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To round out the week, I present to you the American propaganda song "I Paid My Income Tax Today" by Irving Berlin, written in 1942 to facilitate the "unprecedented" income tax collection efforts supporting World War II. The rights to the song are actually still owned...
Weill had brainstormed for years on ways to use his talents towards the American war effort. In 1941, he wrote, “Like everybody else, I have the ardent desire to serve the country in some capacity. I would take any job. But it seems to me I could really be of some...
On a recent foray into the jazz realm here in Pittsburgh, I was introduced to "I've Got My Eyes on You" by Cole Porter. It struck me as a charming little number at first hearing, but Porter's veneer is thin; he is, after all, the master of warping the seemingly...
This week, as I continue my preparations of the Weill and Blitzstein double-bill for NYFOS next month, I see the many parallels between the time in which these works were composed and our current era (and the reasons for which they were written). I would therefore...
With this final Song of the Day, I want to return to my deepest musical roots, and I have been agonizing about this selection, which could have been of any of the great classical composers. Mozart would have been an obvious choice, since his music has followed me...
Sarah Vaughan’s voice became one of the objects of my jazz obsession in college, where I was spending far more time than was probably good for me singing jazz in an a capella group called Redhot & Blue. (The arrangements were great. Don’t judge.) With the high...