BWW Exclusive: Conversations and Music with Michael Feinstein- All About Ephemera

Welcome to Conversations in Music with me, Michael Feinstein

This is a deep dive into some of my ephemera collection. Ephemera means something that is not meant to last, something that is temporary

something that people normally would not keep, that gets thrown away. and when it survives it sometimes becomes a part of history and tells a story

inadvertently gives us little clues and bits of information that we can only get from these pieces of ephemera that are taken for granted

like a handbill or a playbill or a program or an envelope

and I have always been a person who keeps things because for whatever reason

I feel like they may have value to somebody. They may have some sort of significance

in telling a story. For example, this envelope. This is from the Irving Berlin Music Corporation

1650 Broadway. Now, there was evidently at one time some music in here that was sent to somebody

And I just like that logo. And if I'm ever putting together a collage

or a photo montage of something on Irving Berlin. This is something that is an interesting graphic

Playbills, programs often reveal a lot of important information. And this is a playbill from a 1933, 1934 British show

called Mr. Whittington with a score by Johnny Green and Vivian Ellis

It played, is it the Adelphi or the Adelphi Theatre? This is a theater in London, and I've been able to find a number of Johnny Green's songs related to this score

And playbills are interesting because they change sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, because there are different ads for every issue

And if a performer leaves or enters the cast, the name is substituted

And so if one has saved playbills, they have unique information in them

And to have the run of a series of playbills from a single show will reveal the changes of cast and sometimes other changes, including musical numbers and such

This is dated September 24, 1934, which is rather late, as I recall, in the run of Mr. Whittington

a marvelous score and most of these songs are completely unknown here

for many years I tried to find the published sheet music folio

from Mr. Whittington and I never was successful at finding it over a 30 year period

until last year when I finally found a copy of this album of vocal gems

from Mr. Whittington and what makes it all the more remarkable is that there was one song that was in this British musical

that was later recycled by Johnny Green and used in an MGM screen musical called Everything I Have Is Yours

and this book has the revisions by the composer Johnny Green when he adapted it 16 years later

for use in Everything I Have Is Yours. And so this is Johnny's handwriting in red with all the changes he made in the music and rhythmically

And then he wrote under the title of the song, in pencil, everything I have is yours, 1576 being the production number of the film

So that was quite a lot of fun to come across that. So this is an example of a unique document that shows the genesis of how the composer's thoughts about the song changed

As you see, he changed the harmonies here and in other places

So that's Mr. Whittington. I found a bunch of things that came from the estate of Johnny Green

This is the conductor part for one of a series of short subjects

he conducted for MGM Studios, one of which won him an Academy Award

He was the head of the MGM Music Department for 10 years

from the early 50s into the early 60s. And this conductor part is likely all that remains from this Strauss fantasy because as I mentioned previously MGM threw away all of their full scores and playable parts that the musicians played and the only things that they

retained were these conductor parts. So if one wanted to once again play the Strauss fantasy

they would have to listen to the soundtrack recording and use this conductor part and reconstructed

But this is the part from which Johnny conducted the music in the film that has all of his

notations. And I do have a 16-inch transcription disc that has the recording of the soundtrack as well

So maybe someday I'll have the opportunity to restore the Strauss fantasy. Amongst the other things

that this collection yielded that I came across was a presentation volume of the songs of Johnny Green

published songs, Johnny Green, Volume 1, 1928 to 1942. It is not unusual for songwriters to put together these bound volumes of their own compositions

and sometimes they have pieces of music in them that are quite rare

because often sometimes something can be published in a promotional copy. In other words, it's distributed to record companies and singers in hopes that they'll record the song

And if the song doesn't get any attention, it never gets any place past the promotional stage

And this is an example. This is a song called Hold On to Love by Johnny Green and Paul Francis Webster

that was orchestrated by Johnny, recorded by Billy Eckstein for MGM Records

and the record was never released. And so because the record was never released

this sheet music never went past this promotional copy stage. If the recording had been released

they probably would have printed a cover with a picture of Billy Eckstein

and it would say, as recorded by Billy Eckstein. And then, amazingly, in another collection, I came across the orchestration by Johnny Green that Billy Eckstein recorded

So sometimes in the midst of collecting ephemera like this, pieces from various other collections will come together to tell a story

Johnny Green is most famous for having written the song Body and Soul, and this book has different editions of Body and Soul

This is the song as it was first published in England. And I just love this Medusa cover

which was designed by an artist named Maximilian Rasco, who is a listed painter

And it's quite attractive compared to the cover that was first issued in New York

when it was interpolated into this 1930 review, Three as a Crowd

But one of the other unusual things about this first edition of Body and Soul

is there are a few variances in the music, and at the end of the bridge

there is a completely different bass line and chord progression that I discovered in comparing the two editions

So those are the sorts of things that one can discover by having multiple copies of a song from different incarnations

This is another big song of Johnny's, Out of Nowhere, which was an early solo recording for Bing Crosby

And then this is another cover with Ruth Edding on it, who is immortalized in the movie Love Me or Leave Me

played by Doris Day. I'll show you an example of an American publication of a song in a British publication

I'll show you another example of that to show you how they could vary greatly in art and sometimes in content

This song, Hello My Lover Goodbye, this features Ethel Merman on the cover

That's quite an attractive cover. And these songs were all printed in the early 1930s during the Depression

so sales of sheet music were quite low. So some of these are very, very hard to find today

This song actually was originally in a review called Here Goes the Bride

which only lasted a couple of weeks on Broadway, or maybe even less than that. I don't remember, but it was a short-lived show

And this is a drawing by the famous New Yorker cartoonist and caricatures Peter Arno

who also presented the show and probably lost a bundle of money in the process This is a collectible cover because of the cartoon art Betty Boop a Paramount star featured in Fleischer cartoons Sheet music with pictures of cartoon characters are often very collectible especially Disney

Well, anyway, that's... I think that's enough of this. So that's Johnny Green

Wonderful Johnny Green. This is a catalog of the songs of Arthur Fried, who most people know as a Hollywood film producer of the greatest MGM musicals

And this is a book that was sent out to publishers and singers to promote his song catalog

And their individual pieces of sheet music spiral bound together, all generic covers in hopes of getting people to sing his catalog

and then there are these little tiny artist copies one of which I showed you earlier

this is a song that was deleted from the Ziegfeld Follett sung by James Melton

we will meet again in Honolulu I don't think it ever got a commercial recording

but clearly they were trying to promote it Sing Before Breakfast, Judy Garland did that one

Your Words and My Music that was from a movie called Lady Be Good

in relation to the Gershwin Stage Show and etc. This was given to me by Rosemary Clooney

It's a catalog of the songs of Irving Berlin that were sent out again for promotion

And Rosemary had this copy. And she wrote, Michael, dear, here's the old catalog I found

with love, Rosemary. And of course, Rosemary was in the film White Christmas

and was a very close friend of Irving Berlin. So he probably sent this to Rosemary

And it's a chronological listing of all the songs by Irving Berlin, and then it has his songs listed by subject matter, in case somebody

is putting together a show and is looking for a song about animals, or apparel, or a

heart song, or a farm song, or a song about happiness. Holiday songs, well, we know Berlin did well with holiday songs

Christmas, Christmas time seems years away, 1909, White Christmas, Easter, Easter Parade

Lincoln's birthday, New Year's, Thanksgiving, count your blessings instead of sheep, Valentine's Day

be careful, it's my heart. Mr. Berlin certainly had the market cornered

when it came to holiday songs. And then in the back of the book

it has a piece of paper pasted in to update it, to include the most recent songs that Berlin had written

that being 1962 for the score of a Broadway musical called Mr. President that starred Robert Ryan and Nanette Fabroni

So this is a very resonant little piece to me. This is a souvenir program from the composer Sigmund Romberg

when he went out on the road and started doing performances and appearances of his own music

And it's wonderful because it has all these fascinating pictures of Mr. Romberg

Sigmund Romberg was a next-door neighbor of Ira Gershwin's. Ira Gershaw moved at 1021 North Roxbury Drive

Sigmund Romberg moved at 1023. And he was very famous for having one of the most extraordinary music libraries in private hands

And you can see a picture of it here. This is a picture of Romberg in his music library

And you can see it is just wall-to-wall musical scores. Now, there is a story about Eric Wolfgang Korngold going to the home of Sigmund Romberg with a young music student

And they enter Romberg's library, and this young guy sees all of these scores that are lining all of the walls, overwhelming

And he turns to Korngold and he says, did he write all of that

And Korngold's response was, not yet. Romberg was known for taking his own tunes

and plagiarizing them turning them sideways and turning them different ways in order to try and get another hit

from something that was a previous hit so that's Sigmund Romberg another piece of ephemera that's fun

is a book of lyrics by Cole Porter from the movie Silk Stockings

that came from the collection of Sid Charisse. Sid Charisse was in the movie Silk Stockings

and at some point she was given a book that's signed by her, of course, dated April 1956

This is a film that starred Sid Charisse and Fred Astaire. And it lists the lyrics It lists the date Because often they would rewrite the words And when the words were rewritten they would change the date and reflect that it was revised

This song was in the score. Paris Loves Lovers. That was sung by Mr. Astaire

Hotel Sequence. Satin and Silk Finals Act 1 and there are

a couple of songs in here that were written for but not

used in the film and I can't put my hands on them

right now but again it's wonderful to be able to see these

original pieces some person very kindly sent me a whole cache

of photographs of songwriters and these are a very nice edition to have

this is Irving Berlin as he appeared in This is the Army in 1942

when he sang Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning this is a Hollywood portrait

of Irving Berlin taken in the 1930s, even though it doesn't say

This is Mr. Berlin. Lots of photos of Irving Berlin. Rogers and Hart

A nice picture of George Gershwin, a rather famous one, taken in 1935

And I believe that that's a photo of him working on the score of Porgy and Bess

so this would be 1934 and 1935. This is a lyricist named Sammy Gallop

who is not well-remembered today. He had a number of hits in his time

including the lyrics to Holiday for Strings. Richard Whiting, who wrote Hooray for Hollywood and to Marvelous for Words

This photo is sepia. It's not black and white. It's sort of the brownish color

The same color that is in the first part of The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz is not black and white in color. It is sepia in color

But we never knew it was sepia until they released it on home video

because when we saw it on television, it was black and white. Percy Faith

Sammy Kahn. You know who that is? Rocketman, Elton John Brunetopin, the great Diane Warren, who I believe has been nominated for an Academy Award 11 times

Lieber and Stoller, Jerry Goffin, the aforementioned Johnny Green with two of his Oscars

This is Johnny Green on the set of the film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? The recently departed Michelle Negron

Henry Mancini, composer of so many great standards, including, of course, Moon River

An autograph here, a photo of Alex North, one of our great film composers

This man is a Hollywood giant. You probably have no idea who it is

This photo was taken in the 1970s. His name is Ray Heimdorf

He is responsible for the sound of the musicals at Warner Brothers for decades

An incredibly gifted man. John Barry, for all the James Bond scores

This looks like Max Steiner, it is. Mark Wolfgang Korngold, Korngold. Anyway, one more

Elmer Bernstein. Elmer Bernstein, whom I met on one occasion, told me that his family had Feinsteins in their lineage

and he believed that we were related. So I spend all of my leisure hours going through

and cataloging this material to get it in shape so it can be available to others for research

A lot of it will go to our Great American Songbook Foundation in Indiana

to help but continue this legacy of the Great American Songbook. There's a lot more to show next time, so thanks for tuning in