Jewish Stereo Types

So if you happen to be stuck singing one of the more annoying "BE HAPPY" songs, playing around with it is not a bad way to go: Video posted by Bootleg Better (Trust me, some of the more, um, family-friendly versions are exquisitely painful to listen to. Especially with banjos.) "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive," by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, was, believe it or not, nominated for an Oscar ; Mercer said the lyric came from a sermon : "I went to hear Father Divine and he had a sermon and his subject was 'you got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.' And I said, 'Wow, that's a colorful phrase.' " *** Lyricist Johnny Mercer, although completely amazing ( he wrote the lyrics for over 1500 songs , including "Blues in the Night" (also with Harold Arlen), "One for My Baby" (also with Harold Arlen), and "Moon River" (not with Harold Arlen--that's a Henry Mancini melody)), was not Je...

I don't think this song needs much of an introduction--here's "White Christmas" by Irving Berlin, sung by Bing Crosby and Martha Mears (who was voice doubling Marjorie Reynolds), in the movie Holiday Inn : Video posted by alpineic1 . (Only the first two and half minutes or so of the video are from the film.) Or, if you prefer, a cover by Bette Midler that includes the rarely-recorded first verse: Video posted by Bette Midler - Topic , provided to YouTube by Sony Music Entertainment The song was written for the aforementioned Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire vehicle Holiday Inn and became an instant classic. Crosby's version of "White Christmas" is the best selling record of all time, * the single selling at least 50 million copies; when all the various covers ( over 500 at current reckoning) are taken into account, the song is estimated to have sold over 150 million copies and there has even been an entire book written about it. All this despite--or pe...