When a piece of instrumental music is popular, it’s hard to resist the temptation to put words to it, and thus make it even more popular. As noted in this space over the years, a big chunk of Duke Ellington’s “songs” aren’t songs at all, but jazz instrumentals to which a lyric has been awkwardly appended: “Yoooooooooo…. must Take The A-Train/Toooooooo… get to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem.” Who needs it? Just about any instrument playing that line would do a better job than those words do. And “Take The A Train”‘s lyric is a work of genius by comparison with “Prelude To A Kiss”. Ira Gershwin always resisted offers to put words to “Rhapsody in Blue” or “An American in Paris”. He and his brother had written plenty of songs over the years, and he figured if George had wanted “Rhapsody” to have lyrics he’d have mentioned it at the time. Leroy Anderson liked words: He spoke at least nine languages (English, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, French, German, Italian, Portuguese) and, indeed, fancied himself as a lyricist in at least a couple of them. But he didn’t think as a songwriter; he thought as a composer. Unlike, say, Cole Porter or Richard Rodgers, he orchestrated his own music, and so he conceived it instrumentally rather than vocally. Although you can find texts that were written for his most popular pieces, they sound very much like words set to pre-existing notes which don’t particularly require them.
Mark Steyn, “Sleigh Ride”, Steyn Online, 2019-12-08.
