#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.

#88: You're The Top

You're the top!
You're Mahatma Gandhi.
You're the top!
You're Napoleon Brandy.
You're the purple light
Of a summer night in Spain,
You're the National Gallery
You're Garbo's salary,
You're cellophane.
You're sublime,
You're a turkey dinner,
You're the time
Of a Derby winner
I'm a toy balloon that is fated soon to pop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!

What was considered cool in 1934? Cole Porter'll tell you -- in rhyme, no less. Written first on a lark (it reads like it was penned as a party-game, doesn't it?) and then adapted for the musical "Anything Goes," satirists have rewritten the lyrics many times over to fit every occasion. Ethel Merman has sung this name-dropper with everyone from Bing Crosby to Kermit the Frog, but here's a version with Frank Sinatra. (Those are two people you don't usually think of in the same sentence.) Or try Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. Or Cary Grant, playing an extremely flattering and sanitized version of the Indiana-born, Yale-educated composer in a 1946 biopic. Then see this footnoted version of the lyrics from Slate.com to get the skinny on Porter's famous list.

#94: I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself A Letter

I'm gonna smile and say
I hope you're feeling better
And close "with love"
The way you do
I'm gonna sit right down
And write myself a letter
And make believe it came from you

This is either a massively passive-aggressive message ("write me, damn it!"), or it's just darn sad. Either way, it's a little odd that the melody is so cheerful (it's kinda "Tip Toe Through the Tulips" to me somehow), but perhaps because I can totally see myself doing exactly what the lyric says, I like it just the same. This tune, written in 1935 by Fred Ahlert (music) and Joe Young (lyrics), was a Fats Waller standard, later recorded by plenty of stars, including Frank Sinatra with Count Basie, but also Bill Haley and the Comets (in a rejiggered version), Tony Danza, and Danny Aiello. Me, I'd go with Nat King Cole or Sarah Vaughn.

YouTube has the Fats Waller version, snipped from a cute Sesame Street vignette. Hats off to PBS for introducing this one to the young'uns.