And the Oscar for Best Original Song goes to…
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Over dinner before last night’s gig, I started to leaf through this book which I brought out with me (or rather, that V brought over with her, among other belongings that I’d requested):
It’s the sort of book which lends itself to being ‘leafed through’, too - a history of the Great American Songbook, or more specifically, of the men and women who wrote those songs.
Looking things up in the index, I started with a random song which I’m singing right now (well, not right now, obviously. They wouldn’t stand for that sort of thing in the Executive Lounge): ‘Cheek To Cheek’ by Irving Berlin. I discovered that it was nominated for the Best Original Song at the Oscars in 1935, but lost out to ‘Lullaby Of Broadway’ by Harry Warren and Al Dubin. A fact which apparently annoyed Berlin no end, as if it had been 1994, it would certainly have beaten ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight’ from The Lion King.
Learning this interesting jazz factoid, I then looked up ‘Oscars’ in the index - and decided to change my setlist for last night’s gig to make sure that it included a few songs which had won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. What with yesterday being the day of the Oscars, and all that.
It turned out to be a jolly good wheeze… I even got members of the (albeit small, Monday-night) audience to guess in which year the said songs won their Oscars. In the end, I did ‘Secret Love’ (1953), ‘Moon River’ (1961) and ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ (1936), as well as Berlin’s near-miss ‘Cheek To Cheek’.
I failed to include ‘Arthur’s Theme’ (1981), ‘Flashdance’ (1983) and ‘The Theme From Shaft‘ (1971), though all three were, naturally, tempting.
(PS. And if you’re as geeky as I am, then you might find this just as fascinating as I did.)
