Year by Year in Popular Song: 1935

It's 1935. The year Porky Pig was born. The year Babe Ruth played his last game. Will Rogers is killed in a plane crash. And by general agreement, it will later be considered the first year of the Swing Era.

Let's start with the brand of swing music that would come to be known as Texas Swing. It was not exclusively "Texan," but it was a mostly southern and White phenomenon (though of course borrowing heavily from African American musical influences).

There was Milton Brown and His Brownies, who recorded an old favorite, I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You. Then don't forget the Hoosier Hot Shots: Virginia Blues. Patsy Montana wanted to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart. 

Continuing with some of the indelible Americana of 1935, Jimmy Davis and Buddy Jones sing (and yodel) Red River Blues. The Carter Family wonder Can the Circle Be Unbroken. And there's a new voice on the scene: Woody Guthrie checks in with a Dust Bowl Ballad, So Long, It's Been Good to Know You.

Meanwhile, Big Bill Broonzy sang the Southern Blues, and Clarence Willians gave us the Beer Garden Blues. And Sleepy John Estes sang Stop that Thing.

I always reserve a space in these posts for The Mills Brothers and the Boswell Sisters, two of the greatest singing groups in popular music history. This year the Mills boys recorded Moanin' for You and Sweet Georgia Brown. The Boswell Sisters, meanwhile, gave us  Fare Thee Well, Annabelle and Every Little Moment (another great song with lyrics by Dorothy Fields).

The popular song charts of 1935 were dominated by some of the premier songsmiths of the Great American Songbook. People like Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwin boys, Dorothy Fields, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Yip Harburg. And of course we can't forget the great Hoagy Carmichael. 

• Moonburn, sung by Bing Crosby (with a very tasty piano accompaniment by Joe Sullivan). Written by Carmichael and Heynman.
• Isn't This a Lovely Day, sung by Fred Astaire (written by Irving Berlin)
• Cheek to Cheek, Astaire again (Cole Porter the composer)
• I Won't Dance, Astaire (composers Field, McHugh, and Kern). Oh, by the way, maybe you can tell I'm fond of Astaire as a singer.

1935 is said to be the start of the Swing Era (although I think things had been pretty swinging long before this year). Anyway, it was the year of some incredibly popular Big Band tunes: there was the immortal Begin the Beguine, for example, first recorded by Xavier Cugat. Benny Goodman returns with the King Porter Stomp. Duke Ellington planted another song in the American psyche with In a Sentimental Mood. And Glen Miller made his debut with Harlem Chapel Chimes.

I want to feature two more items before getting to our feature song for the year. Louis Armstrong continued to make some of the most joyful music of this or any era: You Are My Lucky Star and I'm in the Mood for Love. 

And so finally we come to the feature song for 1935, Fats Waller's I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter. That's Fats himself at the link. It doesn't really get any better than that, but the song has been recorded again and again through the years (which was the real measure of a song's greatness in those days). Here's a more recent rendering from Diana Krall.

Year by Year in Popular Song: 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934.