I assure you that there is absolutely nothing quite as wonderfully awful as the fetid, foppish, phoniness of The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, which ABC brewed in a low-budget cauldron and unleashed upon an…
Tag: Harold Arlen
Blog posts
A List of Songs Stephen Sondheim Wishes He Wrote Himself (At Least in Part), Volume 1
This most interesting list of songs Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim wishes he wrote himself (at least in part), originally appeared in the New York Times Magazine in 2000 and was a fascinating sidebar to a…
Stargayzing Songwriter’s Forum: 20 Questions With…Peter Zizzo
Peter Zizzo is an Emmy winning producer/songwriter whose songs have been recorded over the years by artists like Celine Dion, Jennifer Lopez, Howie Day, Donna Summer and many others. One of his more recent productions…
Bing Crosby’s 10 Favorite Performers of All Time
Bing Crosby was, perhaps, the first multi-media superstar: radio, recordings, live performances, and film. Crosby was an Oscar-winning actor and the top-selling recording artist of the first half of the 20th-century. Despite all these…
Pink’s “Over the Rainbow”: Whatever Happened to Phrase. Ing?
I should begin by saying I am a fan of Pink. I think she is as talented a pop singer who has come to the fore in the Internet age as any I’ve heard. …
Annie Ross at the Metropolitan Room, New York City: The Singer as Actor
One of the beautiful things about the culture of jazz and cabaret music is that life experience, and the emotional deepening that it confers on its artists, is considered an attribute, not a reason…
“The Men That Got Away”— How The Loss of a Generation Affected Our Ears and Our Hearts
“For the rest of us, here is Judy Garland singing “The Man That Got Away”, the Oscar-nominated mother-of-all-torch-songs, written by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin. If you’ve seen it before, watch it again with fresh eyes and if you’ve never seen it, here is the genius of Judy Garland, a performer without peer.”
Janis Ian’s Between the Lines: The Saddest Album Ever
Remember the Columbia Record Club? If you’re too young to remember, “CRC” and its brethren—the RCA Record Club etc.— were mail-order divisions of the major record labels that enticed you to join with a…
You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught: “The Wizard of Oz” Tutorial for Youngsters
You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught! Any gay uncle worth his salt knows its risky to drop a Rodgers and Hammerstein quote into blog post about Arlen and Harburg’s The Wizard of Oz, but…
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