#65: A Sleepin' Bee

When a bee lies sleepin'
In the palm of your hand
You're bewitched and deep in love's
Long looked-after land
Where you'll see a sun-up sky
With the morning dew
And where the days go laughin' by
As love comes a-calling on you

Two bordellos competing for business in the West Indies is the setting for the 1954 musical, House of Flowers, a collaboration between Harold Arlen (after he wrote The Wizard of Oz) and Truman Capote (before he wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's). Based on Capote's novella of the same name, this was his only musical. An all-star cast, including Pearl Bailey, Juanita Hall, Ray Walston and Diahann Carroll, couldn't save this show from poor reviews and a relatively short run, but Carroll's song, "A Sleepin' Bee," took on a life of its own. Months after an 18-year-old Barbra Streisand learned it for an amateur contest at a Greenwich Village bar that she of course won, she radiantly sang it for her national television debut on the Jack Paar Show in 1961; the textures she brings in this performance are remarkable. And here she is 40 years later, with a lead-in verse that explains what it means to catch a sleepin' bee. This was a signature song for Diahann Carroll as well, and she reprised it in this performance at the 1985 Tony's; artists such as Audra Ann McDonald and seven-time Grammy winner Al "Moonlighting" Jarreau have also been attracted to the dreamlike musical intervals and long, poetic phrases of this bewitching song.

#66: Bill

And I can't explain
It's surely not his brain
That makes me thrill
I love him because he's wonderful
Because he's just my Bill.

While the opening to Gershwin's "I've Got a Crush on You" teases, "It's not that you're attractive, but -- oh -- my heart grew active," the song soon refers to its subject as "my big and brave and handsome Romeo." Not with Kern and P. G. Wodehouse's "Bill" from the epic 1927 musical Show Boat, where the torchsinger Julie goes to great lengths to detail why her boyfriend is unexceptional intellectually, physically, athletically, artistically, professionally and on. The best she can do is explain that she fits snugly in his lap. Oh, the improbable, unexplainable impulses of love! (And, yes, Oscar Hammerstein II was Kern's collaborator on Show Boat, but they pulled this tune out of Kern's trunk after it had proven too melancholy for a different show.)

Famous nightclub singer Helen Morgan played Julie in the Broadway and film versions of Show Boat and -- like her character -- struggled with alcohol. You can listen to Helen Morgan's performance in the 1936 movie, or enjoy this more recent interpretation from the always incredible Audra Ann McDonald. I happen to like this song best when it's more sultry and less operatic, but you can't argue with Audra.

#67: Let's Fall in Love

Let's fall in love
Why shouldn't we fall in love?
Our hearts are made of it
Let's take a chance
Why be afraid of it?
Let's close our eyes
And make our own paradise
Little we know of it
Still we can try
To make a go of it

After meeting model and showgirl Anya Taranda, it was probably easy for Harold Arlen to write songs with his frequent collaborator Ted Koehler for the 1933 film, Let's Fall in Love. Harold, born Chaim Arnook in Buffalo, apparently yearned for Anya when he was in Hollywood and she in New York as he wrote the score. But he took his time proposing -- after five years into their relationship, he left her a note: "Dearest Anya - We're getting married tomorrow - 'bout time don't you think? All my love, H." They did marry, a year before Arlen was hired to write what was to become his best-known score, The Wizard of Oz.

Not to be confused with Cole Porter's "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)," Koehler and Arlen's was not only the title song from the 1933 film with Art Jarrett and Ann Sothern, but it also charted at #21 when Peaches and Herb recorded it in 1967. The whole conceit of the song -- the presumption that you cannot fall in love unless you decide to do so -- is as innocent and sweet as the naivete that the singer professes ("the little we know of it"). One of the only rhyming couplets is a stretch ("close our eyes...paradise"), only heightening the feeling of awkward, new love to this song. Take a seat and listen to Diana Krall at the 2008 Sonoma Jazz Festival, or try American Idol's crooner, John Stevens, and Erika Christensen.

#68: Cheek to Cheek

Heaven
I'm in heaven
And my heart beats so
That I can hardly speak
And I seem to find
The happiness I seek
When we're out together
Dancing cheek to cheek

Written specifically for danceman Fred Astaire and first performed in the Depression Era upper, Top Hat, I've heard Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" everywhere from the score of The English Patient to a recent ringing of the town bells in Black Hawk, Colorado. This song's got a soothing, swaying melody as it climbs and descends the scale, with a dramatic minor C section -- "dance with me / I want my arms about you / the charms about you / will carry me through"-- before returning to the familiar floating "A" section. Because I'm not sure that a gambler wants his lucky streak to vanish the same way you might want your cares that hung around you through the week to do so, I think the unconventional 72-bar music takes first place to the lyrics here. My one beef is that the B section ("oh, I'd love to climb a mountain") comes across as a little sing-songy for my taste, but I defer to Berlin here.

Nothing beats the original Fred and Ginger dancing cheek to cheek in 1935, but here's actor Kenneth Branagh trying in a fanciful version from the 2000 film Love's Labour's Lost. For a recent, more standard nightclub rendition, try the lovely Jane Monheit.

#69: Honeysuckle Rose

When I'm takin' sips
From your tasty lips
Seems the honey fairly drips
You're confection
Goodness knows
Honeysuckle rose

Harlem's famed stride pianist, Fats Waller, earned a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame with his 1928 recording of sweetness syncopated. Written with Wallers' frequent collaborator, lyricist Andy Razaf, this bouncy, sassy number is one of the big duets in the Broadway musical honoring Waller's trunk of hits, Ain't Misbehavin', and is the title of a 1980 movie starring Willie Nelson and Amy Irving. Here's Fats himself serenading one of the Cotton Club girls in an up-tempo version (his eyebrows alone are worth the watch), and then Betty Grable (at about 1:45) with a whitewashed, Ziegfield-like version that reveals, if nothing else, how versatile this song proved to be. For a more modern take, check out American Idol's Ruben Studdard and Frenchie Davis (channelling the unbelievable Nell Carter) from a recent touring production.

#70: Ain't That A Kick In The Head?

How lucky can one guy be?

I kissed her, and she kissed me.

Like a fella once said:

"Ain't that a kick in the head?"

The room was completely black,

I hugged her, and she hugged back.

Like a sailor said -- quote --

"Ain't that a hole in a boat?"

One of the youngest songs in this Great American Songbook, "Ain't That A Kick In the Head" entered the canon in 1960 when Dean Martin and the rest of Rat Pack starred on the silver screen in the original version of Ocean's Eleven. The writing team that ran with the Rat Pack, Sammy Cahn (lyrics) and Jimmy Van Heusen (music), captured the swingin' spirit with everything from the fun colloquial phrases to a syncopated bridge that builds on its rhymes and leapfrogs up the scale. While this is a Dean Martin trademark number, the Irish band Westlife brought it back in 2005 on their album, "Allow Us to Be Frank." There's a bit of a paradox between the oozing self-confidence of any of these guys and the incredulity expressed in the song, but the snap-your-fingers music and head-cocked-just-so phraseology that makes it work nonetheless.

#71: Getting to Be a Habit With Me

Oh, I can't break away
I must have you everyday
As regularly as coffee or tea
You've got me in your clutches
And I can't break free
You're getting to be a habit with me

Fifty years before Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" and a year before Cole Porter's "I Get A Kick Out of You," Harry Warren and Al Dubin captured the narcotic virtues of romance in this soft-shoe-like number from that classic show within a show, 42nd Street. I love those eighth-note triplets ("getting to be," "regularly") that give the song such daintiness. Performed twice in the movie, the second time features the female lead being charmed by one man, and then another, and then two more. What kind of habit is that?

While it never rose above No. 4 on the charts in 1933 (Warren and Dubin's "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" was more popular), this piece has since endured as a classic, performed by Frank Sinatra in the Fifties, Diana Krall in the Nineties and the jazz-bossa nova Brazilian group, Delicatessen, in 2006. I like listening to Ben Selvin's orchestra and "America's Sweetheart of Song," Ruth Etting, on the Victrola. You can learn more about Etting (pictured) and her tempestuous life by watching Doris Day's performance in the 1955 film, Love Me or Leave Me.