Artie Shaw: Where Or When

Happy 92nd Birthday Lena Horne, June 30

from the 1948 film Words and Music. Where or When, a favorite of my father's

Where Or When: Steve & Eydie & Frank

Sidney Leibowitz from Brownsville, Brooklyn, Edith Gormezano, a Sephardic Jew from the Bronx and Francis Albert Sinatra of Sicilian heritage from Hoboken, New Jersey.

When you're awake, the things you think Come from the dream you dream
Thought has wings, and lots of things Are seldom what they seem
Sometimes you think you've lived before All that you live to day
Things you do come back to you As though they knew the way
Oh the tricks your mind can play
It seems we stood and talked like this, before We looked at each other in the same way then
But I can't remember where or when The clothes you're wearing are the clothes, you wore
The smile you are smiling you were smiling then But I can't remember where or when
Some things that happened for the first time Seem to be happenin' again
And so it seems that we have met before And laughed before, and loved before
But who knows where or when Some things that happened for the first time
Seem to be happenin' again And so it seems that we have met before
And laughed before, and loved before But who knows where or when

Where Or When: A Song's Enduring Impact

I couldn't locate the video of Peggy Lee's version, but Nat King Cole is a more than adequate substitute. From Morning Edition, December 23, 2003 -

In 1941, Benny Goodman set out to record Where or When with a 21-year-old Peggy Lee. The Rodgers and Hart ballad came out during the Christmas season, at a time when America was at war. Music journalist Ashley Kahn reflects on the recording's enduring poignancy.

Where Or When: Dion

This was the number 21 hit in 1960. I really don't remember it, but the checker label is certainly familiar. I have to say that after the zenith of my "Nancy Bueller" days of 1958-9 I never had much interest in rock n' roll. I retreated into the world of my parents' music and WNEW-AM. It wasn't such a bad decision, except it started to be dominated by the drech of Ferrante and Teicher and 101 Strings and not the great Riddle arrangements of Sinatra and Ella. Eventually I found the logical path for myself by becoming a jazz fan when I reached college. What abut folk and protest music? I guess I needed to rebel against the rebellers

Where Or When 2

from 9/5/06 from pseudo-intellectualism

This time I matched the larger versions of some the matching Abbott and Levere sites along with the MCNY's text. "The matching New York scenes is nice school project. There are many archival images ready for the amateur to do his or her matching. It would also be an interesting project to take along enlarged old images to the site and do some interviewing of an on-site senior citizen as a prop to spark memories of that scene.

Where Or When

Where Or When was my father's favorite song. It was his song of choice to sing at weddings and bar-mitzvahs along with At Last, The Nearness of You and Stardust. They were not easy songs to sing, because they required a pretty decent range. My father had a good voice, but range was a problem. I could usually tell within a few bars if my father would "make it." If he wasn't I would try to run for cover to avoid embarrassment:from 9/5/06 from pseudo-intellectualism

I stumbled across Douglas Levere's New York Changing site. It preceded the book he published last year on the topic: "Douglas Levere Revisits Berenice Abbott’s New York presents pairs of images by contemporary photographer Douglas Levere and world-renown photographer Berenice Abbott. Abbott’s iconic photographs, drawn from the MCNY's permanent collection, were taken in the 1930s and first published in her landmark book, Changing New York (1939). More than six decades later, Levere used the same camera Abbott had used and returned to the same locations at the same time of day and the same time of year. Indeed, he took on the role of detective as he successfully sought to understand and replicate every aspect of Abbott’s process. When seen side by side, these two remarkable bodies of work reveal much about the city and the nature of urban transformation. Perhaps more than anything else, these carefully crafted images powerfully suggest that in New York, the only constant is change." I included some of those matched pairs, set I thought somewhat appropriately to Rodger's and Hart's "Where Or When."This was a big favorite of my father's to sing at weddings and bar mitzvah's. There were a few times he actually pulled it off with some success. The version used is an abridged Benny Goodman one.
The amazing Hart lyrics, that capture the essence of Deja Vu, complete with the verse:
When you're awake, the things you think Come from the dream you dream
Thought has wings, and lots of things Are seldom what they seem
Sometimes you think you've lived before All that you live to day
Things you do come back to you As though they knew the way
Oh the tricks your mind can play
It seems we stood and talked like this, before We looked at each other in the same way then
But I can't remember where or when The clothes you're wearing are the clothes, you wore
The smile you are smiling you were smiling then But I can't remember where or when
Some things that happened for the first time Seem to be happenin' again
And so it seems that we have met before And laughed before, and loved before
But who knows where or when Some things that happened for the first time
Seem to be happenin' again And so it seems that we have met before
And laughed before, and loved before But who knows where or when