I've always loved songs that use magic as an image of romantic seduction and intoxication. Cole Porter got in on it early in "You Do Something To Me" (1928):
Let me live 'neath your spell
Do do
That voodoo
That you do
So well...
Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer extended the thought in 1944:
That Old Black Magic has me in its spell
That Old Black Magic that you weave so well
Those icy fingers up and down my spine
The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine...
But it was Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh who wrapped up the subject once and for all, a decade later:
Those fingers in my hair
That sly come-hither stare
That strips my conscience bare
It's Witchcraft...
Triple rhymes – hair/stare/bare - can be very boring: they can make a song seem as if it's treading water ("What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?/North and south and east and west of your life/I have only one request of your life..." is a wee bit problematic for me in this respect), but the combination of Leigh's words and Coleman's tune form a kind of musical seduction intensifying with every line.
Sinatra got to all the great bewitching songs: He did "You Do Something To Me" first with George Siravo on his first up-tempo album in 1950, and then a decade later in a breezy Nelson Riddle arrangement that's over in a minute and a bit. "That Old Black Magic" he performed as a dreamy Axel Stordahl ballad in the Forties, and then with a snappy Heinie Beau chart in 1961. But "Witchcraft" was the song he made his own, and in an arrangement that shows off the song so perfectly he knew never to meddle with it. Over half a century old, the number has a rare authentic sensuousness: a couple of decades back, I began noticing that when rock guys like Robert Palmer hit their mid-life crises and decided to try a little finger-snappy cool, "Witchcraft" was high up on the list. Even Bart Simpson, in an episode in which he turns mobster and gets a slick dark suit and tie, breaks in the threads while warbling "Those fingers in my hair..."
Cy Coleman made it big on Broadway and in Hollywood, but he was always a jazz guy at heart. His first writing partner, Joe McCarthy, was the son of a songwriter (the lyricist of "You Made Me Love You"), and so thought hit songs were the height of achievement. But, for a jazz pianist and sonata composer, songwriting was initially something of an afterthought. And, despite "Why Try To Change Me Now?" and some other numbers that made a bit of noise, it was only when he hooked up with Carolyn Leigh that he began to value the form. Miss Leigh was an advertising copywriter who'd had a couple of big hits with Sinatra ("Young At Heart", "How Little We Know") and written half the score for Peter Pan. But she suffered from a lyricist's worst problem: a lack of good tunes. That's where Coleman came in. He met her in the luncheonette at the Brill Building and they fell into conversation. "Why don't we write a song?" he said. So they went upstairs and wrote "A Moment Of Madness", and Sammy Davis Jr recorded it the very next day. As Coleman said to me, you wouldn't believe that if it happened in a movie. But it happened to Cy and Carolyn - and after that they were officially a team.
"Witchcraft" was one of their early hits. They were just kicking around possibilities for songs and Carolyn came up with the title "It's Witchcraft". "I thought it was great," Cy told me. "So I got to the piano and I wrote this very exotic Latin rhythmic tune. And it was all wrong. It was too on the nose." Sometimes you do do that voodoo that you do way too well.
So he started noodling around at the piano and hit on a melodic line that was closer to what Carolyn had in mind. After all, when you write a song about "witchcraft", it's not meant to evoke voodoo and zombies and whatnot, but the idea of love as a spell, an enchantment. It's an odd song structurally: not the usual A-A-B-A – main theme, reprised, middle section, back to the main theme – but a big broad legato release with two pairs of modified A sections either side of it. And Carolyn placed the title up in the first section, and then doesn't use it again until the middle section:
'Cause it's Witchcraft!
Wicked Witchcraft
And although
I know
It's strictly taboo...
(which always feels to me like an odd half-echo of Leo Robin in "Thanks For The Memory" - "strictly entre nous".)
Who to get the song to? Both Coleman and Leigh had had earlier songs recorded by Sinatra, so they sent a demo over to Voyle Gilmore, Frank's producer at Capitol Records. In 1957, Sinatra was filming Pal Joey and the label was getting itchy for a new single, so Gilmore picked out some demo discs and Frank went in to the Capitol Tower in Los Angeles to meet him. "What's that?" asked Frank, pointing to a foot-high pile of records. Gilmore explained they were the songs they were going to play to see which ones Sinatra wanted to do. "No," said Frank. "Pick one song. That's it."
So Gilmore shuffled through the discs, plucked out a demo and put it on the turntable. And out of the speaker came Cy Coleman's voice:
Those fingers in my hair
That sly come-hither stare...
At the end of the record, nobody said anything. Frank looked at his manager, Hank Sanicola. Hank shook his head. No. So Frank said, "Play it again." And, when it was over, he looked at Sanicola again and Sanicola again shook his head.
"This is the song I want to record," said Sinatra, getting up to leave. "You guys put whatever songs you like on the rest of the session, but this song I like."
It took him two-and-a-half hours to nail it at the recording date, but it was worth it. Did you know Coleman and Leigh wrote a verse? It was for a TV show, I believe - long after the song had become a hit. Nobody does it, unless you're doing my old "Beat The Intro" game. But, for the record (so to speak), here's how it goes:
Shades of old Lucretia Borgia!
There's a devil in you tonight
An' although my heart adores ya
My head says it ain't right
Right to let you make advances
Oh no!
Under normal circumstances
I'd go
But oh...
And then:
Those fingers in my hair...
There was no such verse when Sinatra and Nelson Riddle made their landmark record, so Riddle's arrangement opens with a descending figure similar to the one he used on "Mood Indigo": it's a perfect aural evocation of intoxication, not unlike another "bewitching" arrangement, the heady swirl of "Old Devil Moon". With Carolyn Leigh's "How Little We Know", Sinatra's 1963 remake is crisper and sexier than the 1956 original. But you can't say the same about his '63 remake of "Witchcraft": The vocal is more aggressive and less sensual, and it concludes with a spoken "Ooh, you're a fine witch!" – Frank's hommage à the Great One, Jackie Gleason, whose character Reginald Van Gleason III would offer the remark in tipsy appreciation to certain fine beverages. The 1993 duet with Anita Baker is one of the least worst of the Sinatra Duets: the playful sign-off – "Hey, ya little witch!" – is fun and the orchestral prelude by Patrick Williams at the front is mighty fine. But the '57 "Witchcraft" is the real Sinatra classic.
Carolyn liked to rhyme and when she'd tired of masculine rhymes – moon/June – and feminine rhymes – fatter/matter – she liked to put the stress on the third or even fourth syllable before the end of the line – "rules of the road", for example, rhymes with "fools of the road". Noel Coward was partial to this, forever rhyming on the ante-penult:
Why Must The Show Go On?
Why not announce the closing night of it?
The public seem to hate the sight of it?
In Coward's hands, it seems obtrusive and often points up the dreariness of the tune. But with Miss Leigh it sits so perfectly on top of Coleman's sensuous, sinuous jazzy melodies, you hardly notice it. Take the middle section of "Witchcraft":
When you arouse the need in me
My heart says yes indeed in me
Proceed with what you're leadin' me to...
It doesn't look much in print, but, set to those notes, the rhymes slyly turn up the heat, the headiness of the music.
As I said a few weeks ago, "Why Try To Change Me Now?" was Sinatra's way of saying to Mitch Miller no, thanks, I'll stick with the music, and in the end the music will win. To be honest, I wasn't sure. Coleman and Leigh started out as writers of pop standards just as the entire field was about to get plowed over by rock'n'roll. And it seemed to me the songs they wrote for Sinatra and others had come along too late to secure a hold in the repertoire. But I was wrong. These days they're everywhere. The Coleman/Leigh songs from the Fifties and Sixties will endure as long as Gershwin or Porter. Frank figured that out half a century ago:
It's such an ancient pitch
But one I wouldn't switch
'Cause there's no nicer witch than you.
~Mark writes about Cy Coleman in his book Mark Steyn's Passing Parade. There's more Sinatra songs in Mark Steyn's American Songbook. And Steyn's original 1998 obituary of Frank, "The Voice", can be found in the anthology Mark Steyn From Head To Toe. Personally autographed copies of all three books are exclusively available from the SteynOnline bookstore.
~For an alternative Sinatra Hot 100, Bob Belvedere over at The Camp Of The Saints has launched his own Frank countdown and places "Witchcraft" at Number 35. The Evil Blogger Lady is also bewitched by "Witchcraft". And working her way through her own Sinatra hit parade, at Number 46 the Pundette has the Coleman & Leigh song that Frank put on his tombstone - "The Best Is Yet To Come".
SINATRA CENTURY
at SteynOnline
6) THE ONE I LOVE (BELONGS TO SOMEBODY ELSE)
8) STARDUST
10) WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE?
11) CHICAGO
12) THE CONTINENTAL
13) ALL OF ME
15) NIGHT AND DAY
16) I WON'T DANCE
17) I'VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN
19) EAST OF THE SUN (AND WEST OF THE MOON)
21) A FOGGY DAY (IN LONDON TOWN)
24) OUR LOVE
27) FOOLS RUSH IN
32) I'LL BE AROUND
36) GUESS I'LL HANG MY TEARS OUT TO DRY
37) NANCY (WITH THE LAUGHING FACE)
38) SOMETHIN' STUPID
40) I GET ALONG WITHOUT YOU VERY WELL (EXCEPT SOMETIMES)
41) SOLILOQUY
42) THE COFFEE SONG
44) HOW ABOUT YOU?
46) LUCK BE A LADY
48) (AH, THE APPLE TREES) WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
49) I HAVE DREAMED
51) I'VE GOT THE WORLD ON A STRING
52) YOUNG AT HEART
54) BAUBLES, BANGLES AND BEADS
55) IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS OF THE MORNING
57) THE TENDER TRAP
