#81: It's Only a Paper Moon

Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade
It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Harold Arlen's "Paper Moon" hopping rhythm and skipping melody are an infectious combination -- a world that is, like the song implies, almost too good to be true. Interviewed by Walter Cronkhite, lyricist and frequent Arlen collaborator Yip Harburg said his colleague's music had “a particularly wonderful creative quality-imaginative, new, fresh and having identification. His songs live! His songs seep into the heart of a people, of a nation, a world, and stay there." This song was part of a show called, "The Great Magoo," written for a cynical carnival barker who falls in love. The show may have flopped in the Thirties, but the song caught on in the Forties, thanks to both Benny Goodman and Ella Fitzgerald. Everyone from Bobby Darin to Marvin Gaye to Rufus Wainwright has recorded "Paper Moon," but let's hear Nat "King" Cole, and then his daughter, Natalie, share their takes.

#82: I Thought About You

And every stop that we made,

Oh, I thought about you

When I pulled down the shade

Then I really felt blue

I peeked through the crack,

Looked at the track

The one going back to you

And what did I do?

I thought about you

In 1939, composer Jimmy Van Heusen played this soaring melody for Johnny Mercer, who was leaving that evening for Chicago. He rode the Denver Zephyr and mined the trip for inspiration, producing a lyric full of longing. The imagery is classic Mercer, putting us right in the car and cinematically taking us step by step -- from being alone, to spying a sliver in the floor of the car exposing the speeding track, back to "you." Mercer and Van Heusen generally worked with other musicians, but they had a magical moment in "I Thought About You." I'm told that the original artist, Mildred Bailey, performed this memorably, but I can't find a recording on the Web, so Sinatra will be her stand-in.

#83: How Long Has This Been Going On?

I could cry salty tears
Where have I been all these years
Little wow, tell me now
How long has this been going on?

Written by the brothers Gershwin in 1927, this emotional roller-coaster of a song has been tossed around a bit. It was dropped from the musical, "Funny Face," before it hit Broadway -- but was later included in the movie version thirty years later, sung by Audrey Hepburn. It appeared earlier on stage in "Rosalie," a show about a princess from a mythical kingdom who falls in love with a West Point cadet, but was dropped from the movie version, when Cole Porter wrote all new music and lyrics. Musicologist Allen Forte must have liked it, however; he wrote eight pages of analysis on this song, noting in the bridge, “Ira gives us his all, with the erotic lyric ‘Oh, I feel that I could melt; into heaven I’m hurled’--erotic for that time, that is."

Originally made famous by Peggy Lee and then rediscovered by Sarah Vaughn, this one has attracted performers as diverse as Van Morrison, Bon Jovi and Cher, but I personally like the Kristin Chenoweth version from her album, "Let Yourself Go." Also, check out this live performance by Judy Butterfield at Jazz at Lincoln Center, which has a different opening verse and has a slower tempo than I'm used to, but is still quite lovely.

#84: Something Good

Perhaps I had a wicked childhood

Perhaps I had a miserable youth

But somewhere in my wicked miserable past

There must have been a moment of truth

For here you are standing there loving me

Whether or not you should

So somewhere in my youth or childhood

I must have done something good

Gentle readers: know that I would not post just any Sound of Music number on this list. This is a special one, written later than most "standards" (1965) and a Richard Rodgers song with an unusual lyricist (himself). Since his long-time collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein II, passed away right after Mary Martin opened on Broadway as Maria, Rodgers was on his own when Sound of Music hit the big screen with Julie Andrews, and he replaced "An Ordinary Couple" from the stage production -- with which he and Hammerstein had apparently always been dissatisfied -- with "Something Good." While I absolutely love the earnest, confessional nature of this near-hymn and like to think of it as a plaintive reply to The King and I's "Something Wonderful," it's a little weird for Maria to sing it; sure, she's a nun who's a free spirit (and has a great voice, so why not use it?), but Captain Von Trapp is the jerk in the relationship. It works better when Elaine Stritch used it poignantly as the encore of her one-woman show, At Liberty; after pouring out her life history of drunken missteps, she thanks the audience for a blessed career despite it all.

For a slowed-down jazzy glimpse of "Something Good," check out Adrian Sicam on Microsoft Music. Or watch Karen Walker be silly on Will & Grace.

#85: Something Wonderful

He will not always say

What you would have him say

But now and then he'll do

Something wonderful

Captain Von Trapp. The King of Siam. Billy Bigelow. I like to think that the women who love these headstrong, hard-hearted Rodgers and Hammerstein men don't have low expectations; they see something truly special that forgives all of the drama these blokes bring. This particular early Fifties ballad tugs at the heartstrings with its closed melody that opens up like a flower every time it hits the phrase, "Something Wonderful." While I would stay away from operatic interpretations of the song and am partial to Shirley Bassey's full-throated performance here, I also like this stirring, softly soulful version of Amel Larrieux's 2007 album, "Lovely Standards," which rescues this tune from well-meaning sophomores playing Lady Thiang in their high school productions of "The King and I," from where this song originates.

#86: Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)

Electric eels, I might add, do it

Though it shocks 'em, I know
Why ask if shad do it?
Waiter, bring me shad roe

From educated fleas to chimpanzees, Cole Porter catalogues the romantic habits of most of the animal kingdom -- not to mention most of the United Nations (from the Dutch, to the Argentines, to the Siamese) -- with this naughty valentine. Full of double-entendres and witticisms, this 1928 gem got on the radio because of its parenthetic title addendum ("Let's Fall In Love"), which slipped the insouciant tune passed the censors. Since then, everyone from Mary Martin to Joan Jett to Molly Ringwald has done it -- that is, fallen in love with this classic. Do not watch the pretty terrible Kevin Kline - Ashley Judd flick, De-Lovely; you'll get the gist watching Alanis Morrisette singing in this production number on YouTube. Better yet, try Eartha Kitt's more intimate version, where her eyes alone are worth the watch.

#87: Moonglow

It must have been moonglow

Way up in the blue

It must have been moonglow

That led me straight to you

I still hear you saying

Dear one, hold me fast

Then I start in praying

Oh lord, please let this last

This beautifully simple jazz number, written by composer Will Hudson in 1933 as a theme song for his Detroit band and lyricized soon after by Eddie DeLange, is just a few notes, and maybe that's why it feels as ethereal and magical as its subject. The bridge -- "we seem to float right through the air" -- glides right down the scale.

"Moonglow" became a go-to song for clarinetist Benny Goodman and his quartet, and it's still going strong with interpreters like the young New Orleans trumpeter and vocalist Jeremy Davenport on his album, "Maybe In a Dream." Here's Billie Holiday on YouTube with her 1952 take. Oh lord, please let this last, indeed!