summer season in or near the Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove, NJ. These two images were obtained inside that magnificent building during the Music of the Spirit Concert on Sunday, August 26, 2018.
PENTATONIX. (Christmas in August: “Mary, Did You Know?”)
SOUNDTRACK : A friend once told me that I might be the only person who, when thinking of the film “Last Tango in Paris,” thinks first of the music. Well, the music is a close second.
Here is Gato Barbieri, the jazz saxophonist and composer who wrote the score for that film: This part is called “Girl in Black–Tango. (Para mi Negra) ”
VINCE GIORDANO AND THE GRAMMY WINNING NIGHTHAWKS from their album “The Cotton Club Revisited.” Vince does the vocal. Harold Arlen wrote this song for the 1932 Cotton Club Parade.
BILLY JOEL —pictured here in the “neighborhood” when he played 2nd base for John’s Pizza. But then he grew up—moved away; however years later he had to come back because of his New York state of mind (“Now I need a little give and take.”)
