In the last installment, I featured a song by Rodgers and Hart (Blue Moon). Hart was noted for his lyrics packed with unexpected rhymes and unrestrained vocabulary ("when love congeals / it soon reveals / the faint aroma / of performing seals"). He may have been the most brilliant of the Songbook lyricists.
So when I think of the Songbook I mainly think of the lyricists: Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Johnny Mercer, Yip Harburg, Ira Gershwin, Frank Loesser, Dorothy Fields, and so many more. In this series I'm going to be coming back to their work many times. The only difficulty, given so many great songs to choose from, will be deciding which one to feature.
Today, though, I'm going to feature a song with lyrics by Eric Maschwitz: These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You), first recorded back in 1938. Many love songs of the Songbook era had a certain airy unreality about them (songs of the "Fly Me to the Moon" type), but "Foolish Things" is grounded by a string of wonderfully down-to-earth images. Maschwitz, by the way, also wrote the lyrics for another great standard, "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square."
As with any of the great Songbook songs, there are many wonderful versions to choose from: Ella Fitzgerald, Nat Cole, Billie Holliday, and even James Brown and Sam Cooke.
And probably the most underappreciated crooner, Johnny Hartman:
Now that's a wonderful song.
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