On the eve of Remembrance Day/Armistice Day/Veterans Day, this week's edition of Mark Steyn on the Town plays the music of the Great War - songs that are over a hundred years old but are still sung, including a summer pop hit from 2010; a soldiers' favourite that supposedly evokes the sound of French bedsprings; and the only Sinatra track to be banned across the British Empire.
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~Last week's pre-election edition of On the Town attracted a lot of comment. Peter, a First Week Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, writes:
Nice show as always Mark; a fine respite from the ugliness of the 'real' world.
Hearing Frank S. interact with the Presidents, it makes me smile ironically knowing that one of his last (if not very last) celluloid appearances was as himself playing the Chief Executive! Alas, it was not in a classic, it was in... Cannonball Run II, a Hal Needham car race sequel no one asked for. We are talking so 80's, that Spanish boy band Menudo does the title song bilingually over the end credits.
But even here, Frank has his moments, barking down his Rat Pack buddies Sammy and Dean in the Oval Office - 'Who told you to sit down? Stand up!'
Mercifully not available on most streaming services.. catch a DVD or VHS if you dare...
Guess I must've missed that one at the time, Peter. Nancy says:
Eleanor Roosevelt singing (sorta) 'High Hopes'? What next – RFK Jr singing 'My Way'? You are so cool sir.
Dunno about that, Nancy. But we might introduce a weekly Eleanor Roosevelt triple-play. You'll love it. Terry, a South Carolina Steyn Clubber, enjoyed the sabotage of Jack Jones's "Strangers in the Night":
Love the Jimmy Bowen story. I knew him during his highly successful run in Nashville as a producer and label president and that story fits him. Nobody ever called him Jimmy, he was always just Bowen,and he never tried hard to get along with the power structure in Nash Vegas. He cared about making hits, not friends. We had a heckuva run with Bowen.
Indeed. The now retired Mr Bowen is always very modest about his time with Sinatra, but he had an almost unerring instinct for hits.
Teresa Maupin enjoyed Sinatra's favourite patriotic song:
'The right to speak my mind that's America to me' and 'll races and religions, that's America to me.' Beautiful sentiments from Sinatra's 'The House I Live In'. We need to channel that right now. Also, loved the background story of the writer.
Chris, a New York Steyn Clubber, enthuses:
Once again, another triumph for MS. A great show and one that stands apart and will be more memorable than most, both for its content and that it was the last one I heard before the barrel went over the falls on the 5th.
From Shirley Bassey opening with such a terrific 'Light my Fire' to Eleanor [Roosevelt] and Jack Jones in memoriam. Jack Jones' inspiring 'The Impossible Dream' in '65 so grabbed me that it sent me back to Richard Kiley and Man of La Mancha, and that was the beginning of my love affair with Broadway.
And MS had me laughing too hard at the Bryan Adams lyrics (" A woman is a woman and you love a woman as a woman", rinse and repeat). I have never liked that song nor most of Bryan Adams' work except that he clearly has one of the ten best rock'n'roll songs of all time with 'Summer of 69.' And though Mark loves the lyric about 'unborn children in her eyes' to me, Steve Goodman's or Liam Clancy's version of Michael Peter Smith's 'The Dutchman' released in 1968 says it more poignantly; 'He's mad as he can be, but Margaret only sees that sometimes, Sometimes she sees her unborn children in his eyes'.
I am left with two other final thoughts on this Election Day. Eleanor Roosevelt speaks of 'hope' in this episode, and we so often forget that it is the last and only thing left in Pandora's box when everything else has escaped. And, less grimly, as Frank Sinatra hosted a Democrat in 1961 and a Republican in 1985 I have thought bemusedly that perhaps Taylor Swift celebrates Cackala this January but comes back at the age of 59, older and wiser, to celebrate the inauguration of Ewan Vance.
Just to clarify, Chris, I didn't say I loved that line; I said I found it memorable and startling. I'm not sure I especially want to see my unborn children in anybody's eyes.
Alison writes from the English Home Counties:
What can one compare these recordings to? Ghosts? We are so lucky to have them. No previous age did. Their popular music vanished on the wind. The name 'Jack Jones' comes from another life, so it is moving to know he just died . I had not idea until now that he was the son of actor Allan Jones.
Tearing out his car radio over 'Light My Fire'? Was Frank Sinatra being entirely honest? I think he was jealous of a competitor, Shirley Bassey. It was slipping away, to the crooner from Tiger Bay. That would explain his later lyrical 'borrowing'.
The recording of Eleanor Rooseveldt with Frank Sinatra (!) is bizarre - and 'wacky'. She certainly had 'presence'. Her formal voice comes straight out of the 19th century while Sinatra epitomises the mid 20th. What she says and how she talks about hope is moving, but I have mixed feelings about her. The well-meaning human rights movement comes from her work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, after World War Two. I don't know if she and others expected the whole thing to 'mushroom' as it has seemingly forever - until like some dominant, intrusive plant that reaches into every corner of your garden, it stifles and overshadows all other life - and hope.
For a Torontonian Steyn Clubber, John Whale, the show evokes the lost world of roast beef, Yorkshire pud and the BBC Light Programme:
I just love your weekly extravaganza on Serenade and listen to it on Sundays with my morning tea. I grew up in England and am a decade or so ahead of you and so remember Sunday afternoons with Billy Cotton, Round the Horne and the smell of a roast lunch on returning from the pub after playing footy. Memories which seem so long ago now but are revived by your weekly musical choices.
"How's the weather in Hong Kong, June?" and all that, John.
Our West Coast music maven, Gary Alexander, makes an interesting point re Jack Jones:
As Jack Jones mentions (to Judy Garland), he was born in January 1938 -- three years after Elvis and a dozen years after Chuck Berry and Bill Haley -- yet he championed songs with melodies, due in large part to his showbiz parents.
As it turns out, my wife Karen and I were wed on his 30th birthday, January 14, 1968, and on my radio shows in the last 15+ years, I encapsulate our courtship and marriage with a dozen Jack Jones songs from his early years, 1960-1972, ending with a couple from my favorite album of his, Jack Jones sings Michel Legrand, ending with a tear-jerker, for me, "The Years Of My Youth (Comme Elle Est Longue A Mourir Ma Jeunesse)"
This has a storybook ending. On our fiftieth anniversary in 2018, on the Jazz Cruise (our own Love Boat), Jack was aboard as a passenger, not a performer, and I got to meet him and tell him about my radio tribute to his birthday each year, and I told him 'Legrand was my favorite album of yours,' and especially that cut, and he said simply, 'it's my favorite, too.'I don't know if he meant it or says it to get rid of stalkers, but he said it.
The closing words in the English translation are,'There are so many songs left unsung yet. I'm young yet, and my heart's the heart of a young man -- a young man who doesn't want to die.'
RIP, Jack Jones
That is a fine album, Gary. He made a lot of those. The other day I had an urge to hear "The Night Is Young and You're So Beautiful", a song I love by a long-gone friend of mine, Dana Suesse, and which is probably known to most persons under fifty - sixty? - only for its vigorous deployment by Mel Brooks in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Dana told me how much she loved JJ's version - and, after listening to it for the first time in decades, I would say she was quite right about that.
Thanks for all your comments - including the critical ones. On the Town is my weekly music show on Serenade Radio every Saturday at 5pm British Summer Time - that's 6pm in western and central Europe/12 midday North American Eastern. You can listen from anywhere in the world by clicking the button at top right here.
As listeners know, I'm a great believer in old-school appointment listening, and love the way Serenade's Saturday schedule flows through the day. However, we appreciate that many potential listeners are, at the appointed hour, shampooing the cat. So, as a bonus for Steyn Club members, we post On the Town at SteynOnline every weekend. You can find all our previous shows here.
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