About The Music Played Before Class

Music is listed in order in which it is played in class. There is often some (admittedly obscure) logical connection between the music choice and the subject of the class (but sometimes, it's just 'cause I feel like it). The links go to YouTube videos.

 

1) Indiana Jones Theme (Raider's March) John Williams, 1981. OK, so it's a pretty over the top way to start but it's good to pay homage to Raiders and Indiana Jones, movies that probably brought more students to anthropology and archaeology than the combined work of the top 50 scholars in the field (and a great example of the influence of film on culture). This piece has been instantly recognizable to most Americans for some 35 years. John Williams (born 1932) is probably the most successful film composer between the late 1970s and 2010. His credits include Star Wars, ET, Jurassic Park, and Harry Potter, not to mention NBC Sunday Night Football. Hear the version played in class here.

2) Still Alive: Jonathan Coulton/Ellen McLain. Music from the closing credits of Portal (video game)(2007). Portal 2 also had a closing song, but not as successfully (imho). I love the lyrics here. "Aperture Science: we do what we must because we can" is one of the most subtly sinister lines I know. See it here. Video games in general are now a major part of media art of all kinds. Awards for video game music began in the early 2000s with several different (and competing) organizations presenting them. Game music has been eligible for the Grammys since 2011. That year, Baba Yetu (from Civilization IV) won (the lyrics to that one are a Swahili translation of The Lord's Prayer).

3) My Freeze Ray: Neil Patrick Harris. From Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (2008). The song was written by Joss Whedon, who along with brothers Zack and Jed and Maurissa Tancharoen, wrote, produced, and directed the film. see it here. Dr. Horrible was an important moment in media. It was produced during the writers strike of 07-08, partly as an attempt to circumvent the networks and put power directly in the hands of writers. It was also an early entry into web based streaming entertainment. The success of Dr. Horrible was a proof of concept. It showed that there was a good audience for online only presentations and helped open the door for numerous other online shows.

4) Meglio Stasera: Henry Mancini, lyrics by Franco Migliacci, performed by Fran Jeffries from The Pink Panther (1963). See the clip here. Mancini (1924-1994) was one of the most popular composers for movies and TV in the 1960s and 1970s. His credits include music for well over 100 movies and TV shows. In addition to Pink Panther these include Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Days of Wine and Roses (1962) as well as TV shows like Peter Gunn (1958-1962). He had a long collaboration with Blake Edwards (1922-2010), who directed all the Pink Panther films and many others. The song Meglio Stasera had both Italian and English lyrics (the English ones by Johnny Mercer). The English ones seem corny today but both have the same message: "let's do it tonight." Fran Jeffries (1937-2016), who sings and dances in this clip, was kind of a "b-list" actor and model who appeared in a few other films and in Playboy. The Pink Panther was largely a vehicle for Peter Sellers (1925-1980), who creates the central character Inspector Clouseau (seen in the white sweater in the clip). The original Pink Panther film has not aged very well. However, the sequels that Sellers did in the 1970s, Return of the Pink Panther (1975), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) are comedy classics. Musically, the series is best known for The Pink Panther Theme, probably one of the best known movie themes of its era. It's used in all of the Pink Panther movies and in the TV cartoon series that ran from 1969-1976. Listen to one version here. Mancini wrote some great music. He recorded over 90 albums and won 20 Grammys. However, Mancini's music was also the super-bland elevator music of the 70s and 80s. I don't particularly recommend it, but for a taste of the music I grew up hating, click here for a version of the Pink Panther theme from the "easy listening" symphonic group 101 Strings. As that link shows, both the Pink Panther Theme and Meglio Stasera have been covered by many different artists. Sometimes I play a ska version of the Pink Panther theme. It is available here. It's from the Japanese band "Hi-Standard." BTW, in the movies, the pink panther was not an animal of any kind. It was a diamond of extraordinary beauty and value.

5) The Time Warp 1973/1975. Richard O'Brien (b. 1942) with Richard Hartley (b. 1944). The Rocky Horror Picture Show. O'Brien also plays Riff Raff (the male character who begins the song). O'Brien has had a long and varried career as an actor, presenter, and writer. He wrote numerous musicals after Rocky Horror but none were as successful. I don't know. Maybe Rocky Horror is past its "sell-by" date almost 45 years after its first release. But, the stage version is still pretty much always in production and the film is regularly shown in the US and overseas. If you sang along or lip-synced when this was played, I know all about you (not really). See it here. Rocky Horror is probably the most popular and best known "cult movie." Other entries in this genre include John Waters' Pink Flamingos (1972), Rob Reiner's This is Spinal Tap (1984), David Lynch's Eraserhead (1976), Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko (2001), and many more.

6) Theme from Police Squad/Naked Gun 1982/1988 Ira Newborn (born 1949). This is a complicated one. Newborn scored and wrote songs for lots of movies from the 80s and early 90s including Sixteen Candles (1984), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987). This piece of music was written for Police Squad a very short-lived television comedy series from 1982. Only six episodes were aired. However, in 1988 the show was remade as The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad. Two additional Naked Gun films followed in 1991 and 1994. A reboot (or sequel) has been in the works since about 2013 but no word on when of if that will actually happen. You can see the original 1988 Naked Gun opening sequence featuring the theme here (required). It's definitely dated but it's worth checking out because, among other things, it's a really simple special effects idea that works well.

However, the story is not finished because Newborn basically copied his Police Squad theme from the theme music from an early, more successful TV cop show: M Squad. M Squad ran for three seasons, 1958-1960. M Squad stared Lee Marvin as Lieutenant Frank Ballinger and was a serious cop show. Police Squad stared Leslie Nielsen as Lieutenant Frank Drebin and was basically a spoof based on it. You can see the two shows compared here. The link is set for you to watch the older show first. When that's finished, watch the first six and a half minutes of the video. Anyhow... the theme for M Squad was composed by the jazz great Count Basie (1904-1984, but performed by Stanley Wilson who wrote much of the other music for the show). You can hear the M Squad theme here (required). You'll immediately realize that the Police Squad theme is a direct homage.

Police Squad was written and directed by David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams. Their technique was to buy the right to an old, serious but kind of silly show and remake it as a comedy. The best example of this was the comedy film Airplane! (1980) which is an almost verbatim remake of the 1957 dramatic film Zero Hour! (which itself was an adaptation of the 1956 TV play Flight into Danger...welcome to Hollywood).

7) Theme from Psycho (1960): Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975). This is probably the most famous of all the musical compositions associated with Hitchcock's films. All the music for Psycho was written for a string orchestra. Herrmann thought of this as a way of reflecting the film's stark photography. Herrmann was a frequently collaborator with Hitchcock and also wrote the music for North by Northwest (1959), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo (1958). You can hear the whole thing (much longer than the part played in class) here. In addition to working with Hitchcock, Herrmann also wrote the music for the classic films Citizen Kane (1941), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Taxi Driver (1976), and many TV programs including Lost in Space (1965-1968), and Rawhide (1965).

8) Rosemary's Lullaby (Sleep Safe and Warm) (1968): Krzysztof Komeda (1931-1969). This was the theme music for Roman Polanski's 1968 Rosemary's Baby. A great piece for a horror film, it's sweet but deeply creepy. In the film, it's sung by Mia Farrow, who plays Rosemary (hear it here). Komeda was a jazz composer and pianist who worked extensively with Polanski, scoring four of his films between 1962 and 1968. Like Polanski, Komeda grew up in Poland where he was trained as a medical doctor. However, he had taken music lessons as a kid and by the late 1950s was playing jazz full time. By the mid 1960s he was one of the best known European jazz artists. He was killed in an accident at a drunken party in LA shortly after Rosemary's Baby appeared. Marek Hlasko, the deeply troubled Polish writer who had accidentally pushed Komeda to his death survived him by less than a year. Later that same year (1969), Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate (1943-1969), was murdered by the Manson family. Creepy enough for you?

As of Fall 2019, Polanski himself (b. 1933) is a fugative. In 1977, he was arrested for the sexual assault of a 13 year old girl. A plea bargin was arranged, but in 1978, not trusting that the judge would uphold the arrangement, Polanski fled the US. He has lived largely in Switzerland since and made some important movies including Tess (1979), and The Pianist (2002) for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director. However, after the 2018 #metoo movement, Polanski was expelled from the Academy. He later referred to #metoo as a form of "mass hysteria."

9) These are the Laws of my Administration (alternatively Just Wait Till I Get Through With It) (1933). Music by Bert Kalmar (1884-1947) and Harry Ruby (1895-1974), performed by Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont, from The Marx Brothers' 1933 movie Duck Soup. Kalmar and Ruby formed a songwriting team in 1918 that lasted until Kalmar's death in 1947. They wrote music for most of the Marx Brothers' movies and numerous others besides. Ruby was a particular friend of Groucho Marx and appeared several times on Groucho's 1950s TV show You Bet Your Life. The Kalmar Ruby partnership got its own movie, Three Little Words (1950). In Duck Soup, Groucho plays the new president of Fredonia and, in this number, explains what he intends to do. See the clip here. I don't know that Duck Soup really holds together as a movie. However, it's got some of the funniest and most famous comic bits of all time. It's only a bit over an hour long. If you've never seen it, you should. It was a modest success when it was released, but is now considered one of the greatest American comic films (but I think Night at the Opera (1935) is better).

10) Nonsense song from Modern Times (1936). Charlie Chaplin/Leo Daniderff. A historically interesting song. Modern Times was the last time Chaplin was to play the "Little Tramp" character. Like City Lights, it is essentially a silent movie with an embedded soundtrack. However, at the end of the movie, Chaplin sings this number. It's the only time the "Little Tramp" character vocalizes. Check it out here. The set-up is that Chaplin is a "singing waiter." He is supposed to perform a song. He has written the lyrics on his sleeve but loses them and so must make up the lyrics. It's a funny scene but also an important one: Chaplin has created the "Little Tramp" as an everyman character. Sound threatens this because speaking potentially identifies the "Little Tramp" as an American or Brit rather than universal. So, when the character finally speaks, Chaplin chooses to have him speak in gibberish, thus preserving his everyman character. Chaplin wrote much of the music for his movies. Of course, he wrote the gibberish lyrics for this song...but not the song itself. The song he actually sings is Je Cherche Apres Titine (I'm looking for Titine) a 1917 song, music by Leo Daniderff, original lyrics Bertal-Maubon (the songwriting team of Marcel Bertal 1882-1953 and Louis Maubon 1881-1957). The original lyrics are humorous but have nothing to do with the lyrics Chaplin gives it (or the ones written on the piece of paper he loses early in the scene). Here's a modern version of it by Yves Montand.

Here are the opening two verses of the song that Chaplin sings: Se bella gui satore/ Je notre so cafore/ Je notre si cavore/ Je la tu la ti la twa. La spinash o la bouchon/ Cigaretto portobello/ Si rakish spaghaletto/ Ti la tu la ti la twa. Quite a bit has actually been written about the song. If you'd like to see an extensive analysis of what it all might mean, check out Paul Matthew St. Pierre's Music Hall Mimesis in British Film, 1895-1960, which goes into it in great detail. For example, St. Pierre interprets "cigaretto portobello/ Si rakish spaghaletto" to mean "I feel bloated, life is a gamble." Look it up if you want to find out why St. Pierre says this. Me, I'm not too sure.

11) Don't You (Forget About Me) 1985. Simple Minds. This was played over the opening and closing of John Hughes 1985 film The Breakfast Club. It was written specifically for the movie by Keith Forsey (b. 1948)and Steve Schiff. Forsey wrote for many other movies including Flashdance, Ghostbusters, and Beverly Hills Cop. Forsey had trouble finding a band to record the song. Eventually, he settled on Simple Minds, a Scottish band almost completely unknown in the US. They were reluctant to record the song but "Don't You" made them an international sensation (and they still perform it). "Don't You" has been used many, many times in TV and the movies, both seriously and in parody. Here's "Don't You" at the end of Breakfast Club. Here it is in Family Guy. And here's the original Simple Minds video. The connection between "Don't You" and City Lights is pretty obvious.

12) Die Wacht am Rhein/La Marseillais 1942 from Casablanca. (Conrad Veit, Paul Heinreid, Madeleine Lebeau, Corinna Mura, many others). Certainly one of the greatest scenes from one of Hollywood's greatest movies (the author of this very detailed analysis argues that it it THE greatest scene). The scene begins with the German officers (led by Major Strausser, played by Conrad Veidt, one of the greatest stars of Weimar cinema...and incidentally Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) singing Die Wacht am Rhein, a particularly anti-French German patriotic song from the 19th century that includes lyrics like "Dear fatherland, no fear be thine." This is, of course, drowned out by the French refugees singing La Marseillais, the French National Anthem which begins "Arise children of the nation, the day of glory has arrived, tyrany's bloody banner is raised against us." Many of the people shown in this scene are actually French refugees from Nazism. Here's a link to the clip shown in class. Very interestingly, Die Wacht am Rhein was really more of a WWI song than a WWII song. However, that's easily explained by the fact that the director, Michael Curtiz pretty much stole the entire thing from Jean Renoir's 1937 film Grande Illusion which is set in WWI. That's OK. Grande Illusion is a great movie. However, Curtiz' Casablanca scene is, IMHO, far superior to Renoir's Grande Illusion scene.

13) I Wanna Be Loved by You (1959) Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, from Billy Wilder's film Some Like it Hot. Considered one of Marilyn Monroe's great performances. The song was written in 1928 by Kalmar and Ruby (who also wrote for the Marx Brothers, see "The Laws of My Administration" above), with Herbert Stothart for the Arthur Hammerstein Broadway Musical Good Boy (for any musical theater fans out there, Arthur Hammerstein (1872-1955) was the son of the theater producer and composer Oscar Hammerstein 1 (1846-1919) and the uncle of Oscar Hammerstein 2 (1895-1960) of Rodgers and Hammerstein fame). Good Boy starred Helen Kane, and I Wanna Be Loved became her signature song. You can hear her 1928 version of it here. Kane was the original "Boop-Boop-a-Doop girl" and one of the inspirations for the cartoon character Betty Boop (Kane sued Paramount over the character but lost). Here's I Wanna Be Loved as performed by Betty Boop. Kane probably took the "booping" from an African-American performer, Esther Jones (d. 1934), called "Baby Esther." Kane had almost certainly seen Baby Esther perform at the Cotton Club in New York. Clara Bow (1905-1965) was another source of the of the Betty Boop character. Bow was called "the 'it' girl" and has often been seen as the personification of 1920s flappers. Anyhow, by the time Marilyn performed the song in Some Like it Hot it had been covered by many other singers. Her performance, however, became the definitive one. Here's the clip shown in class.

14) Speak Softly, Love (love theme from The Godfather) (1972/1958) written by Giovani "Nino" Rota (1911-1979), performed by Carlos Savina. Speak Softly, Love proved incredibly popular. After the movie The Godfather, several different versions of the song appeared with lyrics in English, French, Italian, and Sicilian. Rota was an extremely prolific film composer. He worked with most of the most famous Italian directors of the 50s and 60s. He also wrote the music for Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet , including "A Time For Us" (you know, the movie song) which, in Henry Mancini's version, was a number one hit in the US in 1969. Speak Softly, love sounds serious and romantic but Rota had used more-or-less the same music but played upbeat, for the 1958 film Fortunella (and for that reasons, this piece was nominated and then disqualified for an Academy Award in 1973...but Rota did win the Academy Award in '74 for his score for Godfather Part II). You can hear The Godfather version, played in class, here and the Fortunella version here. The song's been covered by a really wide variety of artists. You can here Slash's version here.

15) Under Pressure 2010/1981 Queen/David Bowie (Keir Gilchrist, Zach Galifianakis). Under Pressure, the result of a 1981 collaboration between Queen and Bowie, was among the band's most popular songs. They performed it at every concert from '81 to the end of their touring career. It also proved to be one of those songs that finds a lot of use in the media. Here, it is lip-synced by Gilchrist and Galifianakis in the 2010 movie It's Kind of a Funny Story (shown in class, see it here). However, it also appears in a wide variety of other films including Robin Williams World's Greatest Dad (2009) see it here, Grosse Point Blank (1997) see it here, not to mention the trailer for Minions (2015) see it here. It's also been used in many different TV shows.

16) Theme from Streetcar Named Desire 1951. Alex North (1910-1991). Hear it here. It was one of the first jazz themes in the movies. North composed music for numerous films in the 1950s and 1960s. These included Viva Zapata!, Sparticus, The Misfits, and many others. Famously, he was commissioned to write the music for Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey but Kubrick didn't like the work and rejected it. North pioneered the integration of jazz and classical themes in music. He collaborated frequently with Ennio Morricone (b. 1928), another great of his era. North was nominated for an Academy Award 15 times but never won. He was eventually given a Lifetime Achievement award. You may never have heard of North, but you're certainly familiar with some of his music. Here's one you may have heard.

17) Well, Did You Evah! 1990/1956/1939 Iggy Pop (b. 1947) and Deborah Harry (b. 1945). Another song with an interesting back story. Well, Did You Evah! was written by Cole Porter (1891-1964) for the for the 1939 Broadway musical Du Barry Was a Lady, in which it was sung by Betty Grable and Charles Walters (here's something like the original). In 1943, the play was remade as a musical film (from the M-G-M Freed Unit) which included a shortened version of the song. The song was re-written and revived in the 1956 musical film High Society in which it is performed by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra (see it here). The Crosby/Sinatra duet became the best known version. Since the 1950s, the song's been covered by a wide variety of artists. The Iggy Pop and Deborah Harry version shown in class was done for Red Hot + Blue (1990), an HIV/AIDS benefit album that consisted of then current artists doing covers of Cole Porter songs. Here's the video from class. If you're not familiar with Cole Porter, he was probably the greatest song writer of the 1930s. All told, he wrote more than 800 songs, many of them truly classics. Porter's songs have been covered by many, many artists. My favorite covers are probably those Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) did in the 1950s. Here's Anything Goes and Let's Do It. Of course, the reason for Red Hot + Blue was that Porter was a (lightly) closeted gay man. He was also married to Linda Lee Thomas (1883-1954) for 34 years (until her death). She was very aware of his sexuality but they were extremely close. Here's Ella again singing Always True To You (In My Fashion).

18) Public Jitterbug No. 1 Betty Hutton. Musical shorts were common in the 1930s and 1940s. This one dates from 1938 and stars Betty Hutton. The plot is pretty terrible (the government is trying to stamp out the jitterbug) but it's really just a set up for Hutton to sing this song. Hutton went on to become one of the great stars of the 1940s and 1950s. She appeared in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), Annie Get Your Gun (1950), and Somebody Loves Me (1952). She briefly had her own television show, The Betty Hutton Show in 1959-1960. You can find this YouTube video here.

19) Non, je ne regrette rien. Edith Piaf (Marion Cotillard) 1956/1959/2007. Non, je ne regrette rien was perhaps Piaf's best known song. Originally written in 1956, it was a huge hit for her in 1959. Piaf dedicated the song to the French Foreign Legion (under some pretty dubious circumstances) and the song is sung whenever the Legion is on parade. The clip shown before class is from La Vie en Rose, a 2007 film about Piaf. Marion Cotillard stars as Piaf and here lip syncs the song. Cotillard won the Oscar for best actress in a leading role for her performance in this film (see the film if you can). It was the first time a best actress Oscar had been given for a performance in French. You can read the lyrics to the song in French and English as well as a blurb about it here. As with many of these songs, Non, je ne regrette rien has been covered by many artists. Here's a folk/country one by Emmylou Harris (with changed lyrics). I suggest you don't listen to it! Cotillard lip-synced for good reason: Piaf's voice is so integral to the song that there can only be one real version of it.

20) Hooked on a feeling (2014/1974/1968) Blue Swede. Hooked on a Feeling is a pop favorite that's been revived repeatedly since it first came out in '68. It was written by Mark James (b. 1940) who also wrote for Elvis Presley and others. Mark James songs include "Always on my Mind," and "It's Only Love." Hooked on a Feeling was first recorded by B. J. Thomas (b. 1942) in 1968 and Hooked was an (almost) immediate success. But the B.J. Thomas version featured sitar and doesn't sound much like the Guardians of the Galaxy version. The ooga chaka sounds were added in the 1971 version by the British singer Jonathan King (b. 1944). King's version was successful. However, the version that really took off is by Blue Swede a Swedish band that was only around for a couple years in the mid 1970s. Their version was a #1 hit in 1974 and has been repeatedly revived, not only by Guardians but also in Reservoir Dogs (1992), the TV show Ally McBeal (1998 and after, in the form of the Dancing Baby,) and numerous other places. Here's the clip played in class.

21) Main theme to The Magnificent Seven Elmer Bernstein, 1960. Bernstein (1922-2004) was one of the best known film composers of his era. He wrote the music for The Magnificent Seven, The Ten Commandments, The Great Escape, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ghostbusters and numerous others. The Magnificent Seven was based on the Kurosawa film The Seven Samurai. This particular theme became strongly associated with the idea of the American West and has been used in various samplings in many places. From 1963 until 1971 (when all such commercials were banned), it was also used in Marlboro cigarette commercials and was heavily identified with that brand. Hear it here.

22) Summer. Joe Hisaishi (Mamoru Fujisawa). 1999. The opening theme from Takeshi Kitano's film Kikujiro no Natsu (Kikujiro's Summer). Hear it here. Hisaishi (b. 1950), is one of Japan's best known film composers and musical directors with well over 100 credits. You've almost certainly heard his work before since he scored almost all of Hayao Miyazaki films (and if you've seen any Japanese animated film at all it's likely that seen Miyazaki's work which includes such classics as Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service...). These write-ups are about the music but I should also mention Takeshi Kitano (b. 1947), the director of Kukujiro. Kitano (also known as Beat Takeshi) is an exceptional talent. Originally an extremely popular comedian, Kitano has had an extensive career as a television personality, director, author, actor, and screenwriter. For Kukujiro he's the director, writer, and star. Back to Joe Hisaishi...fun trivia: He took his professional name from Quincy Jones (b. 1933), the great African-American music producer (and another man of many talents). How do you get from Quincy Jones to Joe Hisaishi? Well, the Kanji for Hisaishi (久石) can also be pronounced "kuishi" which is pretty close to Quincy. Now also please remember that in Japan (as, actually, in most of the world), last names are normally given first.

23) Video about Carl Stalling (1891-1972). Stalling was the composer and arranger for most of the Warner Brothers cartoons. He was the son of German immigrants and by age 12 was playing in silent movie houses. He was an early friend of Walt Disney and moved to California to write music for the early Disney cartoons. Working at Disney, he invented a system to synchronize music and film. Stalling was at Disney only a few years. In 1936, he moved to Warner Brothers where he did the music for both Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Stalling remained at Warner's until his retirement in 1958. He was succeeded by Milt Franklyn (1897-1962), who had been his assistant for many years, so the sound of Warner's cartoons remained more or less unchanged for a few more years. Stalling and Franklyn really created the sound that we associate with cartoons in general. They invented musical ideas that are now cliche. They relied heavily on classical music and on music from Warner Brothers films (to which Warner's owned the copyright). See the video shown in class here.

24) Mustang Sally. Andrew Strong 1991/1965. Mustang Sally played a critical part in the 1991 film The Commitments. Strong, as you see him in this clip is just shy of his 17th birthday (class film clip here). He was nominated for a Grammy for this performance and went on to a considerable career, touring with Prince, Elton John, Bryan Adams, The Rolling Stones, and others. He also released several albums of his own. Mustang Sally is, of course, classic R&B, originally written and recorded by Mack Rice (his version here). The version that most people know is almost certainly Wilson Pickett's 1966 hit (his version here). However, the song's been covered by many other people. Here's blues great Buddy Guy doing his version.

25) Just Dropped In (To See What Condition my Condition Was In). Kenny Rogers and The First Edition. (1998/1968). Just Dropped in was written by Mickey Newbury, author of many, many pop/country songs. It was covered by a wide variety of people (hear original Teddy Hill version here, and the Jerry Lee Lewis version here, and a more recent version by the Norwegian band The Launderettes here). However, the hit version was done by Kenny Rogers in 1968. Just Dropped in was one of a series of popular druggie songs from the 1960s. Some others of the era: The Crystal Ship (The Doors, 1967), Mother's Little Helper (The Stones 1966), White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane 1967), and Eight Miles High (The Byrds 1966). Just Dropped In was, I think, mostly forgotten when in 1998 it was brought back by the Coen brothers for the film The Big Lebowski. You can see the dream sequence from that film (shown in class) here.

26) Jumpin Jive. Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers 1943. From Stormy Weather (1943). The Nicholas Brothers, Fayard (1914-2006) and Harold (1921-2000) might have been the greatest Hollywood dancers of all time. They grew up in Philadelphia, the sons of Ulysses and Viola Nicholas, musicians who performed for black vaudeville theaters. Fayard, Harold, and their sister Dorothy grew up in the theater and interacted with the great African-American stars of their day. The three Nicholas children started dancing together but Dorothy soon dropped out of the act. In 1932, the family moved to Harlem where the brothers became an immediate sensation, performing at the Cotton Club with Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne and others. They began appearing in films at about this time. Their film appearances are spectacular. However, because they were black, there were almost never given significant roles. They appear in "specialty" numbers, generally unconnected to the plot. Stormy Weather, loosely based on the life of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, was somewhat of an exception. It was a film designed to showcase black talent for white audiences. The white dancers Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly were both big fans of the brothers. Astaire called the Stormy Weather sequence the greatest dance ever put on film. Kelly fought to work with them...and succeeded, sort of. Kelly and the brothers dance together in The Pirate (1948) in a famous sequence ("Be a Clown"). However, this scene was removed from the prints of the film that were shown in southern states. Harold, fed up with American racism, left the country in the 1950s and performed extensively in Europe. He returned in the 1960s and the brothers continued to perform in the 1970s and 1980s. They also taught at Harvard and Radcliffe and received numerous honors. Their best known students: Janet and Michael Jackson. See the clip shown in class here.

Cab Calloway (1907-1994) was one of the great jazz band leaders of the 1930s and 40s. Like the Nicholas Brothers, Calloway was from the African-American elite. His mother was a teacher and church organist, his father a lawyer. They wanted him to be a lawyer as well but recognized his musical talents. Aided by his older sister Blanche, he moved to Chicago, started school at Crane (now Malcolm X) College but was increasingly committed to show business and soon left school. Calloway's career was extremely long and varied. He learned scat singing from Louis Armstrong, led the house band at the Cotton Club during the Harlem Renaissance, appeared in movies starting in the 30s and continuing up to the 80s, and played on Broadway, most notably in Porgy and Bess in 1952 (in a cast that included Maya Angelou) and in Hello Dolly! in 1967. Here he is performing one of his signature songs, Minnie the Moocher in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers. It's an amazing performance considering that Calloway was in his 70s, but, truly none of the musical performances in Blues Brothers are very good. If you want to see how Calloway performed the piece in his prime, here he is doing the song in the 50s. And here he is performing Jump Jive for the two headed monster on Sesame Street in 1981.

27) Another Day of Sun. Ensemble from La La Land. The spectacular opening sequence from La La Land (2016) was filmed on location on a 130 foot high ramp at the intersection of the 110 and the 105 in South LA. The music is by Justin Hurwitz (b. 1985) who also wrote the music director Damien Chazelle's other films including Whiplash (2014). Lyrics are by the songwriting team Pasek and Paul (Benj Pasek b. 1985 and Justin Paul b. 1985) whose other works include A Christmas Story, The Musical (2010) and James and the Giant Peach (2010). Much of the singing is dubbed. Angela Parrish, who never appears in the film, provides the lead female vocals. You can see her playing and singing the song here (not great quality). You can see the clip from class here. I really love this number but it's also great fodder for parody. Here's one good one. Here's one used for the opening of the Golden Globe award with Jimmy Fallon and Tina Faye.

Not shown this semester) Cocktails for Two. Spike Jones and his City Slickers (Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow) 1944/ 1934. Cocktails for Two was originally written for the 1934 movie Murder at the Vanities and was covered by many bands. The first really famous version was by Duke Ellington in 1934 (hear it here). Numerous other versions followed.

Spike Jones (Lindley Armstrong Jones 1911-1965) was a percussionist who was bored with his work and, with a group of similarly minded folks, started doing parodies that featured nonsense words and sounds such as gunshots, bells, and raspberries. He first became known for the 1942 recording Der Fuehrer's Face, released as a Disney cartoon in 1943. Cocktails for Two (version shown in class here) was a big hit for Jones (though the original artists didn't appreciate that). Jones plays the bartender in the short.

Jones went on to great success in the later 1940s and 1950s with parodies of other popular songs and of classical music (here's his version of the William Tell Overture). He had a radio show from 1947-1949 and a television show that appeared sporadically in the 50s and early 60s. He made numerous appearance in films and on TV. Jones had a strong influence on many comics and musicians from the 1960s to the present including P.D.Q Bach, Frank Zappa, Weird Al Yankovic, and many others. Spike Jonze (born Adam Spiegel) the director of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Her was named for him (well, he took the name when he was in highschool).

Despite all this acclaim, I'm not really sure that Jones' work holds up well today. Looking back from a half century and more's distance, I think that Allan Sherman was far more important. Sherman (1924-1973), a TV writer and producer, wrote and performed often brutal parodies. He wrote new lyrics to pop songs and classics. Here's an example and here's another. He enjoyed a brief moment of extreme popularity in the 1960s. His best known song, Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh, set to a famous piece of classical music, was a #2 hit in 1963 (that the piece is still popular [maybe partially due to its being referenced on The Simpsons] is shown by the fact that the YouTube video of it has more than 3.5 million hits).

Sherman did parodies of many, many pop songs of his era. However, their authors did not appreciate his humor and he was repeatedly sued by powerful artists and rights holders. The lawsuits ended his singing career, pushed him into poverty, and probably contributed to both his alcoholism and his early death (he was only 49). However, he won the cases against him. And these cases established the now unquestioned rights of artists to do parodies.

Not shown this semester) Officer Krupke. "The Jets" 1961/1957. From the musical film West Side Story. The film was based on the Broadway show that appeared a few years earlier in '57. Arguably the most enduring musical of its era, West Side Story was a musical version of Romeo and Juliet set among street gangs in contemporary (late 1950s) New York City. The music was composed by Leonard Bernstein, the lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Bernstein was music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra when the film appeared and became perhaps the best known classical musician in the US. Stephen Sondheim went on to become one of Broadways most successful composers and lyricists. His works include Into The Woods, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George, and Sweeny Todd. I generally prefer to play this in class without the film clip. IMHO, the lyrics have aged well, but the styles of costuming and choreography in the 1961 film have not. You can see the clip from the film here. West Side Story in general and this song in particular has been done by about a million community theater groups, high schools, glee clubs and so on. Here's a far better than average 2014 staging of the song from Stratford High School in Houston. It gives you an idea what a current day setting of the song might look like.