Blue Room

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Blue Room (also The Blue Room ) is a pop song written by Richard Rodgers (music) and Lorenz Hart (text) and published in 1926.

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Richard Rodgers (left) and Lorenz Hart (1936)

The song by the songwriting team Rodgers and Hart was featured in the musical comedy The Girl Friend , which premiered on March 17, 1926 at New York's Vanderbilt Theater . There Blue Room was presented by Eva Puck and Sammy White.

The song, written in F major in the form AA'BA '' , has a simple motif in dotted rhythm, repeated on the offbeat . the romantic chorus uses Rodgers' favorite device of increasing the scale , this time starting at F and returning to the lower notes D and C each time. Hart's moody lyrics create an image of domestic happiness ( With Mister and Missus / On little blue chairs ).

According to Alec Wilder , Blue Room was the first recognizable Rodgers song; for Stanley Green “a classic of city-life contentment ”.

First recordings and later cover versions

The first musicians to record the song from 1926 were Sam Lanin , The Melodic Sheiks and The Revelers, in the field of jazz also Victor Arden / Phil Ohman (Brunswick), the California Ramblers (Pathé) and Fred Rich and His Hotel Astor Orchestra (Columbia). In the following years he was also recorded by the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra , Isham Jones , Jan Garber , Benny Goodman ( The Famous Carnegie Hall Concert 1938 ) and Eddy Duchin . Richard Rodgers played the song in early 1940 for a Columbia album ( Richard Rodgers Conducts Rodgers & Hart ), accompanied by a studio orchestra.

The discographer Tom Lord lists a total of 253 (as of 2015) cover versions in the field of jazz , including a. by Gene Ammons , Chet Baker , Bing Crosby , Miles Davis ( Miles Davis and Horns ), Ella Fitzgerald , Bud Freeman , Glen Gray , Hank Jones , Jimmy Smith and Joe Venuti . The song was also used in several films; Perry Como and Cyd Charisse sang it in the Rodgers-Hart biopic Words and Music (1948, directed by Norman Taurog ). Perry Como entered the top 20 of the US charts with his recording for RCA Victor . Carmen Cavallaro was a vocal double in The Eddy Duchin Story (1956, directed by George Sidney ) .

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b c d e Marvin E. Paymer, Don E. Post: Sentimental Journey: Intimate Portraits of America's Great Popular Songs . 1999, p. 89 f.
  2. ↑ Michael Lasser: America's Songs II: Songs from the 1890s to the Post-War Years . New York, London: Routledge, 2014.
  3. ↑ a b Tom Lord: Jazz discography (online)
  4. ↑ Information at Jazzstandards.com