But it’s a long, long while from May to December,
& the days grow short when you reach September.
The autumn weather turns the leaves to flame,
& I haven’t got the time for the waiting game.
Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few;
September, November. . .
& these few precious days I’ll spend with you,
These precious days I’ll spend with you.
Maxwell Anderson
1938
Maxwell Anderson was a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, author, poet, reporter, & lyricist. He wrote the Broadway musicals Knickerbocker Holiday & Lost in the Stars, both with scores by Kurt Weill; the plays The Bad Seed & Key Largo & the screen adaptations of Death Takes a Holiday & All Quiet On The Western Front.
Knickerbocker Holiday, which starred Walter Huston, John Huston’s father, Angelica’s grandfather, created a stir as both a romantic musical comedy & a thinly veiled allegory equating FDR’s New Deal with fascism. Anderson was a pacifist & an individualist anarchist. He saw the New Deal as another example of the concentration of political power which had given rise to both Nazism & Stalinism.
The most memorable about this creaky musical was September Song, which was sung Huston. Huston’s voice had such pathos & poignant prudence that his rendition became one of American musical theater’s legendary moments.
Much of the credit goes to the music. Kurt Weill, the German composer of the great TheThreepenny Opera, Happy End, The Rise & Fall of the City of Mahagonny, all with Bertolt Brecht’s lyrics, & Lady in the Dark, with Ira Gershwin lyrics, One Touch of Venus, with Ogden Nash doing lyrics, had emigrated to the USA 3 years earlier to escape the Nazis.
Weill’s score is a cheeky mix of darting drollery & smart, sanguine sentimentality. Ironically, producer Jean Dalrymple wrote that she was “a little disappointed in the score because it was so American, & nothing like The Threepenny Opera which I had gotten used to & loved. I felt shocked that he Americanized himself so quickly.”
Here, to start my September songs is perhaps my personal favorite, performed by the great Jimmy Durante in 1955.
Once in the 1980s, I snuck a look at my audition card for a musical. The director, choreographer & musical dirctor & stepped out of the theatre & I just took a peek. The card had 5 stars & the note: “ Terrific performer- a young Jimmy Durante”. I could not have not more pleased with a comparison.
In 1963, after decades of novelty & comedy songs on Broadway, films, & TV, Durante was invited to record a “serious” album of standards. He was uncertain about the project, but the resulting album, September Song, was in every way a success. It was Durante’s only album to enter the Top 40, & the title track made Billboard’s Top Pop 100. Mixing Durante’s unique voice with lush strings & a vocal chorus, September Song is a off-kilter masterpiece full of peerless performances. I find Durante to be an underestimated talent even if he was a technically deficent vocalist, but he aced this project with aplomb & created a piece of work very different from, but just as charming as, the comedy songs that had made him a star.
Knickerbocker Holiday, which starred Walter Huston, John Huston’s father, Angelica’s grandfather, created a stir as both a romantic musical comedy & a thinly veiled allegory equating FDR’s New Deal with fascism. Anderson was a pacifist & an individualist anarchist. He saw the New Deal as another example of the concentration of political power which had given rise to both Nazism & Stalinism.
The most memorable about this creaky musical was September Song, which was sung Huston. Huston’s voice had such pathos & poignant prudence that his rendition became one of American musical theater’s legendary moments.
Much of the credit goes to the music. Kurt Weill, the German composer of the great TheThreepenny Opera, Happy End, The Rise & Fall of the City of Mahagonny, all with Bertolt Brecht’s lyrics, & Lady in the Dark, with Ira Gershwin lyrics, One Touch of Venus, with Ogden Nash doing lyrics, had emigrated to the USA 3 years earlier to escape the Nazis.
Weill’s score is a cheeky mix of darting drollery & smart, sanguine sentimentality. Ironically, producer Jean Dalrymple wrote that she was “a little disappointed in the score because it was so American, & nothing like The Threepenny Opera which I had gotten used to & loved. I felt shocked that he Americanized himself so quickly.”
Here, to start my September songs is perhaps my personal favorite, performed by the great Jimmy Durante in 1955.
Once in the 1980s, I snuck a look at my audition card for a musical. The director, choreographer & musical dirctor & stepped out of the theatre & I just took a peek. The card had 5 stars & the note: “ Terrific performer- a young Jimmy Durante”. I could not have not more pleased with a comparison.
In 1963, after decades of novelty & comedy songs on Broadway, films, & TV, Durante was invited to record a “serious” album of standards. He was uncertain about the project, but the resulting album, September Song, was in every way a success. It was Durante’s only album to enter the Top 40, & the title track made Billboard’s Top Pop 100. Mixing Durante’s unique voice with lush strings & a vocal chorus, September Song is a off-kilter masterpiece full of peerless performances. I find Durante to be an underestimated talent even if he was a technically deficent vocalist, but he aced this project with aplomb & created a piece of work very different from, but just as charming as, the comedy songs that had made him a star.
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