If you enjoy Steyn's Song of the Week at SteynOnline and on Serenade Radio, please note that there will be a live stage edition during the 2025 Mark Steyn Cruise - along with many other favourite features from SteynOnline and The Mark Steyn Show. More details here.
~In these days before Halloween and other looming horrors, here's the SteynOnline premiere of a timely Serenade Radio edition of our Song of the Week. Mark tells the tale of a bewitching song by two of his favourite songwriters, including a conversation with the composer, the late Cy Coleman. Plus: the singing voices of Frank Sinatra, Anita Baker, Robert Palmer and Bart Simpson.
Click above to listen.
~This airing of our Serenade Radio Song of the Week is a special presentation of The Mark Steyn Club. Thank you for your kind responses to this series. Our last selection, "Lullaby of Broadway", prompted this reaction from Jackie, a Pennsylvania member of The Mark Steyn Club:
What a wonderful, wonderful show! I tend to get overwhelmed with things to read or podcasts to listen to during this hectic election cycle and the west's demise. I am pleased that I found time to listen. Mark, what a gem you are! Absolutely loved the show and I will be singing Lullaby of Broadway in my head for the rest of the week!
Anne Kearney, a First Month Founding Member, agrees:
Loved, loved, loved this Harry Warren episode, as I do all of your Songs of the Week (and On the Towns)! I didn't realize he'd written all those fabulous songs!
I'll never forget the first time I saw Wini introduce Lullaby of Broadway in Gold Diggers of 1935, and then see Busby take off with it. I was stopped in my tracks. Your photo at the top captures a perfect moment.
Can't thank you enough, Mark, for reminding us of, and chronicling, these incomparable songwriters.
Anna, a Sacramento Steyn Clubber, feel the same:
THIS WAS WONDERFUL. The Warren and Dubin dyamic was magical...all of these wonderful songs that sweetly penetrated the childhhood of this Baby Bommer (1950) - now I finally know who to thank for these wonderful songs. Expecially the dancers.
Mr Bradley, an Oregon member, spots the connection with a Steyn classic:
'When a Broadway baby says goodnight, it's early in the morning.'
Fabulous show this week. What a song. And, for anyone who may not be aware of it, I highly recommend for your reading pleasure Mark's acclaimed romp through a century of musical theatre (to borrow his own description), Broadway Babies Say Goodnight.
Fran, a First Weekend Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, says:
I'm with the late and great Brian Savin's wife, Anita. This was one of the best of the Song of the Week episodes. Most people can probably relate to 'that's the story of my life' comment by Harry Warren, always in other great people's shadows. It's alright, though. We surely know Harry's story now and will always remember it. Fantastic tribute to his work, thank you.
One more from Chris in New York:
Well once again you can't do any better than this. I've been doing a bit of traveling and catching up with the writings and the interludes and the comments in the MS club.
As a dyed in the wool New Yorker, I had always defended the city that never sleeps: "Yes it's dirty but 8 million people are crammed in here", "sure it's crowded but you can get a good pastrami sandwich at 2:00 in the morning", "he really is right when he sings 'if I can make it there I can make it anywhere' ". I had always looked to these New York centric songs and stories, the '55 Dodgers and the '69 Mets as the years went by and much like a Roman citizen, with all of that heavy throw- weight behind him would look back even in 300 AD (*) and say "You should have been here 200 years ago" or two decades ago or whatever.
I cannot hear even the simplest piano rendering of Lullaby of Broadway ("the noisiest lullaby in the history of Broadway"-natch) without hearing the crash of 10,000, or so it seems, tap dancers at the end of Busby Berkeley's locomotive in my head. I had missed the loss of winsome Winny and you caught me unawares, MS, as she disappeared to the pavement.
In the juxtaposition of your recent essays ("Kamala lightens up") I could only think perhaps the final coda of Warren and Dubin might just perfectly fit for all of us: "Good night, baby. Good night, the milkman's on his way". ... and I dare say both the milkman and the iceman cometh.
Thank you all. We do enjoy your comments on the show. Steyn Club members are welcome to respond to this week's show below. Alternatively, anybody can leave comments over at Serenade Radio, where they love hearing from listeners.
Steyn's Song of the Week airs thrice weekly on Serenade Radio in the UK, one or other of which broadcasts is certain to be convenient for whichever part of the world you're in:
5.30pm Sunday London (12.30pm New York)
5.30am Monday London (4.30pm Sydney)
9pm Thursday London (this week only - 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific)
Whichever you prefer, you can listen from anywhere on the planet right here.
