Harold Arlen Centennial

[Brownian Motion]

EDITORIAL OBSERVER NYT

Turning the Music of the South and the Shtetl Into Bluesy Sophistication

By ADAM COHEN

Published: February 11, 2005

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer dropped "Over the Rainbow" from early prints of "The Wizard of Oz," in part because it sounded too sophisticated. It slowed down the picture, the doubters argued, and in any case, if a young girl in a Kansas farmyard suddenly broke into a song, it would not be one as philosophical and wistful as this one. "Over the Rainbow" stayed in the picture, of course, after some heated studio infighting, and became an instant classic.

The world-weary tone may have sounded odd coming from the Kansas cornfields, but it was typical of its composer, Harold Arlen, who is best remembered today, when he is remembered at all, for composing the music for "The Wizard of Oz." But that score - particularly the lighter fare, what Arlen called the "lemon-drop songs" - was a departure from the bluesy, urbane style of most of his big hits, like "Stormy Weather," "Blues in the Night" and "Come Rain or Come Shine."

Arlen, who was born 100 years ago next week, was one of the great composers of the 20th century, as well as an unusual kind of cultural alchemist. Long before Elvis or Eminem helped blues and hip-hop cross over into the white mainstream, Arlen fused his own Eastern European Jewish musical traditions with African-American blues. The music that emerged - the product of two groups whose members, at the time, could not check into a hotel in much of the country - went on to assume an improbably large place in American popular music.

Arlen was born Hyman Arluck in Buffalo, the son of a cantor who had moved north from Louisville, Ky. He showed an early interest in music, singing in his father's synagogue choir and listening to the "race" records of his day, including Dixieland jazz and Bessie Smith. As a teenager, he and some friends formed Hyman Arluck's Snappy Trio and performed in vaudeville houses. Later, he was part of a larger group, the Buffalodians, that achieved some regional renown.

Arlen's big musical break came after he moved to New York and made his way up to Harlem, where he listened to the jazz legends who performed there late into the night, including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller.

One day when Arlen was tinkering at the piano, he wrote a tune of his own. The blues-infused song he came up with was eventually matched with words by Ted Koehler to become "Get Happy," whose lyrics - "Shout Hallelujah, c'mon get happy/We're goin' to the Promised Land" - evoked the story of Exodus, which held special meaning for both Jews and black Americans.

"Get Happy" was an enormous hit, and Arlen and Koehler soon found themselves on staff at the Cotton Club in Harlem, writing songs for its popular reviews. A show they scored in 1931 included the now-classic "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," and another in 1933 featured "Stormy Weather," sung by Ethel Waters to 12 encores. She would later say that "Stormy Weather" perfectly captured her own blue mood, calling it "the story of my misery and confusion, of the misunderstandings in my life I couldn't straighten out."

Arlen's music was not all misery and confusion, but his finest songs are far from happy. He and his lyricists found poignancy not only in thwarted love ("This Time the Dream's on Me"), but in barroom talk ("One for My Baby, and One More for the Road") and even show business ("It's Only a Paper Moon"). Frank Sinatra's classic renditions of Arlen and Ella Fitzgerald's "Harold Arlen Songbook/Volumes 1 and 2" capture his music in all of its sophisticated despair.

Like many artists of his time, Arlen felt the call of Hollywood. He moved West and began writing for the large studios. That allowed him to compose the "Wizard of Oz" score and a few other classics, along with a lot more forgettable contract work.

Many of his best songs are from his Harlem days. His biographer, Edward Jablonski, argues that a main reason Arlen's reputation is not greater was "his choice of well-paid obscurity in Hollywood" rather than trying to stick it out in New York.

Arlen was hardly the only Jewish composer of his time to draw on African-American music. Jerome Kern wrote "Show Boat," his musical about life and racial oppression on the Mississippi River, and George Gershwin tramped through the Gullah region of South Carolina to do research for "Porgy and Bess." But of all of them, Arlen seemed to have the deepest feeling for African-American culture, and the warmest personal relations with black musicians. Ethel Waters is said to have once called Arlen the "Negro-est" white man she knew.

Cultural critics, like Jeffrey Melnick, in his book "A Right to Sing the Blues," point to a variety of reasons Jewish composers may have been drawn to African-American music. Jews, particularly recent immigrants, may have seen a history of exclusion they could relate to. And they may have adopted the rural South as a metaphor for the small European villages, and simpler way of life, their own families had left behind. But racial crossover is fraught today. These same critics point out that there are inevitably questions of exploitation whenever, as in this case, the group doing the borrowing has more power.

Arlen, though, was not just appropriating. He was mixing several kinds of music to create something new, and wildly successful. Arlen songs like "Stormy Weather" and "I've Got the World on a String" made it to the top of the charts, and remain central to the popular musical canon today.

Yip Harburg, the Lower East Side-born lyricist who wrote the words for the Oz songs, once described Arlen's musical formula: he used "a combination of Hebrew and black music" to create something "typically American."

[Sundog]

Local Chicago jazz DJ, Dick Buckley, featured the songs of Arlen on his show this afternoon. Quite enjoyable!