WHO WANTS SONG HITS?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 363, 7 June 1946, Page 22

WHO WANTS SONG HITS?

(Written for "The Listener" by

KAY

vox populi is vox Dei, I give up-but not without a brief examination of the case. These popular numbers, as they are called, must be manufactured by the hundreds in the song factories of to-day. Song hits, as delivered by crooners and caterwaulers, can certainly hit very hard-hard enough to hurt. The very young, who are addicted to these latest hits, will retort that all this is only middle age lashing out at what is new. But is it so new? It seems to me that never were tunes and words thrown together with so little inventiveness and so many clichés. "A date with Fred MacMurray has Me in a hurry: A guy like Mischa Auer has me in his power." Their titles often sound like conundrums-for instance: "Is you is or is you aint?" How I can uke and uke and uke, And you can uke a ukelele too, And I can wick and you can wack And we can wicky wacky woa, Hello Aloha, how are you?

And here’s another: You've got me on the brink of a new affair, And though I’m in the pink for a new affair, Fall in love, says my heart, It’s romance, take a chance. . And imagine any adult who is not certifiable getting up to sing-"O-oh, I wanna woo, I wanna woo and bill and COOs. i= All That Blueness If we are to have comparisons, fet love be like a red, red rose and not like a cigarette. And all that blueness! Blue of the skies-Your tum-tum €yes -Eyes so blue-Pining for you-I’m feeling blue. Nothing so saucy as a black-eyed Susan! Picasso had his blue period, but he escaped. Mood Indigo, Rhapsody in Blue, St, Louis Biues-so they go on. Dreara-Romance-hearts to burn, to churn, to girn-and not a head among the lot of them. We, the public, are to blame for allowing such tasteless trash. It must be in the air, this blight, a symptom of our bankrupt times. As mites come to cheese and maggots to meat, a universal blight is on our song-making-and we are too blighted even to notice it. Unfortunately, the radio has the power to multiply these low grade wares. The Rubbish Used to be Real . There has always been rubbish, but there was more variety about the old stuff. Occasionally a man sang about his dog-with more zeal than art-his Arab steed or his grandfather’s clock. But how could the monstrous mechanism of modern industry produce songs or singers? Men are mostly robots now (re-member-Chaplin’s Modern Times) and robots make no music. To make labour easier, the older generations devised their labour songs; for instance, the sea-chanties, as specificaliy English as the hornpipes. Remember the "Nancy that kittled my fancy" and Nancy Dawson, Old England Square, and Hanging Johnny who had such a passion for the business. The English hunting songs show the same positive zest in life--so, too the drinking songs, both British and German: Whisky for my Johnnie, Little Brown Jug, The Pope who lives a happy life, and (because he) drinks the best of Rhenish wine. The amusing Willie who brewed a peck o’ maut which Rab and Allen came to pree. Poetry of Life For freshness of subject and treatment, the Hebridean songs took a lot of beating-the Churning, Spinning and Rowing songs, powerfully accented. A young Hebridean would make a song to his boat (Birlinn of the White Shoulders) and well he might as boats mean bread and butter there, The sailors sing, almost religiously: Bless the white sail and her fare, bless her riggings and her high masts, In a tune worthy of Wolf, the seagull in the Land-Under-Waves is invoked: (continued on next page) ,

(continued from previous page) Where are our fair lads resting, with seawrack for their shrouds. The Sealwoman, hot from her work, slides into the sea, and with a keek up and a keek down, sings her Sealwoman’s Seajoy. There is the handsome lad frae Skye "that’s lifted a’ the cattle, a’ oor kye; he’s ta’en the black, the white, the dun ~-and I hae mickle fear he’s ta’en my heart forbye." This is the basic stuff of song, wrought by the folk themselves. "Like watercress gathered fresh from cool streams, thy kiss, dear love, by the Bens of Jura." Simple effects, yet poetry in every breath. If we are to have a song about a girl, let us have Hogg’s lassie who is "neither proud nor saucy yet, neither plump nor gaucy yet, but just a jinkin’, bonnie, blinkin’, hiltie-skiltie lassie yet." Or let us have Kate Dalrymple, "with a wiggle in her walk and a snivel in her talk," rather than that peroxided cutie who is "lovely to look at, delightful to know." : Stephen Foster compares his lady to an arbutus; and while we’re botanical, think .of Schumann’s fine-spun Snowbells, not to forget his Green Jasmine Tree and his better known Almond Tree, all tremulous with its tripping arpeggios. We all know Schubert’s Linden Tree, with the hero hanging stoutly on to his hat in the middle of it. Moreover, Schubert has a whole garden of flower songs that are never sung. Real songs can tell of so many things; even of a ladybird-and you may be sure a humorist like Schumann knows how to deal with it. Perky, too, is his Sandman (Brahms has one also) who, ‘sack on back, sneaks comically and very

staccato up the stairs with grains of sand to drop into the children’s eyes. If he apostrophises his maiden with the best of them, Schubert can make music of other matters: the miller with the wanderlust, Atlas grumbling with the world on his back, the postman who brings no letter, the green ribbon, the pigeon-cote, the greybeard, the tricky trout that is not quite tricky enough, the mournful raven, barking watch-dogs, the stormy morning, the inn which is in reality a graveyard-one could go on indefinitely. He has little stories of the poor hurdygurdy man out in the freezing cold while round him yap the curs and not a soul puts a penny in his little plate! But wait a minute-somebody feels for him: Let’s go on together, turn and turn about, I will make the songs, and you shall grind them out. There is his intrepid traveller, in the heights above Wildemann, forging his way in snow and storm through forest heights, keeping out the weather by remembering past delights. Words Were Worthy In those great days, the song was taken so seriously that none but the finest poets were used and none but the finest composers to set these poems to music. There is the substance of one Schubert song with words by Goethe: "Lash your heroes, Time! No dawdling for me! I would devour life, not nibble it crumb by crumb, I would pack the thin life of many days into one day of glory; and then, come what may, so the end come quickly." To-day that theme would be treated something like this: Come on Baby, let’s have a Big Time, sister, let’s make Whoopee!