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By Paul Goldfinger, Editor Blogfinger.net
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 .
