Playlist for Sunday, July 13, 2014: One Lazy Afternoon...

Well, here we are in the middle of summer...I can tell because my hair is in a permanent state of frizz, my cats lay melted on the cool(ish) bathroom tile, and my blender can't quite keep up with the daily call for frozen pinas and margaritas....I wish! So it's time for a couple of summer songs, and that makes me think of "Lazy" with Marilyn Monroe, "Lazy Afternoon" with Kaye Ballard, and of course "Summertime" and Lena Horne. Too bad the studio doesn't have a hammock!

But we'll rouse ourselves for some Sweeney, some Take Me Along, and some Oliver!  Lionel Bart (true child of the 60s that he was, with hutzpah in spades) wrote the book, music AND lyrics for that last blockbuster, but interesting side note: He could NOT read or write music, which puts him right up there with Irving Berlin (and hssssss...Mel Brooks)!  Thanks to Eric Rodgers, who listened to Lionel's dum dum dee dums, and wrote them down, we have Oliver and several other Bart works, which include the theme to the James Bond movie, To Russia with Love.  Huh.

Two very special classics, "Mary" and "After the Ball" round out our show..."Mary" was written of course by George M. Cohan, and was placed in both "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "George M!"  "After" was written WAY back in 1891, and based on the number of copies of sheet music sold (5 MILLION!?), is the best selling song in Tin Pan Alley history.  I guess that would translate into 10 million I-Tunes downloads in today's market, right?

That all sounds much too tiring...Pour yourself a tall cool one, and join me on Sunday. 


Summertime (Lena Horne, Porgy and Bess)
Lazy Afternoon (Kaye Ballard, The Golden Apple)
Lazy (Marilyn Monroe, There's No Business Like Show Business)
Lazy Moon (Ensemble, Goldilocks)
Not While I'm Around (Ken Jennings, Sweeney Todd)
The Worst Pies in London (Angela Lansbury, Sweeney Todd)
Eve (Alan Alda, The Apple Tree)
Nine O'Clock (Robert Morse, Take Me Along)
Take Me Along (Jackie Gleason, Walter Pigeon, Take Me Along)
Who Will Buy? (Bruce Prochnik, Ensemble, Oliver!)
It's a Fine Life (Georgia Brown, Davy Jones, Oliver!)
Stuck with Each Other (Margery Gray, Byron Blu Mitchell, Tovarich)
It's a Bore (Daniel Massey, Alfred Drake, Gigi)
Mary (Jacqueline Alloway, George M!)
After the Ball (Barbara Cook, Showboat)
Swing! (Rosalind Russell, Wonderful Town)