Monday, July 5, 2010

We're Having A Heat Wave


from the youtube description
You probably could not find two more disparate females than Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe, and yet they MET (see video), and in a small way, Marilyn even helped Ella get a gig she couldn't get before, at the famous Mocambo in Los Angeles (Marilyn was a huge fan of Ella's and promised The Mocambo she would sit in the front row every night if they booked Ella for a week...and they did just that in 1955). Ella became the first black performer at The Mocambo, and this incident even prompted Bonnie Geer, a London-based American playwright, to recently write a play about the two entitled "Marilyn and Ella". The song "Heat Wave" was composed by Irving Berlin in 1933 originally for the Broadway musical "As Thousands Cheer" starring Ethel Merman. In 1954, the song was reprised in the motion picture "There's No Business Like Show Business" also starring Ethel Merman along with Marilyn Monroe who famously sang this Berlin tune in the film. Ella subsequently recorded it for Verve, and I wonder if Marilyn was on her mind when she sang it.
We're having a heat wave,
A tropical heat wave,
The temperature's rising,
It isn't surprising,
She certainly can can-can.
She started a heat wave
By letting her seat wave
In such a way that
The customers say that
She certainly can can-can.
Gee, her anatomy
Makes the mercury
Jump to ninety-three.
We're having a heat wave,
A tropical heat wave,
The way that she moves
That thermometer proves
That she certainly can can-can

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