Woody Allen sings "September Song"

Y'know, if you asked me abaht it, I'd have to say this: it's, kind of like a lwoong lwoong time from May to Decembah, which is when my pahrents go to Flahhrida every yeahh and stay there for, like, six months or something, and I haven't gahht time for things like, y'know dating, when I nevah know whethah the gehrl is  going to "dig" me or not, not that I think "dig" is the proper expression for what you'd cwall, amorous attachment to someone that lasts more than, say, two minutes? (pause for laughs and bodily contortions). Speaking of two minutes, I was trying to figure out why my gehrl friend awll-wees calls me "minute man". (pause) I asked my analyst abahht it and he said it had something to do with an egg timer. That I should use one. Becwosse my egg timer lasts at least twice that lwoong,you know? But then she said to me, honey, your time is up and it hadn't even, you know, beeped yet. Am I supposed to be singing a swoong here? Sahrry. I haven't got time for that, y'know, "waiting game" they twoahhk about in the sahhng, because to be hahhnest with you if I wait much lwwoonger I'm going to be dead! (riotous laughter, applause) Being dead isn't exactly conducive to amorous attachment unless you're, y'know, one of "those" people, and I'm nahht, I sweahh! No matter how it looks, I've never been that desperate.  I know it's very stylish right now to be a zahhmbie and all that sort of thing, but most of my gehrl friends have been zahhmbies to begin with! The sahhng says something about the days dwindling down. Reminds me of how I always go over-budget on my pick-chas. You know, the cash dwindles down.  (scattered applause) By the way, if you wondah why I cwaall them "pick-chas", it's becwooahs my cinematic style hasn't really changed since, you know, Take the Money and Run, when wooa-di-ences really appreciated good cinematography and really hot gehrls. I'm kind of an old-fashioned guy, y'know, I don't use a computer, in fact even typewriters are too modern for me, so I use a unique system, maybe you've seen it, it's called a Gutenberg? Run by hamstah, and hand-cranked when the hamstah dies. Most of my budget goes into replacing all the hamstahs that die of ex-woahh-stion after printing out all those pages, and besides, the Humane Society has been getting after me for some reason. So I spend a lot of twoyyme hand-cranking, you know? It's given me carpal tunnel so I can't indulge in my favorite athletic activity. Guess I'll just have to take up synchronized swimming. Thank you very much, good night. 

Feel like I'm made out of Emmental

This is, or will be, my last word on September Song, I hope. It's now wearing a bit thin now after I was hoodwinked yesterday into thinking Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holliday recorded the exact same song with the exact same arrangement in the exact same vocal style.


Turns out both of them were by Sarah Vaughan, but someone(SOMEONE, not me!) had mislabelled one of the two videos and posted it as Holliday's rendition. There. Mystery solved. What embarrasses me is that I didn't get on to it right away: I did twig on the arrangement, which sounded so much the same that it puzzled me. But because I was expecting to hear two different vocal performances, that's what I heard. Sort of.

I was trying to find some strange versions of this song sung by comedians on variety shows like Ed Sullivan, just to prove that they could be Serious Artists If They Wanted To Be (which they couldn't). Rodney Dangerfield was one of them, I swear. He sang Fool on the Hill, I think, on  Hollywood Palace. I thought he also sang September Song, but I couldn't find any reference to it.


And I DO remember Milton Berle singing it, probably on the Muppet Show.  I found him offensive at the best of times, though the legend of his oversized penis is kind of entertaining. Once during an infamous dick-comparison in a bar somewhere, someone had the audacity to challenge him. His accomplice, probably a gangster in a zoot suit, whispered in his ear, "No problem, Miltie. Just take out enough to win."


I like the concept, if not the execution.

So I find this instead, and think: God, Sammy Davis. I used to buy his albums, incredibly, and marvelled then at how much he sounded like Frank Sinatra. He does, in his phrasing more than his vocal timbre which is actually warmer and smoother. Most singers try for beauty, and Sinatra didn't bother because he had Something Else. He appeared to think with his voice, and I don't know if anyone else has ever done that. (Some men think with their penis, but that's another story.)

A couple of things put me off Sammy Davis. He became more and more Sammy Davis as he got older, and disappeared into the sunken trough of Living Legend. There was all that Candy Man business, followed by the appalling Sweet Gingerbread Man ("Feel like I'm made out of peppermint, uh-huh, uh-huh"). In the mid-'80s I saw the beef-on-a-stick skewering of Davis on SCTV, in which Joe Flaherty nailed him as a histrionic white guy in an Afro spouting show-biz hyperbole. Then I saw Jim Carrey's grotesque impersonation of him, which many found offensive. Well, yes, it WAS offensive, but that was the whole point.

 

 

With these situations, I find it useful to go back and actually listen to the recording(s) in question. It surprises me how often I am - surprised. For one thing, this arrangement (the factor that ruins nearly everyone else's version with sickly suds and squeaky, cheesy violin glissandos) is much cooler, dominated by saxophone, with a Rat Pack sound that suits his performing style. During "the days dwindle down" bridge, the accompaniment takes on a doo-wop quality that reminds me of the Platters (who also recorded this, though for some reason I don't like their version).

I think the song got sort of sung-out in the '60s and you don't hear it any more, not much anyway. It has that godawful introduction ("when I was a young man," and blah-blah-blah, as if we cared) that in some versions literally takes up half the recording. When I found the reference to limping around toothless in the original, it took something away from the song's charm.

You don't expect Quasimodo to stand up there singing a love song.

Lady Day and Sarah: are they the same person? You decide

Lady Day and Sarah: just a coincidence? You decide

As so often happens, a hunt for a decent version of Kurt Weill's September Song turned into something quite else.

I kept playing different versions, 90% of them embedded in those godawful schmaltzy '60s string arrangements (and Frank Sinatra's brilliant version was thus ruined for me), then finally coming upon Billie Holliday. Wow, she aced it: undersinging it with that incomparable throw-away voice that made it sound easy. Here at last was something I could post! But I still had to listen to a few more, and when I heard Sarah Vaughan. . .

It too was magnificent, perhaps even sweeter, if a bit less subtle. But as I listened to it over and over again, I noticed something strange.

These two versions are done with exactly the same arrangement. I mean EXACTLY the same. The smoky slow-dancing tempo, the sax licks, the piano, the soulful guitar. It's as if someone lifted the vocal track out of one song and plunked it down in the other.

So fine, I guess this was a popular arrangement for September Song during that time - when was it, the '40s? My YouTube info is scant. But - identical? That's just so strange. Why would two titans of song decide to do it that way, when all these singers tried so hard not to sound like each other?

Anyway, this is valuable for an example of Billie Holliday before she degraded into a heap of irritating mannerisms. She still had a voice. Sarah Vaughan went on for far longer, not being a heroin addict, but was she ever so poignant again?

Why do I post this? Oh. . . cornball as it is, it's September, the kids are going back to school, and I at last understand that line "one hasn't got time for the waiting game". It's really one of my favorite songs, especially those two melancholy chords in the first line under "em-ber".

I have this memory - surely it must be wrong, but I don't think so - of watching TV eons ago, probably when I was about ten, and seeing Rodney Dangerfield on a variety show. Sometimes comedians stepped out of their normal roles then, with mixed results (and I swear I remember him singing The Fool on the Hill, and he shouldn't have). But I swear, and I may be wrong, I heard him speak-sing this one and it wrenched my heart. What did I know of Kurt Weill then? Well, plenty, since my histrionic sister had come back from Europe speaking German, waving copies of Goethe and singing little ditties from Mahagonny. Moon of Alabama (later recorded, incredibly, by The Doors) was practically my cradle song.

I can't find Rodney Dangerfield singing September Song, but I did find this odd twinning of two of the greatest voices ever, each slotted into the exact same arrangement. I still don't know why it happened that way, but it's intriguing to listen to.

We won't go into the melancholy I feel when I hear this, summer running through my fingers so fast it scares me, fall lifting up hopes that invariably fail. I wonder if I want to live out my 50s or if it might be better to make a graceful exit right now, before real deterioration sets in. I can't quite bring myself to dive in front of a bus, however (not today, anyway): I just hate suicide, too many people I loved have done it, not that I haven't thought about it a few hundred or a few thousand times.

One hasn't got time for the waiting game. But - for what?

 

 

 

CODA. As usual, I found more just as I gave up. I had this feeling the words were just a little different in the original version from the stage musical, Knickerbocker Holiday (and how a song like this ended up in such a jolly-sounding production, we'll never know).

 

Darker, stranger, and even with certan subtexts which may or may not have been intended.

 

 

When I was a young man courting the girls
I played me a waiting game
If a maid refused me with tossing curls
I'd let the old Earth take a couple of whirls
While I plied her with tears in place of pearls
And as time came around, she came my way
As time came around, she came

But it's a long, long while from May to December
And the days grow short when you reach September
And the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
And I haven't got time for the waiting game
And the wine dwindles down to a precious brew
September, November
And these few vintage years I'd share with you
These vintage years I'd share with you

But it's a long, long while from May to December
And the days grow short when you reach September
And I have lost one tooth and I walk a little lame
And I haven't got time for the waiting game
And the days turn to gold as they grow few
September, November
And these few golden days I'd spend with you
These golden days I'd spend with you.

When you meet with the young men early in Spring
They court you in song and rhyme
They woo you with words and a clover ring
But if you examine the goods they bring
They have little to offer but the songs they sing
And a plentiful waste of time of day
A plentiful waste of time


But it's a long, long while from May to December
Will the clover ring last till you reach September
And I'm not quite equipped for the waiting game
But I have a little money and I have a little fame
And the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I'd spend with you
These precious days I'd spend with you



Hmmmmm. "Clover ring"? And who are these young men? The line "I've lost one tooth and I walk a little lame" does somewhat take away from the smooth romanticism we've come to associate with the song. It's a bit macabre, in fact: offputting. And those tossing curls (rhymed, of course, with pearls): the antiquated courtly language. And the reference to wine. As with Woody Allen's mother and the boiled chicken, hasn't this song been put through the deflavorizing machine?

You decide.

CODA TO THE CODA. Playing these two versions over once again, I'm embarrassed, because I honestly think they're the same recording. They are just TOO alike to be different renditions, different voices.  I think someone mislabeled one of the recordings. So we're left to wonder, who's Sarah and who's Lady Day? Or are both of them someone else?