Exclusive: Conversations and Music with Michael Feinstein- The Music of Oscar Levant

I'm Michael Feinstein

This is Conversation in Music. That was a little bit of the Gershwin Concerto in F

which I wanted to play because the person who did the best interpretation of it, in my humble opinion, was Oscar Levant

I want to focus on Oscar Levant's music. If you know the name Oscar Levant at all

You probably know him from seeing old movies on television. Or you know some of his witticisms, which have been oft quoted

Worth quoting, certainly. Things like, I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin

Or Elizabeth Taylor ought to get a divorce and settle down. Or when the singer Eddie Fisher left Debbie Reynolds to marry Elizabeth Taylor, he said, how high could anyone stoop

Levant was absolutely brilliant. brilliant, so brilliant that even Groucho Marx would not appear on his local Los Angeles television

show, which ran for about three years and sadly does not exist anymore except for one program

with Fred Astaire and excerpts of a few others. But today being about Levant's music is something

that I think he would have liked because the music was the thing that was most important to

Oscar Levant. Please do look him up and discover him because his recordings of Gershwin and other

classical repertoire are magnificent and in some instances definitive. Certainly I feel that they

are with the Gershwin, even though they were recorded so long ago that the fidelity is not

what it could have been if he had re-recorded them a few years later. But Levant is someone I first

discovered because of his books. I think I may have seen him on television in the movie Rhapsody

in Blue, which was the all but fictitious story about the life of George Gershwin in which Oscar

played himself. But when I was in junior high school, I discovered that Oscar Levant had written

a book. I used to take the bus in Columbus, Ohio, downtown from my home. It was 50 cents

and I always would make sure with the five dollars I had that I had 50 cents remaining to take the bus

home. And one day I discovered this paperback book. This is a copy called Oscar Levant

The Unimportance of Being Oscar, which cost me 95 cents. And I was thrilled to find the book

because even though I was quite young, I still had heard about Levant and knew about him because

he was pretty much a household name, even in the 1960s, long after he had stopped concertizing

He had a number of nervous breakdowns later in his life and tragically stopped playing the piano

in 1958, stopped playing professionally then. And the world was deprived of so much more that could

have come from him creatively. He died in 1972, August of 1972, at the age of 65. And he was

somebody who was so brilliant and very contemporary in that when you see interviews with him and when

you read his books, he was not a product of the 1940s and 50s where everything was sort of

whitewashed and glossed over. He was real. His television show was the first reality television

show. And these books are filled with amazing anecdotes about his contemporaries and stories

that he picked up. I see that I have a piece of paper in here from, oh, I wrote down some of his

quotes. He'll double cross that bridge when he comes to it. Underneath that, marriage is a triumph

of habit over hate. I don't know why that seemed important to me to write down when I was in my

early teens, but there we are. Oscar Levin's first book was published in 1940. I don't know

if you can see because of the glare of that dust jacket, but this book published in 1940

was a best-selling volume, and it's one of the things that helped establish Levant

And this copy is autographed to Harold Arlen, who was his close friend

Harold Arlen wrote Over the Rainbow and a gazillion other songs. It's ownership signature of Harold Arlen

and it's signed by Oscar. For Reverend Harold, sensitive, highly talented, greatly successful, and spiritually a great exponent

of, quote, our people. Chauvinistically yours, Oscar, May 5th, 1940. Well, Reverend Harold is

referring to a song cycle that Arlen wrote called Reverend Johnson's Dream, which was recorded and

released around that time. And as far as being a spiritually a great exponent of our people

what Levant meant was that Arlen incorporated a lot of the Jewish-sounding modalities into his

popular songs, as well as a tremendous use of African-American themes. And Oscar and Harold

were such good friends that I have a home recording that I'll have to share with you sometime

of Oscar just palling around with Harold, playing the piano and improvising music

and it's spectacular. But this book, Smattering of Ignorance, put Levant on the map. Years after

he stopped concertizing, he wrote a second book, which actually was compiled from recorded

reminiscences and assembled into this book called The Memoirs of an Amnesiac. That was 1965

and it too became a bestseller. Later was reprinted in this very attractive paperback edition

and then came The Unimportance of Being Oscar, the first of his three books that I read

When I was in junior high school, and I guess it was eighth grade, there was a teacher who

encouraged me to read all three of Levant's books, saying that you don't really get to know

what an author is about or who an author is until you've read all of their works

So I read all three of his books and then started discovering his recordings

And then I discovered his popular songs, which at first I didn't realize he had been so prolific

in writing. Most people don't know that Oscar Levant wrote music, and I eventually was able

to collect all of his published songs, even though some of them are still photocopies

So I'd like to show you some of those. Oh, this book, this is a novel called Burlesque

And Burlesque was made into a movie called The Dance of Life

which features Oscar Levant's first appearance in a movie in 1929. So this is connected to Levant

And Levant was in the Broadway play Burlesque which is what it was called when it played On the Great White Way starring Barbara Stanwyck and then when it was made into the movie The Dance of Life with Nancy

Carroll and Hal Skelly, Oscar was in the film. I'm wondering if there's any photos in here

of him. There's an interesting photo from the movie, but it doesn't have a picture of

Levant. So, oh, this is interesting. I pulled this out because I thought it would be of interest

Oscar Levant was also very close friends with Irving Berlin, and it was Irving Berlin who

published some of his songs back in the days when Levant was a songwriter. And in the 1960s

Irving Berlin put together a privately bound volume of some of his favorite songs to send to

his contemporaries, and to exploit his catalog. So this was the copy that belonged to Oscar and June Levant

and it is signed to them from Irving Berlin, for Oscar and June, with love from Irving, 1969

And then it has bound, I believe it's 180 of Irving Berlin's songs

of which it still is about 10% of his output. So these are bound into this volume with gilt-edged pages there

I keep skipping all the covers, all the different attractive covers. And when I used to visit June Levant, whom I met shortly after moving to Los Angeles

we would pull this book out and sing through the various Irving Berlin songs

so it was very sweet of her to later give this book to me

And it's interesting that Berlin chose to include in this book things like I'd Like My Picture Took

which was far from a hit and very, very obscure, but nevertheless there was something about it

that he liked enough to include in this volume. I'm Beginning to Miss You, another obscure song

I'm Not Afraid. I'm putting all my eggs in one basket. That's a little bit better known, Fred Astaire sang that

with Ginger Rogers and Follow the Fleet. It's a lovely day tomorrow

I've got my love to keep me warm. Anyway, that's the Berlin book. So these are some of the boxes

of the Oxfam of Ant sheet music that I've collected. And it's fun to try and collect the complete works

of any songwriter. And it's often very difficult to find copies of sheet music these days

because they are an endangered species. And you can often buy a piece of sheet music from Music Notes

or some publishing service online where they are computer-generated and sent directly to you as PDFs

The problem with those, even though I appreciate them, is that they sometimes have all kinds of typographical errors in them

and we sometimes don't know about the authenticity or correctness of a song

unless we go back to the original publications. In the late 1920s, Oscar Levant came to Hollywood and worked for RKO Studios

writing songs for their first musical film, which was called Street Girl

So I have a lot of his early songs from movies from the late 20s

This is from the mid-1930s, written with Edward Heyman, with whom he wrote his most successful song

All My Life is from Leathernecking. So these are all kinds of different editions of his early songs

This came from a collection at RKO Studios. And let's see if we're awake

So this was Oscar Levant's most famous song, and it's called Blame It On My Youth

I'm trying to find a vintage copy of it. Ah, here it is

This is the original publication of Blame It On My Youth. when Oscar would play this at parties later

he would say, I'm now going to play you a medley of my hit it features a picture of a man named Joey Nash

who was a popular band singer of the time who must have sung the song on radio

even though, to my knowledge there is no recording of Joey Nash

singing it Joey Nash sang with a band called Richard Hinder but anyway

Lamin' on My Youth is his most enduring song and possibly the only song of his

but still available online and in print, even though there was another song

that was rather provocative for its time because it was about drugs, about taking drugs

And that was recorded by the Chip Web Band with Elvis Gerald. And that was called Wacky Dust

They call it Wacky Dust. It's something you can trust. So that's Wacky Dust, also recorded by Blue Baron L. and Bunny Berrigan

Bunny Berrigan had what, in many opinions, is the best record, for those of you who care about those things

They call it Wacky Dust. It's from a hot cornet. It gives your feet a feeling so breezy, and oh, it's so easy to get

Well, Wanky does a thinly veiled song, as I said, about drugs

Well, in addition to having about 80 popular songs to his credit

Levant also wrote symphonic music. He wrote a number of symphonic pieces that were played on the radio

including a piano concerto that was premiered in 1942 by the NBC Symphony

but only one of his compositions was commercially printed and it's a thing called Nocturne, Nocturne for Orchestra

and this one belonged to David Braxton who is the composer of Laura of whom I've previously spoken

and at one point Andre Previn was interested in possibly performing this piece

and there's a note from Ara Guzulimian who was the music administrator of the L.A. Phil

written about Andre Previn and the possibility that he might perform something in Levant

It says, Dear David, Andre's enthusiasm for the Levant seems to be lukewarm at the moment

and so I'm returning this score with our thanks. So the one contemporary performance

that this piece might have gotten by Andre Previn in the L.A. field in the early 80s was not to be unfortunately There is also a piano samatina that was composed by Levant that was published in the early 1930s

And there's a rhapsody for piano and orchestra that he wrote for a movie called Romance on the High Seas

but it was cut from the film. And I have a soundtrack recording of it

and it's quite spectacular. It's only about three and a half minutes long, but it's worthy of being heard

Levant also wrote film music. And these are studio copies of some of his film cues

for a movie called Nothing Sacred that some of you may know. It's a delightful film made by Selznick

So these are all little remnants of Oster Levant's composing life that sadly stopped after around 1942

He just gave it all up. So these are all, these are called stock orchestrations

These are things that one could purchase for 75 cents, and then your local big band could play these pieces

Inside are individual parts for all the instruments in a big band

And that's how they help to exploit these different compositions by all the popular song composers of the time

And all of these songs are so obscure. Then came the rain

Last night a miracle happened. We've got the moon in six pence. It was from a British musical he wrote called Out of the Bottle

And this was a popular song in Britain, but it never did anything over here

But routinely, publishers would print what they called stocks in hopes that they would help to make all of these things popular

As I mentioned, Blame It On My Youth was his most enduring song, but in the late 1920s, there was another song that was popular by the band called Lady Play Your Mandolin, which had lyrics by Irving Caesar, and was ubiquitous in that time

It went, Lady, play your mandolin. Lady, let that tune begin. When I hear your song of sin, I'm a sinner too

Señorita, sweet Chiquita, I could eat your heart. Levant used to refer to it as his cannibalism song

This is the original cover of Lady, Play Your Mandolin. and it has a picture of Nick Lucas, who made a very popular recording of it

It's quite a cute song. Lyrics by Irving Caesar, who wrote also the lyrics to Swanee and Tea for Two

So that's Lady Player Mandolin. One of the last song scores that Levant wrote for a musical film

is a movie that starred Ginger Rogers called In Person. and that movie featured three songs with music by Oscar Levant and lyrics by Dorothy Fields

And that song that I'm going to show you, Don't Mention Love to Me

still is known by some, by some songwriter aficionados and fans of the work of Dorothy Fields

Oscar Levant was the one to point out that Dorothy Fields often wrote songs with negatives in the title

like, don't blame me, or I can't give you anything but love

It's not where you start, it's where you finish. And this one is an example of that

So I think I'll keep this one out because I'd like to sing that one for you

This is the cover of the sheet music for the British publication of the song

Now, Ginger Rogers made this movie in person when she wanted to temporarily break away from her partnership with Fred Astaire

They were in the midst of making their now iconic musical films together. And she made this one, and it was an immediate failure

It got very bad reviews, and she went back to working with Fred

and they eventually made 10 movies together. This is Oswald Levin's original manuscript in his hand of the verse for Don't Mention Love to Me

And it is the most rudimentary notation. It just says verse, and it has the melody with just rudimentary chords here and simple bass notes

And from that, somebody, probably also listening to Oscar play the piano, took that and

oh, that's coming apart, created more substantial accompaniment. so that's don't mention love to me

so let's keep this one out and let me give you a rendering of a few of these songs

let's move my Levant library over here and see what we got here

There is one thing I know

If I let myself go And our lips should ever touch

I would love you much too much It is better far to share

Just a casual affair So before a kiss is hard I must tell you this

To warn you My heart

Is not a plaything Party Is not a gaything Darling

Don't mention love to me Romance

Hey, bring us sorrow Let's be friends on the viral day Don mention love to me I can like you discreetly

No halfway measures for me. I must love you completely. If this should end, where would I be

You smile I'm overpowered I'd fall

But I'm a coward Darling Don't mention love to me Darling

Don't mention love To me So that's Don't Mention Love to Me

I think it's a very pretty song. I hope that maybe somebody will hear it

and will want to sing it. Well, I'd like to sing You Will Blame It on My Youth

So let me extract that. from this conflagration. Certainly I think I know the song

but a funny thing happens sometimes when there's a camera in your face, you know

So let's pull out this conflagration. Okay. Wow

It's already taped together. How about that? I recorded this song in 1987 or 86 when I first played the Algonquin Hotel

I sang it there and I included it, even though now I can really blame it on my youth

This is one of those songs that I think I sang too early back in the day

But anyway, now I don't have to worry about that. you were my adored

then you became the board and I was like a toy

that brought you joy one day A broken toy that you prefer to throw away

If I expected life when first we kissed, blame it on my hand

All the world to me If you were on my mind

All night and day Blame it only you If I forgot to eat

And sleep and pray Blame it on my youth If I cried a little

When first I learned the truth Don't blame it on my heart

Blame it on my youth Like a child is real

You've been more than anything It's longer to me

If you were on my mind All night and day

Blame it on my youth If I forgot to eat and sleep and dream

Blame it on my youth If I cried in the day

When first I learned the truth Don't blame it on my heart

Blame it on my youth For Oscar