The Greatest Song Of All Time (Except for a Couple of Others)

Thanks to the devious Charlie for coining that phrase, because it means you can make a grand statement without having to defend it. You can declare your love today and change your mind tomorrow. You can be definitive and indecisive at the same time! Which, after all, is the definition of being a Lemming.

So, today I submit to you that "My Romance" is the GSOAT(EFACOO).

Here are some random facts (remember I don't have to prove my case thanks to Charlie):

It was written by Rodgers & Hart for the 1935 musical Jumbo, one of those old-time Broadway extravaganzas where they actually built a circus tent inside the old Hippodrome. Very few people remember that show anymore. They had it at Tams-Witmark Music Library when I worked there, but nobody ever rented it. Probably because it requires a live elephant.

Warren talked about it in a 1986 letter to the WOctet: "Jumbo is vintage Rodgers with two wonderful ballads, My Romance and Little Girl Blue (O.K. for male voices, as Sinatra proved) and two great waltzes The Most Beautiful Girl in the World and the trapeze opener, Over and Over Again, an Octet favorite when I arranged it in the 1940s." (click on the songs to hear various versions.) 

It has been recorded by everyone from James Taylor to Dave Brubeck to the Supremes, but it didn't really enter Lemmings consciousness until Paul brought home a Best of the Hi-Lo's record. Paul says, "I bought it on a browsing expedition at the huge Tower Records on Broadway near Astor Place. It was the album with Skylark, My Romance, Beginning to See the Light, I Thought About You, Stars Fell in Alabama, Birth of the Blues, etc." (Remember Tower Records?!)

The Hi-Lo's

For those who don't know the Hi-Lo's, they were a vocal quartet started in the 50s that featured the impossibly spiky semi-deranged arrangements of Gene Puerling. For the Lemmings, those arrangements were like a dare. Like I dare you to sing these and not sound like a total train wreck, you timid woodland creatures, you.

 

Timid Woodland Creatures

So, like idiots, we took that dare and decided to try "My Romance" at our 2nd Annual Farewell Concert in 1993. We ain't no Hi-Lo's, but no trains were wrecked either. Here 'tis.

Maybe I should have called it the GAOAT(EFACOO) where the first A stands for Arrangement. Or for Awesomeness. But whatever. I didn't set out to do a whole thing on that song, but when the totieness starts flowing.... it's hard to contain. Damn you, totie DNA!

POLL RESULTS: It's that same DNA that led us to pick "How Deep Is The Ocean" as our favorite song stolen from the Octet folio (click title to hear). No surprise there. So, this week... something less obvious: best Lemmings haircut. If you have or know someone who has hair, vote above on the right.

Then shut.