Side of the Street, Cherry, It Had
to Be You, There'll Be Some
Changes Made, You Do Some–
thing to Me, Moanin' Low, I Know
That You Know, Liza, My One
and Only, Embraceable You,
Someone to Watch Over Me,
Memories of You, Lady
Be
Good,
I Can't Get Started With You
(written by Vernon Duke and Ira
Gershwin in 1936-about the last
gasp of the period), My Kinda
Love, Time on My Hands, Concen–
tratin' on You, Delilah, Rose
Room, Body and Soul, After
You've Gone, Old Fashioned Love,
Keepin' Myself for You-a much–
truncated list, but one that in–
cludes most of the tunes on which
both good jazz performers and
everyone on down from there–
including the large ponderously–
stringed music-to-read-by
schmalz
combinations-have depended most
heavily.
A handful
of
men wrote
most of them: Gershwin, Spencer
Williams, Fats Waller, Youmans,
Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart.
Most of these men are dead; there
have been no successors. (Out of
an earlier jazz period that stretched
into the twenties came such revered
hot classics as Wolverine Blues,
That's a Plenty, King Porter
Stomp, Ballin' the Jack, Some of
These Days, St. Louis Blues, Jazz
Me Blues, Royal Garden Blues,
Maple Leaf Rag, Squeeze Me,
Wabash Blues, among a great
many more. These belong to a
time as enclosed and without con-
616
tinuance as that of the Ephrata
Cloisters, Vorticism, or the demesne
of Lord Timothy Dexter.) Today
from the broken tap that Cole
Porter turns on at widely-spaced
intervals leak repetitive imitations
of his earlier smooth flow. Vernon
Duke writes songs for children and
"serious" music. Duke Ellington
interests himself in musical em–
broidery work. He has also recent–
ly become a disk jockey and plays
some of the most richly-debased
stuff ever committed to wax. Rich–
ard Rodgers composes music for
operettas like
Oklahoma
and
Al–
legro,
a very sad end. Harold
Arlen, responsible for such un–
faded period pieces as Fun To Be
Fooled, You Said It, Moanin' in
the Morning, and Down with
Love, has eliminated from his work
his early originality and spontane–
ity.
The general drift of songwriters
to the West Coast since the intro–
duction of sound films has had its
dfects. In Hollywood, Epstean's
law finds its purest expression.
Songwriters, malleable as margar–
ine, easily made happy by residences
convenient to a racetrack, have
lived up to the pattern. Hollywood
Hit Parade - juke box - Hooperized
numbers tailored to blanket the
country and ravel out in four
weeks, become all-pervading mod–
els. Just as large sections of indus–
try seem
to
be consciously aiming
at the creation of overpriced
jimcrack merchandise--expensive
fountain pens that feed great blots
