May 12, 2005 10:47 PM
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(Updated May 12, 2005 10:48 PM)
In the fifties, I grew up in Bangalore, studying in King George’s School in Austin town. Close to the school was a café called Crown Café, which I am told is still extant. It had a juke box which was active from morning till night, non-stop. I used to visit this café every Sunday at 4 pm and hang around till 8 pm listening to English songs. Every week I had Rs. 3 to spend(Re 1 on a cutlet and Ice Cream and Rs. 2 on the juke box). We had to pay 25 paise for each song. My friends and I would come armed with our 25 paise coins and a list of songs.
Some old songs stand out in memory and I used to sing them over and over again, ad nauseam till somebody asked me to shut up. I shall discuss some of them in this review. The men and women of my generation might recognize some of their old favorites. To my younger friends like knmurali and psixx these may be of historical interest.
- TO CELIA . Sung by Paul Robeson and written by none other than Ben Jonson, the illustrious contemporary of Shakespeare. Ben Jonson was an anti-romantic and wrote this song just to prove that writing a love song was no big deal. He did not care for this song. It is a “manufactured” song, but the lines are very beautiful, revealing how talented Ben Jonson was.
Paul Robeson was a Shakespearean actor, famous for his portrayal of Othello. He possessed a fine bass/ baritone voice and made the song very famous.
It goes: Drink to me only with thine eyes/ And I’ll pledge with mine/ or leave a kiss but in the cup/ and I’ll not look for wine….
No beloved can remain unmoved if her lover sings these lines when he is courting her…
.2 Doris Day’s QUE SERA SERA was another favorite of ours. Our eyes used to mist when we used to hear it. It is an evergreen song and I think it will be
remembered even in the 22nd Century. It is tender, wistful, beautiful and haunting.
As many people know the song, I shall not burden you with the lines.
3. We were very fond of “I LOVE YOU BECAUSE….”
I love you because you understand, dear
Every single thing I try to do
You are always there to lend a helping hand, dear
I love you most of all because you are you.
This song was sung by many different artistes including Elvis Presley, the idol of our generation. However, we were fonder of the versions of Al Martino and Jim Reeves. It is a perfect love song which even many among with bull frog voices were wont to holler.
Pat Boone’s CHERRY PINK AND APPLE BLOSSOMS WHITE was another favorite, because of his “tutty fruity” voice, with all its trills, feeding our impressionable minds with tender emotions. By the way, Hemant Kumar has plagiarized the tune for his “AJA ZERA….”. We used to argue whose song was better and Pat Boone usually won the contest hands down.
Jim Reeves, known as Gentleman Jim was the hottest favorite of our generation. When he died in 1964 in an air crash at the age of 39, a part of our adolescence perished too. I have collected more than 300 of his songs over the years on LPs and audio cassettes. I used to be very fond of his ROSARIO and when I bought my first L.P. of Jim Reeves, I played this song about 150 times on the first day on my Stereogram. The song is about the unfruitful love of a cowboy in Argentina who was in love with his employer’s daughter. He leaves employment when the girl married a rich farmer. The tragedy of the situation was that the girl did not even know that the cowboy who saddled her pony was in love with her.
Our generation grew up with some legendary singers like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Harry Belafonte, Billie Holiday, Johnny Cash and Joan Baez, among others. I have treasured memories of these exponents of forgotten genres of music. The silver lining is that some of these genres are making a re-appearance.
