(above) header tab 5 generation browse demonstration: Page Index > Songbook site index > Songwriter > Songwriters to 1954 > Berlin, Irving > Berlin pages (11) — correction: The page Irving Berlin: selected songs of 1909 and 1910is now included in the Berlin drop down index.
It was one of Engelbert Humperdinck’s biggest hits, spending five weeks at #1 on the UK Singles Chart, from September 1967 to October 1967, and has since sold over 1.17 million copies in the United Kingdom.[3][4]
International charts for the Humperdinck single, from Wikipedia:
Engelbert Humperdinck — issued in the UK on the single Decca F 12655*, b/w “That Promise” (Gordon Mills)
.
Some versions available in video libraries, such as the following, seem to have echo added
.
Adapted from Wikipedia:
Recordings of a French-language version, titled “La dernière valse,” were released by Mireille Mathieu and Petula Clark in 1967. Mireille Mathieu’s version spent three weeks at number one in the French pop charts, and was also a hit in Britain, reaching #26. Petula Clark’s version entered the French charts in February 1968 and reached number two[7] but did not chart in the UK.
The songwriting/production team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David had been struck by Dionne Warwick’s work as a session singer on The Drifters’ “Mexican Divorce” in February 1962 and subsequently Warwick had regularly vocalized on demos of compositions by that Bacharach/David team, beginning with the song “Make It Easy on Yourself.” Florence Greenberg, owner of the Scepter Records label, had signed Warwick after hearing her voice on the demo for “It’s Love that Really Counts” although Greenberg did not wish to release that song as a single by Warwick (“It’s Love That Really Counts” was given to the Shirelles to serve as a B-side); Greenberg also rejected “Make It Easy on Yourself” which was subsequently placed with Jerry Butler, which would become a charted hit recording. Warwick had hoped “Make It Easy on Yourself” would serve as her recording debut.
Upon learning from Bacharach and David the label didn’t think her style was correct for their new song, and that Jerry Butler was selected for recording it, a keenly disappointed Warwick felt used, manipulated and exploited, and dismissed the team’s assurance of writing her an equally viable song in her own style. According to a Biography cable television episode on Burt Bacharach, Warwick responded by shouting, in [sic] nearly in crying rant, at the songwriters as she left the recording studio: “Don’t make me over, man . . . (you have to) accept me for what I am”. Bacharach and David looked at each other in the moment, in stunned disbelief, at her youthful outburst at them. David said to Bacharach: “Burt, I think we just heard the title of a new song”. David, never to waste life’s circumstances and moments as inspiration for a song, in fact went to work on lyrics and utilized Warwick’s authentic energetic outburst as the title and sentiment for “Don’t Make Me Over”, shifting the meaning of the phrase to “Accept me as I am”.[1]
With the song composition completed, “Don’t Make Me Over” was recorded under Bacharach and David’s guidance by Warwick at Bell Studios in August 1962. The production, at the time, was a recording industry departure, and represented a new, powerful, often-soaring orchestral-choir framing of Bacharach’s melodies with David’s either forceful or tender lyrics around the bold, fresh soulful female voice of the young Dionne Warwick—an original sound—the new Bacharach-David style of recording had been coined for the listening public. Florence Greenberg initially disliked the unconventional new sound. The witty Bacharach recalls Greenberg “cried upon hearing it, and not because she loved the recording” – and another track from the same recording session: “I Smiled Yesterday”, was the official A-side of Warwick’s debut single with “Don’t Make Me Over” relegated to the B-side. However, it was “Don’t Make Me Over” that would be the hit single that broke initially in heavy rotation on San Francisco radio upon the record’s October 1962 release, and under this title, Warwick’s single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 dated 8 December 1962, to rise as high as #21 – #5 R&B – in January 1963.
Dionne Warwick – recorded in August 1962, and issued in October 1962 on Scepter 1239 as the B-side of “I Smiled Yesterday” (Bacharach & David); chart success: #21, Hot 100
.
(below) 1963 lip-sync performance for unknown television show
This Guy’s in Love With You (m. Burt Bacharach, w. Hal David)
From the History section of the Wikipedia page on “This Guy’s in Love With You”:
As documented in a Biography cable episode featuring Bacharach, the recording originated when [Herb] Alpert asked Bacharach, “Say, Burt, do you happen to have any old compositions lying around that you and Hal never recorded; maybe one I might use?” Alpert said he made it his practice to ask songwriters that particular question; often a lost “pearl” was revealed. As it happened, Bacharach recalled one, found the lyrics and score sheet, and offered it to Alpert: “Here, Herb … you might like this one.”
Alpert saw the possibilities in it for himself. The composition had a recognizable Bacharach-David feel, a spot for a signature horn solo in the bridge and in the fadeout, and it was an easy song to sing within Alpert’s vocal range. He originally sang “This Guy’s in Love with You” on a 1968 television special, The Beat of the Brass.
A brief description of the song’s genesis given by Burt Bacharach, however, differs markedly from the story reportedly told by Alpert in the aforementioned Biography episode. Referring to the Herb Alpert special and the request for the song, Bacharach, in an interview conducted by Ken Sharp and published at popentertainment.com on 24 July 2006, said:
It was a television show. Herb was very hot and his band, The Tijuana Brass was very hot. I was signed to A&M as an artist. There were great guys running the record company, Herb and Jerry (Moss). They asked me to do it, to write a song with Hal David, come in and write the arrangement and conduct the orchestra. I did it as a favor.
The composer says nothing about digging into his chest of unused manuscripts to magically pick out a neglected gem. He specifically says that the song was written in response to a request by the heads of A&M, Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss.
Hal David’s recollection of the song’s creation, on the other hand, while not explicitly confirming the version of events provided by Alpert, is at least compatible with it. According to Songfacts.com, in the book Bacharach by Michael Brocken (full title Bacharach: Maestro! The Life of a Pop Genius, published in 2003), David is quoted saying:
He wanted to do our song on a TV special he was doing. It was a song he was going to sing to his wife, and the lyric was not quite appropriate for what he wanted to say. He asked us whether we could change it so it would fit what he needed. And I did; and he did it on the show and got a terrific reaction and recorded it. And it turned out to be a stunning hit!
Wikipedia says,
[Herb Alpert] originally sang “This Guy’s in Love with You” on a 1968 television special, The Beat of the Brass. In response to numerous viewer telephone calls following the broadcast, Alpert decided that the song should be released as a single recording, and it reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart in June of that year, remaining in the top position for four weeks.
Songfacts agrees partially with the Wikipedia article, but adds questionable details, saying:
Alpert sang this to his first wife in a 1968 TV special called The Beat of the Brass. The sequence was taped on the beach in Malibu. The song was not intended to be released, but after it was used in the TV special, thousands of telephone calls to CBS asking about it convinced label owner Alpert to release it as a single two days after the show aired.
The Songfacts description is factually inaccurate on at least two points:
1. In the The Beat of the Brass segment, Alpert is shown singing to his wife only during the first minute and a quarter of the song sequence, from about 0:37 to 1:14, and not at all in its final 3 minutes. The parts of the sequence filmed on the beach don’t appear until over 3 minutes into the song. Earlier parts may have been filmed in Malibu Creek State Park or in one of the numerous other scenic parks in the Santa Monica Mountains, but they weren’t shot on or near a beach.
2. The single was not released “two days” after the show aired. According to IMDb, the airdate of the TV special was 22 April 1968. The single was issued in May, and according to BacharachOnline.com’s list of Bacharach hit recordings, entered the Hot 100 chart on 18 May 1968. A note on the page on the single at 45cat.com, “BB May 11, 1968,” suggests that notice of its release may have been published in Billboard magazine that week, one week before it broke onto the Billboard pop singles chart.
Herb Alpert provides an interesting detail regarding a modification he made to the Bacharach arrangement in a recent interview conducted by Marc Myers, and published under the title “Herb Alpert Readies New Album” in the Arena section of the Wall Street Journal, dated “updated September 23, 2014.” The exchange:
Myers: In 1968, you recorded “This Guy’s In Love With You.” Why did it work?
Alpert: You have to start with a great song. I asked Burt Bacharach, a friend, if he and Hal David had a song for me. He gave me this one and wrote the orchestral arrangement. He was even in the studio when I recorded it. I wanted this two-second pause between my vocal and my trumpet solo. Burt said, “Oh, man, you can’t do that. Take it out.” I thought it felt good and wanted to keep it. Burt didn’t think the gap was radio-wise. I thought a pause would be a dramatic and sensitive way to segue from the vocal to the horn. Actually, my vocal on the record was supposed to be the demo, just to see if it was in the right key. But when we listened to the playback, the musicians said, “Don’t touch it.” I agreed.
Herb Alpert — from the Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass TV special The Beat of the Brass, which aired on 22 April 1968
.
Herb Alpert – single issued in May 1968 on A&M 929, backed with “A Quiet Tear (Lagrima Quieta)” — The performance of the music on the B-side is credited to Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, but Alpert is the lone credited performer on the A-side.
BacharachOnline.com’s list of Bacharach hit recordings indicates that the single entered the Hot 100 chart on 18 May 1968. It rose to #1 on the week of 22 June 1968 and remained atop the chart for four consecutive weeks. The recording was also included as a track on the band’s 1968 album The Beat of the Brass, released in the same month as the single.
Conflicting reports regarding the year the song was recorded by Thelma Houston, and whether it was released by Motown in the US:
Labels of the New Zealand single displayed at 45cat.com, Discogs.com, and SwissCharts.com bear the date 1973. A note in the Discogs.com page on the single says, “Originally scheduled for U.S. release in late 1973 as Motown M-1260, but apparently cancelled. As far as I know, New Zealand is the only country where this single was released.”
In its Thelma Houston page, soulwalking.co.uk appears to be three years off on the date of the original single:
Thelma’s 1976 version of the song ‘Do You Know Where You’re Going To’ was set to be released, however, the song was given to Diana Ross as part of the movie soundtrack for the film ‘Mahogany’.
In the comments section of an article on the song at SongFacts.com, John in Nashville, Tennessee, says,
“Do You Know Where You’re Going To” was originally recorded by Motown artist Thelma Houston in 1973. Her version was released as Motown single #1260.
In a post featuring the Mahogany soundtrack version with the revised lyric, recorded in 1975 by Diana Ross, blogger Abagond says,
“Do You Know Where You’re Going To” had been kicking around at Motown for years. Thelma Houston was about to do it as a single but then it was given to Diana Ross to use as the theme song for her film “Mahogany” (1975). Thus the strange two-part name. It became one of those theme songs that are more famous than the film itself.
Thelma Houston’s recording of the song is included in the Motown Records singles discography at Global Dog Productions (GDP) as Motown 1260, b/w “Together,” dated July 1973. I’ve used GDP’s discographies periodically over the past couple of years, and have not previously noticed it to be their practice to report in their lists, undifferentiated from verifiable releases, scheduled releases that were cancelled. However, being cancelled is what some of the major discography sites such as Discogs.com and Second Hand Songs report happened to Motown 1260.
The existence of a published catalog number, and the fact that I’ve yet to see or hear of any evidence of a Motown 1260 disc or label, together suggest that a U.S. single release was planned, assigned a catalog number, probably announced in notices, but cancelled. A less likely scenario, one which might help explain the inclusion in the GDP discography, is that a limited number of singles were issued before the record was withdrawn from the market.
.
(below) In 2009, Thelma Houston performs “Do You Know Where You’re Going To” using the original 1973 lyric, with a few minor modifications
.
Lyric, 1973 version
The Sections I’ve numbered 3 and 4 are heavily rewritten in the 1975 (Diana Ross) version, with only a couple of lines having any resemblance to the the lines they replace. The lines about “Stony Brook” (University, presumably) in section 3 of the 1973 version indicate that the first person, the narrative speaker, is rather down on the institution. While “just hanging out” there, she and the second person (the “you” to whom the monologue is directed) had “had a look,” and having done so the first person concludes that they’d now “seen what nothing’s about.” Section 4 doesn’t slam any places of higher learning, but its relation to the rest of the lyric is far from clear.
_______________
“Do You Know Where You’re Going To?” lyric by Gerry Goffin, 1973 Thelma Houston version — transcribed by doc on 9 June 2014:
1 Do you know where you’re going to Do you like the things that life is showing you Where are you going to Do you know
2 Do you get what you’re hoping for When you look behind you there’s no open doors What are you hoping for Do you know
3 Sometimes while standing still in time You think you’ll live the thoughts that fill your mind Now we’ve both been to Stony Brook, just hanging out We’ve had a look and seen what nothing’s about
repeat 1
4 Now, what am I to say to you What kind of prayer am I to pray for you I can only do my best and tell you what I see And if you see the rest, please send it to me
repeat 1 & 2
_______________
Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To?)(m. Michael Masser, w. Gerry Goffin) — 1975 version
From the chapter “Forget Diana,” of the book Diana Ross: A Biography (2014) by J. Randy Taraborelli, page 295:
In September 1975, “Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To?)” was released. Prior to its release Berry Gordy and Michael Mass, who also composed the soundtrack to the film argued over the mix– the actual sound of the recording. Berry wanted one version released, Michael another. As a last resort to get his way, Michael sneaked in to the recording studio and erased a portion of the version Berry preferred, thereby causing his (Masser’s) version to actually be released. It was a clever trick on Michael’ part, and Berry wasn’t pleased about it at the time. Since then, he’s learned to laugh about it, especially since Michael’s version went straight to number one on the pop charts. It remains one of Diana Ross’s most popular songs. Her performance on it was imaginative and compelling and set the stage beautifully for the release of the movie.
Diana Ross — Motown M 1377F, issued on 24 September 1975, b/w “No One’s Gonna Be A Fool Forever” (Michael Masser, Pam Sawyer) — chart peaks: #1 Hot 100 (1 week, 24 January 1976), and #1 Easy Listening (1 week, 6 December 1975)
Let’s Face the Music and Dance(Irving Berlin) was originally registered for copyright as an unpublished song on 14 June 1935.* It was introduced in the musical film Follow the Fleet (1936) in a production number in which the song is sung by Fred Astaire (Bake Baker) to Ginger Rogers (Sherry Martin), followed by a dance sequence by the pair.
There may be trouble ahead
But while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance
Let’s face the music and dance
Before the fiddlers have fled
Before they ask us to pay the bill
And while we still have the chance
Let’s face the music and dance
Soon
We’ll be without the moon
Humming a diff’rent tune
And then
There may be teardrops to shed
So while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance
Let’s face the music and dance, dance
Let’s face the music and dance
“Let’s Face the Music and Dance“: Astaire sings this to Rogers after which the dance begins slowly and culminates in a static exit pose. The dance is filmed in one continuous shot lasting two minutes and fifty seconds. During the first take, Ginger’s dress, which was heavily weighted so as to achieve a controlled swirling action, hit Astaire in the face[7] midway through the routine, though the effect is barely discernible. He nonetheless selected[8] this take out of twenty overall for the final picture.
The set – designed by Carroll Clark under the direction of Van Nest Polglase – is frequently cited as a leading example of Art Deco-influenced art direction known as Hollywood Moderne. Film clips of this routine were featured in the 1981 film Pennies from Heaven – detested by Astaire,[9] – where it was also reinterpreted by Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters with revised choreography by Danny Daniels.
full number (almost)
.
from the beginning of the vocal sequence — mirror image (to be replaced)
Carolina in the Morning(m.Walter Donaldson, w. Gus Kahn)
The song had its debut in the Broadway musical revue The Passing Show of 1922 at the Winter Garden Theater, which opened on 20 September 1922, and closed after 85 performances on 2 December 1922. Vaudeville performers incorporated the song into their acts and helped popularize it. Notable recordings when the song was new were made by such artists as Marion Harris, and Van and Schenck.*
Other artists to have later successes with the song included Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Jimmy Durante, Dinah Shore, Judy Garland, and Danny Kaye. In 1957, Bill Haley & His Comets recorded a rock and roll version.
.
The original 1922 lyrics (now public domain in the United States due to age) are given below. The chorus remains well known, but the verses have generally been omitted from vocal performances since the early years of the song’s popularity. The verses give a hint of melancholy to the song, while the chorus on its own can be an almost ecstatic reverie. — adapted from the Wikipedia song profile
_____________________
1st verse:
Wishing is good time wasted
Still it’s a habit they say
Wishing for sweets I’ve tasted
That’s all I do all day
Maybe there’s nothing in wishing
But speaking of wishing I’ll say:
chorus:
Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning
No one could be sweeter than my sweetie when I meet her in the morning
Where the morning glories
Twine around the door
Whispering pretty stories
I long to hear once more
Strolling with my girlie where the dew is pearly early in the morning
Butterflies all flutter up and kiss each little buttercup at dawning,
If I had Aladdin’s lamp for only a day
I’d make a wish and here’s what I’d say:
Nothing could be finer than to be with Carolina in the morning.
2nd verse:
Dreaming was meant for nighttime
I live in dreams all the day
I know it’s not the right time
But still I dream away
What could be sweeter than dreaming
Just dreaming and drifting away
_____________________
Van and Schenk – recorded on 18 September 1922; issued on Columbia A 3712, c/w “I’m Gonna Plant Myself In My Old Plantation Home”; the recording date is two days prior to the Broadway premiere of The Passing Show of 1922
Video or audio file to be replaced
______________
Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra — recorded on 21 September 1922; issued on Victor 18962, b/w “Cow Bells,” recorded by Zez Confrey and his Orchestra
1890-1969 selected standards and hits pages
1890-1899 selected hits and standards
