On this week's edition of Mark Steyn on the Town Mark surveys the scene from Samoans to Rockefellers, with a Sinatra Sextet celebrating Frank and Quincy Jones down the decades.
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~Last week's celebration of songs from the Great War attracted a lot of comment. Olga, an Arizona member of The Mark Steyn Club, writes:
The Armisticest show ever ~ nicely done, Monsieur Steyn!
Am seriously contemplating having been a British soldier in a past life,
because hearing Back to Mandalay fewer than five times in a row always
feels off-kilter. Played this episode on repeat, but am now gathering more
versions for an all-Mandalay playlist.Raising a thirst, indeed.
Josh Passell, a First Weekend Founding Member of the Steyn Club, agrees re "Road to Mandalay":
All-Mandalay radio is a format whose time may have come. I'd be a P1 listener. ("First Preference: A station to which a specific demographic listens a majority of its time. P1 listeners are vital to a station's ratings, as they usually constitute the majority of a station's Average Quarter-Hour audience.")
I remember hearing some of this before, but I don't always remember so good. But the archives here are infallible. I see that Frank's "Mandalay" reached the dizzying heights of # 20 on the Sinatra Song of the Century charts nine and a half years ago. And a stirring defense of the poem, followed by a stirring reading, culminated Steyn's Sunday Poems Summer Special #5. It stirs still. I cycle through parodic odd snatches of movie dialogue or other random quotations on my Facebook profile. I'm thinking of putting Kipling up there for a good long time not least because I like it, but because others won't. How many Obama Inauguration poets could match this?
Come you back to Mandalay
Where the old flotilla lay
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On The Road To Mandalay
Where the flyin' fishes play
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
'Crost the Bay!
The dawn may come up like thunder, but James Fulford thinks the anecdotes are beginning to come up ever more woozily and out of focus:
Mark, the last time you mentioned Eliza Doolittle, "daughter of John Caird, co director of Les Miserables and Frances Ruffelle" you had met her when she was EIGHT months old.( The Mark Steyn Show: A Soldier Comes Home, Remembrance Day,2021) It's all good, as they say, but for the record she was born on April 15, 1988, so calculations should start from there.
Yeah, I suppose I could actually check the dates, at least ballpark-wise, but I rather enjoy winging it. And say what you will but I haven't reached the stage - as the great English ballet choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton did with me around the time I met little Eliza - of telling anecdotes about other people as happening to himself.
Or at least I don't think I have, have I?
Bart Nielsen, a First Week Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, says:
Funny you should mention the difference between the English and American lyrics for the Mademoiselle from Armentières. While I was listening to the song I noticed that my Dad always sang it with the American lyrics, unsurprisingly given his Americanness. I wasn't aware of the other version.
Diane writes from Maryland:
So a bit sad and reflective at the beginning of the program and now, somewhat more in equilibrium. Forty million dead in WWI, possibly more, and more than in WWII. What a world.
Felix Powell committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart. Did not know. (He joins a long list of much-appreciated people who exited by their own hand/feet – from Capucine to George Sanders to Robin Williams). (Was he trying to cheer himself when he wrote "Pack up your troubles..."?)
Writing of suicide, there was smack in the middle of the program "Poor Butterfly". Sorry, but in this case will take Puccini over Sinatra.
No idea that Skitch Henderson accompanied Sinatra. What an interesting guy SH was, serving and then living a good long life to play on. (RAF and US Army Air Corps, doubly interesting.)
So Kipling's daughter did not want the word "broad" introduced into her father's poem/adapted as lyrics. Did she read her father's stories?
Songs as palliatives for the left behinds (or soon-to-be) and the men who were going...A tough niche to fill. Trying to be upbeat about the road ahead when it's going to be littered with corpses isn't easy.
As for "songs of parted lovers" (MS), think the WWII cohort of songwriters was better (much better) – perhaps because they focused more on love than the implied glory of war.
Despite the somber takeaways, enjoyed the program greatly – always learn a lot. Thank you, MS.
From Alison Castellina:
Thank you for a wonderful tribute to our fallen, wounded and now dead, who include my jolly Grandpa born in 1898. I planted a tree in his name, in 2014. I hope it is an oak but would be happy with a sweet chestnut. It is in Langley Vale Wood ('The First World War Wood') in Surrey, England. The land had been the site of Tadworth Camp where recruits learned soldiering, including trench warfare and how to protect themselves from gas attacks. I'd like to see more woods planted in the names of all those who lie in Flanders who had no children to remember.
My grandfather was still singing "Pack up your Troubles" to children, more used to the Beatles, in the 1960s. The song seemed like ancient history then, but it was only 45 years old (i.e.1980 to us, now). He probably did not know that the composer had killed himself with a Dad's Army rifle in 'Walmington on Sea' during WW2 which rather undermines the humour of the top BBC show, too.
One day, I will go walking through Langley Wood listening to the First World War songs my grandfather so adored and sang so often, remembering, thankfully, that if he had not survived the night staunching his bleeding in late 1917 in a shellhole after a massacre of Welsh Guards, I would not be here, today.
Hadyn Wood's arrangement of his own 'Roses of Picardy' is beautiful and Sinatra sings it beautifully too.Haydn Wood studied under Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music.
The lyricist of 'Roses of Picardy' was not a WW1 soldier but rather aged Fred E. Weatherly born in 1848. He was a barrister based in London and in Bristol and penned lyrics on the train between the two, writing thousands of sellable songs. These lyrics were left over from a failed project, so Haydn Wood was sent them and worked his magic. Weatherly suggested he had not had a life filled with romance and that the Picardy song was based on the romance of a friend.
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.
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Mark Steyn on the Town can be heard on Serenade Radio at the following times:
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