Music, maestro!

Music, maestro!

Music has always fascinated me, ever since I was a kid. My mom was a wonderful singer, I’ve been told I’m fair to middling, and I played saxophone in the high school band. An aunt of mine has told me I have “the beat” because she’s watched me react to bluegrass, Dixieland and other lively genres.

So, I decided to devote this week’s column to something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before: A list of the 20 most beautiful songs of the 20th Century (“most beautiful” in my opinion, of course).

I can hear some of you readers saying, “Here he goes with another list! He just had one last week!” That’s true. But, hey, at least I’m consistent!

OK, here we go, starting with No. 20 and counting down:

20. “The Death of Jimmie Rodgers,” written by Bob Miller, and recorded first by singing cowboy Gene Autry in 1933, just a month after Rodgers’ demise. Jimmie Rodgers, known during his brief entertainment career as “The Singing Brakeman,” is considered the founder of country music as we know it today. Estimates of the number of his records sold from the first one in 1927 until his death in 1933 range up to 20 million. And don’t forget, this was with a much smaller U.S. population, and during the Great Depression.

The song is a plaintive memorial to Rodgers. Its words could have been mawkish and corny, but Miller cannily avoids that. Lyrics like, “There are millions who’ll miss you, friend Jimmy, miss that soft voice that made millions happy …” and “I know you’ll be yodeling in heaven, in that angelic place up there,” give a touching picture of just how popular Jimmie Rodgers was with the working people of the South and West.

Gene Autry was not known for showing much emotion in his singing. But when he performs the intensely personal last verse, “There’s no words can express to you, Jimmie, just how much I thought of you,” and “You’ve inspired me, old pal, like no other; and I’ve loved you, Jim, just like a brother,” one can hear a quaver in his voice that is unmistakable. You see, Jimmie Rodgers was not only Gene Autry’s friend, but also his idol; Autry did cover versions of so many Rodgers records and mastered his sound and style so well that sometimes in listening to those old discs it’s hard to tell if you’re hearing Jimmie, or Gene.

19. “Moonlight Sonata,” by Ludwig von Beethoven, first published in 1801. What can you say about a song with no lyrics? It’s beautiful; when you hear it you’ll probably recognize the melody of this piece of classical music, because it’s been very widely performed in recent years.

18. “Never Mind, Bo Peep,” by Victor Herbert, from “Babes In Toyland,” first performed in 1903. The great comedy team Laurel and Hardy starred in a movie version of the operetta in 1934. The song is simple, but has a brisk, beautiful melody line. It refers to Little Bo Peep’s loss of her sheep, and the promise of all the other residents of Toyland to help her find them — especially her sweetheart, Tom Tom the Piper’s Son.

17. “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” a Walt Disney film from 1937 that was the first feature-length animated movie in history. Few of us would not recognize the song. Its rendering by the actress doing the voice for Snow White, midway through the movie, is a bit much because her voice just has too rapid a vibrato. But the full-orchestra and chorus version at the end will give you goose bumps and choke you up. It does me, anyway.

16. “Yesterday,” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, The Beatles. More cover versions of this song have been recorded than of any other single in history. Paul McCartney said he woke up one morning with the tune in his head, fully formed. You know the melody; the words tell of an idyllic romance, sadly now gone wrong.

15. “Here, There And Everywhere,” by Lennon-McCartney, with McCartney singing lead, from the “Revolver” album. One of his most beautiful ballads; Paul McCartney has always said it is his favorite Beatles song.

14. “Danny Boy,” the unofficial Irish-American and Irish-Canadian national anthem. Its plaintive words are addressed by an aging father to his son who is going off to war — although a casual listen may lead you to believe that it is a love song. The melody’s origin is unknown, although it was first written down in Londonderry, Ulster, by a Miss Jane Ross who was a piano teacher, in the mid-19th Century. Ross heard a piper or fiddler playing the beautiful tune on the street, hurried home and musically notated it while it was fresh in her mind. In 1910, British lyricist Frederick Edward Weatherly added the words to the song we now recognize.

Prior to receiving a set of lyrics, the instrumental song was known as “Londonderry Air.” I first heard of that (verbally) when I was just a kid, and imagined that they had said, “London Derriere”! I got a good laugh out of that. Imagine my surprise the first time I saw it written out.

13. “Gulf Coast Highway,” a song about the Texas oil fields, was written in 1988 by Nanci Griffith, James Hooker and Danny Flowers. The next year it was featured on an album by the Cajun women’s singing group Evangeline. Jimmy Buffett left Margaritaville long enough to sing the male lead with them. The topic sounds prosaic, but the melody is lovely and the narrative poignant.

12. “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” written by Larry Henley and Jeff Silbar, and memorably sung by Bette Midler in the movie, “Beaches,” the only chick flick I ever liked. A friend told me before I saw the movie that it was a tear-jerker. I held up OK until Midler started singing that awesome song to her dying best friend; then I really lost it.

11. “The Rose,” by Amanda McBroom, sung by Midler in the movie of the same name. Another poignant tune that many said (but Midler has always denied) was referring to the doomed blues singer Janis Joplin. A dark, poignant song; very moving.

10. “Unchained Melody,” first recorded by the Righteous Brothers (Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield), and since then covered by many, many other artists. Oddly enough, in this, one of the first two hits they had, Hatfield sings the song all by himself in his sky-high tenor, without any accompaniment by Medley.

9. “Ave Maria,” the beautiful Roman Catholic anthem written by Austrian composer Franz Schubert. The actual title is “Ellens dritter Gesang.” The lyrics are based on the Catholic Ave Maria prayer.

8. “Jerusalem,” a hymn which the Irish tenor Joe Feeney used to sing occasionally on “The Lawrence Welk Show” in the 1950s and 1960s. I’ve been unable to find any other information about that hymn, but it had a soaring, majestic melody that required a singer of Feeney’s considerable talents to do it justice.

7. “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” by Paul Simon, recorded first by Simon and Garfunkel. Need I say more? All of us of “a certain age” remember this song that marked the pinnacle of that duo’s brief but remarkable partnership.

6. “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” by Bob Nolan of the Sons of the Pioneers, first recorded in 1934. Of all Western songs, this one is probably the most representative and most memorable. The members of the group that made that first recording of it included a young lead singer from Cincinnati named Leonard Slye, who later became better known as Roy Rogers.

5. “Finlandia,” by Jean Sibelius, 1899, revised in 1900. This stirring unofficial Finnish national anthem was most memorably recorded by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Philadelphia Orchestra back in the late 1960s. The opening passages, which comprise about two-thirds of the song, are full of “storm and stress” befitting Finland’s turbulent history. The last third consists of a memorably unique melody that leads up to a loud, stirring finish.

4. “The Dancing Queen,” by the Swedish musical group ABBA, recorded in 1976, and featured in the recent movie “Mamma Mia!” Even if the lyrics seem a little prosaic, they voice perfectly the feelings of a teenage girl going out for a wonderful night on the town, where for a few hours she is “queen” of everything. And has there ever been a melody that is at the same time so lovely, joyful and pure?

3. “You Light Up My Life,” written by Joe Brooks as a ballad, but when it was recorded by Debby Boone in 1977 she transformed it into an inspirational song. Her version went platinum and was the best-selling single of the 1970s. The song ranks No. 7 on Billboard’s All Time Top 100 Songs list. In 1997, the country singer LeAnn Rimes, who I believe has a better voice than Boone, did her own version on the 20th anniversary of the original record. The song is soaring in melody and the lyrics are very inspirational.

2. “Stardust,” one of the earliest and the best-known song written by the immortal Hoosier composer Hoagy Carmichael. We’ve all heard it; even given that Carmichael was only 28 years old when he wrote the melody in 1927, it already has his signature sound. Mitchell Parrish penned the lyrics to Carmichael’s melody later that same year. Superb; as close to flawless as a song gets.

In 2000, Swedish music reviewers chose “Stardust” as “the tune of the 20th Century.” In 1999 National Public Radio named the song as one of the 100 most important American musical works of the century. Carmichael himself once told of the first time he heard a recorded version of his best-known song:

“And then it happened — that queer sensation that this melody was bigger than me. Maybe I didn’t write it at all … I wanted to shout back at it, ‘Maybe I didn’t write you, but I FOUND you!’ ”

And finally, (drum roll, please!):

1. An ethereal, other-worldly song called “Winter Light” which was the theme of the 1993 movie version of “The Secret Garden.”

A masterful Polish composer named Zbigniew Preisner wrote the song which is sung by American chanteuse Linda Ronstadt in the movie. Her bell-clear soprano caresses the graceful lyrics about winter, love that lies dormant, the coming of spring, and the touching, joyful revival of that love. The melody could have been written by angels; it is perfectly balanced, goes neither too high, too rapidly or too slowly. Hear the song once, twice, and if you have any feeling for music at all, that melody will haunt you. It has me.

So that’s it, folks; my top 20 songs that have given me chills, caused me to choke up, even sob. Nearly all of them can be heard on YouTube if you just use the title as your search term. Unbelievable, how many things they have on that website.

How did I make the choices? Throw darts at a board? Eeenie, meenie, minie, moe? (Oops!) No. It’s like this:

Beautiful music — I mean REALLY beautiful — doesn’t depend on a beat, or clever lyrics (although those can help). For instance, I think “Down At the Twist and Shout” by Mary Chapin Carpenter is one of the finest American songs of the last 20 years. But I wouldn’t even consider naming it to this list. It has wonderful rhythm, great Cajun-style lyrics, a unique melody — but it’s not a “beautiful” song.

To fit into that category, I think a song has to have a melody that’s unique sounding, but not too complicated; a tempo that’s not quirky, but that doesn’t sound like that of half-a-dozen other songs either (like most of the country songs being written nowadays do). The melody has to gradually progress upward, a little higher, higher still, as if reaching toward the sublime. And if the lyrics are first-rate, as they are in some of the above songs, then all the better.

To qualify as “beautiful,” I think a song has to remind us that, yes, there is a land that is greater than this. And, please God, if we reach it some day, we’ll hear songs there, just like these.

Old Corporal <corporalko@yahoo.com>

Music, Maestro!, – Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 21:14:54 (EST)