Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry

Steyn On-line ^ | June 6, 2021 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

This month we are marking the centenary of Nelson Riddle, perhaps the greatest of all arrangers of popular song. That's what Frank Sinatra thought, and we cite "I've Got the World on a String" and "I've Got You Under My Skin" as merely the obvious examples. But Sinatra and Riddle rescued a lot of other songs over the years - songs that had once been hits and then been forgotten, songs that had been in hit shows but no one had noticed, songs that had been in the stage version but dropped for the movie adaptation... But they rarely transformed a song's fortunes on the scale they did with this one. It was from an awe-inspiringly hideous train-wreck of a musical. But Sinatra recorded it - and made it a hit. And twelve years later he re-recorded it with a Riddle arrangement - and made it a standard. And, a quarter-century after that, another Nelson Riddle arrangement of the song wound up spawning an entire industry. Here are Nelson and Linda Ronstadt on stage at the 1984 Tokyo Music Festival:

That song could have turned out really bad. It is, after all, the only torchy ballad of lost love whose central image is of laundry - the household wash, the clothes line:

When I want rain
I get sunny weather
I'm just as blue as the sky
Since love is gone
Can't pull myself together
Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry..

It was written by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn, two songwriters who went way back with Sinatra. The first time I met Jule Styne was at his office up the dingy stage-door stairs above the Mark Hellinger Theatre on Broadway.

[lee martell]

Mark Steyn, true to his nature, tends to prattle on and on in this rambling article. He has a point of course, about Jules Styne being one of the great American songwriters for show tunes in the 20th Century.

Just two of the many songs Jules either wrote or co-wrote:
“Let it Snow, Let it Snow!”
“Never, Never Land”.
I noticed the author has the same last name as one of his subjects. Hmm. Maybe they are distantly related.
Jules was from Britain.

[Fungi]

Let it snow, the rendition by Dean Martin is an absolute classic, the best there is.

[Jyotishi]

“I noticed the author has the same last name as one of his subjects.”

Well, they do seem to have the same pronunciation.

[Fiji Hill]

Dorsey hired a boy singer called Frank Sinatra, and when Frank quit two years later he took Axel with him as his all but exclusive arranger for the first decade of his solo career. And for a while they all wound up living at the Sunset Towers on Sunset Strip in Hollywood, Cahn and Stordahl rooming together in one apartment, and Frankie two floors up.

I used to live a block from the Sunset Tower, an art deco high rise, when I was living on the Sunset Strip. At the time, I was unaware of the celebrities who had lived there, including John Wayne. It was in bad shape when I was living in the neighborhood, but it has since been converted into a luxury hotel.

[Fiji Hill]

Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne wrote Let it Snow during a heatwave in the summer of 1945 in totally snowless Los Angeles.

[stanne]

Jule Styne

[lee martell]

Is that right? One of the most enduring winter/ Xmastime songs written in skillet hot LA!

Well as a certain Canadian said “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

[Rummyfan]

Steyn started out writing about and reviewing music and musical theater. Sure he takes some detours but I swear, when reading him I hear his voice and the puns strewn throughout make the trip worthwhile.

[Bigg Red]

Mark

[Fiji Hill]

"White Christmas" was also written in Los Angeles. The original version included a verse, rarely heard, about being stuck in "Beverly Hills, LA" at Christmastime. However it is included in this version, which is my all-time favorite. It was recorded a cappella, since the instrumentalists were out on strike.

White Christmas--The Song Spinners (1942)

[Rummyfan]

"White Christmas" was also written in Los Angeles.

By a Jewish man no less. Irving Berlin.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Mark Steyn is a mysterious fellow. How the heck did you get to know so many of the big shots of Tin Pan Alley? Was he in the music business? He is not that old. It is fascinating stuff, and makes me think he is 20 years older than he actually is.

[lee martell]

Mark is older than he looks or acts. He is 61 y/o. But yes, as you said, he came along decades after these songs were popular. Some folks come to a private conclusion that most the popular music offered to their own generation is bilge or bunk. They allow some other type of music to grab their hearts and imaginations.
Just the other day, I met a Lyft driver, who looked about 35.
He was playing a DVD with music by The Delfonics, most famous for two songs: “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time?” and La,La, La, La Means I Love You”

Those were hits back when I was in Junior High, early 70’s.
The driver says he likes the harmonies and the beautiful mood they bring. He says too much music from his gen. is very negative or amateurish.

[Stentor]

I probably haven’t heard Kitty Kallen since I was a kid in the 50s. Nice version with Harry James.

[clive bitterman]

I thought it was written in the bar of the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix...

[eyedigress]

My Favorite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEjq8ZoyXuQ