Grrrr. Monday. It's grim.
There are some things that are certain to cheer one up at the start of a week, however!
One of them is our beloved Sir Noël Coward, The Master, whose 125th birthday it is today!
The other is the assembled talents of a bevy of drag queens. From Belgium.
Put 'em together on a Tacky Music Monday, and what do you get? This old fave!
Have a good week, dear reader.
"She could take the melody in her hand, hold it like an egg, crack it open, fry it, let it sizzle, reconstruct it, put the egg back in the box and back in the refrigerator and you would've still understood every single syllable." - Quincy Jones
We have an important centenary to celebrate today, dear reader - that of the utterly magnificent Miss Dinah Washington! All hail.
The former Ruth Jones took the music world by storm with her crystal clear, multi-range vocals - perfectly suited to jazz, blues, torch songs and big band music alike. She worked over the years with the top names in the industry, including Lionel Hampton, Louis Jordan, Brook Benton and the aforementioned Quincy Jones, and was certainly an influence on later artists like Aretha Franklin (and all other blues and soul artistes thereafter).
Remarkably, by the time of her accidental death in 1963 from an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of 39, she had already had seven husbands and recorded a back catalogue of fabulous music of which many artists would have been proud. One can only imagine what more delights Miss Washington would have given the world had she lived longer...
[And just look who's playing "continuity announcer"!]
And of course, a record for which she is perhaps most famous these days (written, of course, by the Master - Noel Coward):
We're mad about her!
Dinah Washington (born Ruth Lee Jones, 29th August 1924 – 14th December 1963)
Noël Coward wrote the song for a 1932 London revue, Words and Music. The song concerns the unrequited love of the singer for a film star and, as originally written, it was sung by four different women who are queued outside a cinema, all pining for the matinee idol. For the New York Broadway version, Coward wrote additional verses that referred to gay feelings, effeminacy and conversion therapy. The verses ran foul of censorship laws and were never performed, references to homosexuality being forbidden.We have, here at Dolores Delargo Towers, a cover of the "gay" version by the late Peter Greenwell, but unfortunately no recording appears to be "out there" by The Master himself.
The original lyrics are:
Mad about the boy
I know it's stupid to be mad about the boy
I'm so ashamed of it but must admit the sleepless nights I've had
About the boy
On the silver screen
He melts my foolish heart in every single scene
Although I'm quite aware that here and there are traces of the cad
About the boy
Lord knows I'm not a fool girl
I really shouldn't care
Lord knows I'm not a school girl
In the fury of her first affair
Will it ever cloy
This odd diversity of misery and joy
I'm feeling quite insane and young again
And all because I'm mad about the boy
So if I could employ
A little magic that will finally destroy
This dream that pains me and enchains me
But I can't because I'm mad...
I'm mad about the boy
One of the verses in the "straight" version is
Mad about the boy,
It's pretty funny
But I'm mad about the boy.
He has a gay appeal that makes me feel
There's maybe something sad about the boy.
The word “gay” did not become synonymous with homosexual for another three decades but, according to the Encyclopaedia Of Homosexuality, the phrase "gay cat" meaning "a homosexual boy" first appeared in print in 1933. It is therefore likely that the use of the word gay for homosexual was already in use and that the straight lyrics include in-jokes by Noël Coward.
The lyrics to the banned version are:
Mad about the boy
I know it’s silly
But I’m mad about the boy
And even Dr Freud cannot explain
Those vexing dreams
I’ve had about the boy
When I told my wife
She said
“I never heard such nonsense in my life!”
Her lack of sympathy
Embarrassed me
And made me frankly glad about the boy.
My doctor can’t advise me
He’d help me if he could
Three time he’s tried to psychoanalyse me
But it’s just no good
People I employ
Have the impertinence
To call me Myrna Loy
I rise above it
Frankly love it
‘Cos I’m absolutely
Mad about the boy
