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...

First is something that is making me happy: Patrick Stewart is reading #ASonnetADay : We've reached Sonnet 17, a mini landmark in these 154 sonnets. #ASonnetADay pic.twitter.com/tVBxrrW1fE — Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) April 5, 2020 Shakespeare is a long way back but as he reads them they are as fresh as today. (Thanks for finding this for me goes to my sister, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah!) * * * * * Also, today's song calls back to yesterday's song, being that the same people--Milton Ager and Jack Yellen--who wrote this song also wrote "Happy Days Are Here Again." And the title of the song, of course, harks back to Friday's post: "Happy Feet": Video posted by warholsoup100 (Yes, I know. That song is not in the movie with the dancing penguins. But the title is the same!) (Okay, yes, I only know because I looked it up. And I'm not perfectly sure that that is a movie with dancing penguins. It looks like it's a movie with dancing pe...

Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, but the first of my two songs for today was written in 1930 , for the Depression-era 1932 revival of the musical revue Americana , and it's a stark reminder of the need for organized labor.   "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney, sung by Bing Crosby: Video posted by warholsoup100 In its review of the revival, The New York Times particularly called out the song for praise: [Y]ou are likely to feel that Mr. Gorney has expressed the spirit of these times with more heart-breaking anguish than any of the prose bards of the day. If Mr. Hoover had asked for a song instead of a poem the other day, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" would have been what the President ordered. Interestingly, as Rob Kapilow points out in an interview on NPR the song isn't someone asking for a handout--it's someone talking back to the system, someone saying, "I worked hard, I helped bui...

Well, actually, no, I cannot write a sonnet. However, that's the lyric in Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade." Like "White Christmas," it was a song in 1942's Holiday Inn , sung by Bing Crosby to Marjorie Reynolds: Video posted by soccerkrazy2 although it originally appeared in Berlin's 1933 revue "As Thousands Cheer." And, like "White Christmas," it had a movie constructed around it, 1948's Easter Parade , in which Judy Garland sings it to Fred Astaire: Video posted by Gregory Maldonado I don't think it's quite so successful that way, but it's a fun film with tons of great songs. (Don't miss "We're a Couple of Swells": Video posted by gem tracker Did Fred Astaire even know how not to be elegant?) The film is perhaps most famous for a number that was deleted-- Judy Garland performing "Mr. Monotony" in the outfit she later famously wore in Summer Stock's "Get Happy"...

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...