I've Got the World on a String

Since we seem to have an incoming leader who appears to be channeling 1933, I thought it might be interesting to look back at some of the songs of 1933. It's a far more interesting year musically than a lot of them, as it turns out.

The 1930s were the years that the Great American Songbook was written. Even a cursory look at some of the songwriters who were active tells you how fertile a time it was. 1933 was a year when Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington and George and Ira Gershwin were all at the height of their powers. What an embarrassment of riches! We are now 76 years on and the names still have great meaning and some of the songs of the year are still remembered and beloved.

Consider one of Arlen's masterworks of the year, I've Got the World on a String, performed here over 20 years later by Frank Sinatra. Pure escapism. If the reality was grim, the song was a great release:

I've got a song that I sing

I can make the rain go

Any time I move my finger

Lucky me, can't you see - I'm in love

It wasn't all escapism, though -- Arlen and collaborator Ted Koehler also gave the world a gloomier view with another enduring classic, Stormy Weather, here performed by the great Lena Horne 10 years later. The lyrics betray something sadder, couched in the rubric of romance but certainly evocative of hard times:

I walk around heavy hearted and sad

Life comes around

And I'm still feeling bad

Rain's pourin' down

Blindin' every hope I had

This pitterin' patterin'

Beatin and spattering

Drives me mad

Love, love, love

This misery's just too much for me

Can't go on

Everything I have is gone

Stormy weather

Since my man and I ain't together

It's raining all the time

Keeps raining all the time

You listen to this and you need a drink.

But there were antidotes. One of the most beautiful and enduring songs of the era was Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Lady, shown here in a 1967 performance in Copenhagen. The melody is beautiful and lingers, almost as long as the last note that saxophonist Harry Carney plays in the clip.

In the classical realm, 1933 was the year that Prokofiev gave us Peter and the Wolf and Richard Strauss debuted Arabella.

And the songs of 1933 continued to reverberate years later. Jerome Kern and collaboartor Otto Harbach came up with a little ditty that more than 20 years later would be one of the first big hits of the rock and roll era, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, performed here in all its doo-wop splendor by the Platters.

Meanwhile, a few additional titans of the music business were born in the midst of all this. It's difficult to imagine popular music today without the contributions of James Brown, producer extraordinaire Quincy Jones and Jerry Leiber, who with collaborator Mike Stoller created songs that will likely endure as long as some of the best works of Arlen and Kern. All arrived on the scene in 1933.

One last good thing about 1933, at least personally: both my parents were born, within 12 days of each other in May of that year.

Even in the pit of the Great Depression, great music was being made, great musicians were born and there was more hope and despair. I suspect that no matter how dire 2009 might look right now, we'll have the chance to hear something that will endure. And perhaps some future generation will enjoy the great work of a baby that is born this year. We've all got the world on a string. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.