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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. This is the first of a five-part program paying tribute to composer Harold Arlen. Arlen wrote the classic movie score to The Wizard of Oz and composed countless unforgettable melodies like Stormy Weather and Get Happy. This program was guest-hosted by Ken Blum and featured commentary by Arlen biographer Ed Jablonski. It originally aired in July of 1982.

[0:44] Paul Lazarus: In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was a look on at something shocking, but now God knows, Anything Goes. Good afternoon and welcome to Anything Goes. This is Paul Lazarus. For the next two weeks, Anything Goes will be hosted by guest producer Ken Blum, who together with Ed Jablonski will present a very interesting look at the work of composer Harold Arlen.

[1:13] Ken Blum: Life Full of Consequences from the Metro Picture Cabin in the Sky. This was done by Rochester, character Little Joe, and Lena Horne, character Georgia Brown. I'm going to try to do both. All from my friend's brain. Gonna hate him from here on in. Out!

[1:50] ♪ Musical number: "Life's Full of Consequence" — performed by Harold Arlen ♪

[3:48] Ken Blum: That was Life's Full of Consequence from Cabin in the Sky, sung by Harold Arlen. Today we're going to be taking a look at Harold Arlen's career through many rare recordings and some that are not so rare. This is Ken Blum and the show is Anything Goes. Paul Lazarus is out today, so I and Ed Jablonski, Harold Arlen's biographer, will be taking a look at Mr. Arlen's career.

[4:10] Ken Blum: We're going to be playing many rare tapes never before heard and some better-known recordings, too. Because of the age of the tapes and the home recordings and the glass records we're going to be playing, some of the sound may be somewhat, let's say, lacking in high fidelity, but we think the material more than compensates for any lack of good sound. We're going to be doing two shows, today's part one, and we're going to be taking Mr. Arlen from his first days in Buffalo through his Hollywood period and then in the next show we're going to be concentrating on his Broadway period.

[4:40] Ken Blum: We're going to start the show today with one of the more famous recordings, that by Judy Garland, that she did of an early Arlen song, Get Happy, although this recording was made late in Judy's career. Ed, do you want to tell us why Get Happy is such an important song in Arlen's career?

[4:59] Ed Jablonski: Well, it really got him out of show business and band playing and piano playing and arranging into, actually, the music business. At the time he wrote it, he was in the cast of a show called Great Day. It was a score by Vincent Eumanns and was serving as Eumanns' amanuensis. He was writing down songs. Eumanns did not like to bother with writing things down. He found out that not only did Harold sing, he had a singing part in the show, but he could actually write music, which was a little bit unusual in those days.

[5:31] Ed Jablonski: But one day also, while one of his friends, I think Fletcher Henderson was a rehearsal pianist, and so Harold took over for him for the dancers. In between the dance routines, Harold would play around with what's known as a pickup, that you play a couple of bars that signal to the dancers that it's about time to begin. As it evolved, it kept becoming more and more complicated, which is a rather typical Harold Arlen device. Will Votery, who was an orchestrator and was also working on the show, came over and he said, I think that's a rather interesting little idea you have there. It begins to sound more like a song and it's no longer a pickup.

[6:16] Ed Jablonski: Then somebody else, Harry Warren, who was a song plugger at that time, worked for a publisher, heard it also and he was rather impressed with it. It kept getting longer and longer and longer and he said, I think I got the guy who can write this up for you. The guy turned out to be a man named Ted Kohler, who was also a somewhat semi-struggling songwriter. He had already written a few songs. They got them together and the song turned out to be Get Happy, which went into a show called the 915 Review. This would have been about 1929-1930, a show that had songs by Kay Swift and by George and Ira Gershwin and several other people, and the last that I think all of eight or five performances. However, that song just simply caught on.

After that, Harold simply stopped playing the piano in clubs and in shows. He already had quit Great Day, which seemed to take forever to get on the boards anyhow. So that's his introduction into the real, honest, and good-as-professional songwriting.

[7:40] ♪ Musical number: "Get Happy" — performed by Judy Garland ♪

[10:03] Ken Blum: Tell us about our next selection, Rhythmic Moments, which is an early piano piece, and we have a recording, a live recording, by Kevin Cole.

[10:11] Ed Jablonski: Well, that was written in 1928 when Harold Arlen was a youngster. He had barely gotten out of Buffalo, his hometown. He was working with a group, what was that band, called Buffalodians. It actually is his very first solo piano composition. In fact, the sheet music says it was written by one Hyman Arluck, or Arlen rather, no, Harold Arluck, before he had changed to Arlen. In fact, when Kevin first played it for Harold, he really didn't quite recognize it, being that it was quite a few years ago. He got quite a kick out of it, and I think he found it rather delightful. It's almost like meeting somebody you never knew before. Really, it's a ragtime, stride piano, and also it shows his authentic feel for that idiom, which was unusual. Even Gershwin, I don't think, ever quite came that close to what is a real folk idiom. There isn't much else to tell him, except I think Kevin's performance is charming.

[13:39] Ken Bloom: You're listening to Anything Goes, featuring a tribute to composer Harold Arlen.

[14:00] Ken Bloom: Next, we're going to be hearing "Stormy Weather," sung by Harold Arlen. It was initially started for Cab Calloway, who was a great big band leader and star of most of the Cotton Club shows. And when Harold called the front shout, that opening just soars; he wrote with Cab Calloway in mind. Also, it was one of the few songs that took a very little while to write. They wrote it in a whole afternoon. He and Ted Kohler. Kohler had a curious way of writing. He would lie down a lot, and he used to tell Harold he was saving his cells. He would think with his eyes closed, and Harold never knew whether he was asleep or not. But they started the song, went down, had lunch, came back, and finished it. And actually, what happened then is that Calloway moved out of the Cotton Club and went into some other club.

So they had to have a star, and so Esa Waters became the one who actually introduced it in the show. But before that even, someone realized that they had a bit of a goldmine on their hands. So they actually asked Harold Arlen to record it with the Leo Reisman Band. And the recording was issued before the show, actually. It's actually a review in a Harlem nightclub. It wasn't a real Broadway show. They were considered very fancy, and Uptown Trade went there and whatnot. So the song, the record was a hit before the show actually opened, so that they were lined up to get in before the opening. And it became a tremendous, of course, even for Esa Waters and for everybody else who ever... Lena Horne made a career out of it, practically.

But the first wonderful recording was the one by Arlen himself. Okay, we're going to be hearing that, and then afterwards, also from the Cotton Club Parade, "Happy As The Day Is Long," and then "Ill Wind."

[16:21] ♪ Musical number: "Stormy Weather" — performed by Harold Arlen ♪

[18:12] ♪ Musical number: "I've Got the World on a String" — performed by Harold Arlen ♪

[21:23] ♪ Musical number: "Happy as the Day is Long" — performed by Harold Arlen ♪

[23:22] ♪ Musical number: "Ill Wind" — performed by Harold Arlen ♪