Pagan Love Song
Pagan Love Song (Eng. Pagan love song ) is a song written by Nacio Herb Brown (music) and Arthur Freed (lyrics) and published in 1929.
Background of the song
The song resulted from Freed and Brown's second collaboration for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer when they wrote the music for the film The Pagan (1929, directed by WS Van Dyke ); Pagan Love Song was the title song of the film and refers to the Pacific island of Tahiti in its lyrics . Ramón Novarro introduced the song in the film.
The song is performed at a moderate pace ; the first lines of the lyrics read: “ When the first rays of the sun and the lazy land dream. All the happy years there. You belong to me and I belong to you . ”The sheet music editions of the song sold very successfully in the United States; the publisher Jack Robbins sold over 1.6 million copies. Bob Hope introduced the song in 1929 when it made its debut appearance at the New York vaudeville theater Procter's Eighty-sixth Street Theater.
First recordings and cover versions
The first musicians to record the song in May 1929 in the United States included Sunny Clapp and His Band O'Sunshine, Harold "Scrappy" Lambert , Annette Hanshaw , Irving Kaufman and Lee Sims . Lud Gluskin played him in Germany and Philip Lewis in England. The most successful version in the USA was that of the Copley Plaza Orchestra under the direction of Bob Haring , which reached # 1 on the charts in 1929. The versions by Nat Shilkret and The Troubadours Orchestra (# 3, Victor 21931, with Frank Munn, vocals) and the studio formation The Columbians with Ben Selvin ( Columbia 1817), which reached # 5 in the US charts, were also popular.
Cover versions of the song followed in the 1930s . a. by Paul Whiteman , the Casa Loma Orchestra , Bob Crosby , Nat Gonella , The Andrews Sisters , Benny Goodman , Glenn Miller and Teddy Stauffer . Frieder Weissmann played a version with a German text ( Tahiti Fairy Tales ).
Julia Lee recorded a rhythm and blues- tinged version of the Pagan Love Song , which dispensed with the otherwise predominant Hawaiian music arrangement . In later years he was also recorded by musicians such as Hot Lips Page , Ziggy Elman , Harry James , Toots Thielemans , Connee Boswell , Pee Wee Erwin , Gene Ammons , Dinah Washington , Mal Waldron , Wild Bill Davison , Kid Thomas Valentine and Keith Ingham .
The song was also used in several film musicals, such as Night Club Girl (directed by Edward F. Cline , 1945) and Pagan Love Song (directed by Robert Alton , 1950) with Ether Williams . The discographer Tom Lord lists a total of 92 (as of 2015) cover versions.
Notes and individual references
- ↑ a b c Don Tyler: Hit Songs, 1900-1955: American Popular Music of the Pre-Rock Era . 2007
- ↑ Allan R. Ellenberger Ramon Novarro: A Biography of the Silent Film Idol 1999, page 141
- ↑ In the original: Where the golden sunbeams and the lazy land dreams. All the happy years thru. You'll belong to me and I to you. See notes and beginning of the lyrics
- ↑ Velvet Tone 1936-V
- ↑ Hits of All Decades
- ↑ Nat Shikret in Songwriters Hall of Fame ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Munn lived from 1894 to 1953.
- ↑ The Columbians & Ben Selvin - Pagan Love Song 1929 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Published on Odeon O-4972 b (Be 8967)
- ↑ a b Tom Lord: Jazz discography (online)
- ↑ For the film Pagan Love Song , Harry Warren and Arthur Freed initially wrote a song called Tahiti , which they discarded. Freed then remembered the song written in 1929 with Nacio Herb Brown, which was then used. See John Howard Reid: Hollywood Movie Musicals ., 2006, p. 144.
