Live Video Footage from the “Night Sessions” CD Launch
“Fly me to the Moon” written by Bart Howard (1954)
Louise Howlett (voice) & Albert Combrink (keyboard)
Recorded live at the launch of their CD “Night Sessions” – 7 October 2010, Cape Town
A Little Fly Me to the Moon History:
From “Sinatra! The Song is You – A Singer’s Art” by Will Friedwald
Regarding the song, Fly Me to the Moon, Friedwald says that the composer, Bart Howard, originally wrote the song as a waltz and there were already hundreds of versions out there before Sinatra recorded it. June Christy and Peggy Lee were two of the bigger names who sang this song.
Quincy Jones had arranged the song as an instrumental for Count Basie. Jones boosted the tempo and changed the time signature to 4/4 for Basie’s 1963 album “This Time by Basie.”
Sinatra had known Bart Howard for over a decade and wanted to record the song. On the Sinatra-Basie album of 1964, the song explodes with energy and Howard, the songwriter, wrote “Frank changed the lyrics (and the song) so much, which normally would have annoyed the crap out of me but didn’t because it worked so well.” The song went on to become an anthem for swinging songs.
To book the artists or purchase a CD, contact Louise Howlett at singing-lady@hotmail.com and visit www.albertcombrink.com for more information.
Purchase downloadable tracks of the CD at CDBABY.com
Fly me to the moon – FREE DOWNLOADABLE SHEET MUSIC
"Fly me to the Moon" Free Sheet Music
Fly me to the moon – Lyrics:
Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like on
Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby, kiss me
Fill my heart with song
And let me sing forever more
You are all I long for
All I worship and adore
In other words, please be true
In other words, I love you
Fill my heart with song
Let me sing forever more
You are all I long for
All I worship and adore
In other words, please be true
In other words
In other words
SAMA Nominees for “Best Instrumental Album” extend the traditional tango into the realm of Jazz: Bassist Charles Lazar’s latest composition, Live Amateur Video footage.
“…Now, I’ve told you…” - composed by Charles Lazar
Recorded live on 07 April 2011 during KKNK (Klein Karroo Nationale Kunstefees) in Oudtshoorn.
CT Tango Ensemble:
Stanislav Angelov – Accordion
Willie van Zyl – Saxophone
Albert Combrink – Piano
Charles Lazar – Double Bass
Watch a live video of CT Tango Ensemble playing “Los Mareados”; Download Free Sheet Music of “Los Mareados”; Lyrics and translation of “Los Mareados”
Los Mareados (Music: Juan Carlos Cobian /Enrique Cadicamo (1900-1999)
Performed live by the CT Tango Ensemble:
Juan Simon – Voice
Stanislav Angelov – Accordion
Jacek Domagala – Violin
Albert Combrink – Piano
Filmed during the run of Tango Show El Beso – December 2004 at The Little Theatre – Cape Town, produced by El Cacha Tango Company, directed by Heinrich Reisenhofer (www.elcacha.com)
Juan Carlos Cobian
A deceptively simple little Tango, Los Mareados starts with a quasi-recitative, building to a very dramatic climax. It’s composer, pianist and tango-innovator Juan Carlos Cobian (1896-1953), was born in Pigüé, Buenos Aires. His fame rests on both his playing as a pianist, and his compositions. He was perhaps the first to fill in the bass line with embellishments when the melody rests. This practise was later taken up by other masters such as Francisco de Caro. Alongside the composer Enrique Delfino, Cobian was the main creator of the so-called “Tango-Romanza”. Born of Spanish father and Argentine mother, he showed early pianistic promise imitating the lessons of his sister Delores, who encouraged her parents to let her younger brother take lessons as well. After graduating from the “Conservatorio Williams” at the age of 17, he did the rounds in Buenos Aires playing for silent movies and beer houses until landing a job with the best paid bandoneonist of the time, Genaro Esposito. He was arrested for evading military service, but the time to good use, writing a number of tangos.
“Tango-poet” Enrique Cadicamo
Novelist and “Tango-poet” Enrique Cadicamo (1900-1999), born Luján, Buenos Aires, was an early prize-winner of the Max Glücksmann competition for new tangos. His lyrics are rich in the Lunfardo style. Lunfardo is not so much a Latin dialect of Spanish, as it is a specific use of a “sub-set” of that language, rich in imagery that might be lost on the audience – or not, depending on how one is using it. Lunfardo is frequently found in the lyrics of Tangos, supplying nuances and double-entendres with overtones of sex, drugs and the criminal underworld. It is an integral part of the Spanish spoken in Argentina, Uruguay, even parts of Paraguay and Chile. But for all practical purposes, Lunfardo is not understood by the general Spanish speakers from other countries. In the mouths of some, Lunfardo is mere slang. In the pen of Cadicamo, it’s power even attracted the ire of censorship.
Buenos Aires 1943
From “Los dopados” to “Los Mareados” to “En mi passado” and back again.
Cobian originally composed Los Mareados as an instrumental tango. The lyrics were added by Raúl Doblas and Alberto Weisbach for use in the play “Los Dopados” (The doped) which premièred in Buenos Aires in 1922. The acidic text describes two lovers breaking up and swearing to get angrily and madly drunk together on “Champagne that kills your little soul”. The show was soon forgotten.
Two decades later, Cadicamo heard an old record of the song with Cobian himself on the piano. He wrote new words, repeating the central theme of the bitter champagne-drinking break-up. So, in 1942 Los Mareados was recorded again and was an instant hit on the local radio stations. But not for long: just three years before Juan Domingo Perón became president, the military government clamped down on Lunfardo elements in all forms of public life. Suspect literature and music were banned, and Los Mareados was no longer allowed radio play.
Eva & Juan Perón
Cadicamo, locked in an office with an intimidating armed military official, was “requested” to rewrite the lyrics. And so, the tame “En mi pasado” was born. No more drunken Champagne-tinged skirmishes: the lovers part calmly and without sex, alcohol or violence.
Los Mareados was only heard in its original form again in 1949. A delegation of poets and musicians begged for a special hearing with the president of the nation, General Juan Domingo Perón. Perón was swayed by the passion of a group that included the greats Anibal Troilo and Francisco Canaro, and lifted the ban.
Los Mareados Lyrics (Cadicamo) in the original Spanish (and Lunfardo)
Rara.. como encendida te hallé bebiendo linda y fatal…
Bebías y en el fragor del champán, loca, reías por no llorar…
Pena Me dio encontrarte pues al mirarte yo vi brillar
tus ojos con un eléctrico ardor, tus bellos ojos que tanto adoré…
Esta noche, amiga mía, el alcohol nos ha embriagado…
¡Qué importa que se rían y nos llamen los mareados!
Cada cual tiene sus penas y nosotros las tenemos…
Esta noche beberemos porque ya no volveremos a vernos más…
Hoy vas a entrar en mi pasado, en el pasado de mi vida…
Tres cosas lleva mi alma herida: amor… pesar… dolor…
Hoy vas a entrar en mi pasado y hoy nuevas sendas tomaremos…
¡Qué grande ha sido nuestro amor!…
Y, sin embargo, ¡ay!, mirá lo que quedó…
Ave. de Mayofe - Buenos Aires c.1930
Los Mareados Lyrics (Cadicamo) in a very loose English Translation by Albert Combrink
How strange! As if you were on fire, I found you drinking - contagious and fatal.
You drank, and in the noise of the Champaign, you were crazy – laughing so that you did not cry.
It pained me to see you like that, your brilliant eyes shooting an electric bolt – your beautiful eyes that I adored.
Tonight, my friend, alcohol will be our friend. What matters is that we be inebriated, and we recall how intoxicated we used to be.
Everyone has sorrows, and we have ours.
Tonight we will drink, because we can no longer see who we used to be.
Today you enter my past – part of the history of my life.
My soul takes three things with it: Love, a Scale, and Pain.
Today you enter my past. We will take new paths.
How great was our love.
And yet, despite everything, our love looks at what is used to be.
Download Free Sheet Music of “Los Mareados” in a piano arrangement by Tango Pianist and Arranger Rogelio Marra.
CT Tango Ensemble performing Julian Plaza’s Payadora live at the 2008 Paulaner October Music Festival Cape Town’s V & A Waterfront.
CT Tango Ensemble performing Julian Plaza’s Payadora live at the 2008 Paulaner October Music Festival Cape Town’s V & A Waterfront. The CD was also recorded on their second Album, Tango Club(launched March 2010)
CT Tango Ensemble
Stanislav Angelov – Accordion,
Albert Combrink – Keyboard
Jacek Domagala – Violin
Dave Ridgway – Double Bass
Read more about Julian Plaza’s delightful milonga, Payadora HERE
Recorded live & produced by Marek Pinski from CDXpress (pinski@iafrica.com)
To buy their CDs or book the Ensemble go to: www.goodmusic.co.za
Louise Howlet (Voice) & Albert Combrink (Piano) perform the 1934 Rodgers & Hart Classic, “Blue Moon” at the launch of their CD “Night Sessions”, 7 October 2010, Cape Town.
Louise Howlet (Voice) & Albert Combrink (Piano) perform the 1934 Rodgers & Hart Classic, “Blue Moon” at the launch of their CD “Night Sessions”, 7 October 2010, Cape Town.
To book the artists or purchase a CD, contact Louise Howlett at singing-lady@hotmail.com and visit www.albertcombrink.com for more information.
The following information is by Bill Brent and was published originally in the Weekly Bugle.
Thought you’d be interested in the story of Blue Moon.
Bill Brent
Blue Moon was the only Rodgers and Hart song to become a hit, that was not written for a show or movie; but Blue Moon has a remarkable history. The lyric that we are familiar with was the fourth… here’s the story:
Rodgers and Hart were under contract to MGM for about a month when they were given the task of writing songs for the “Hollywood Party”. They were told every MGM star would be in it, Disney was making a technicolor cartoon to stick in the middle of it, and it was to be the big screwball comedy “to end all screwball comedies” to quote Richard Rodgers… “One of our ideas was to include a scene in which Jean Harlow is shown as an innocent young girl saying – or rather singing- her prayers. How the sequence fitted into the movie I haven’t the foggiest notion, but the purpose was to express Jean’s overwhelming ambition to become a movie star (‘Oh Lord, if you’re not busy up there,/I ask for help with a prayer/ So please don’t give me the air…’).” The scene was never shot, no sound checks were ever made, and in fact, only three of the dozen or so Rodgers and Hart songs written for the film made it to the screen. So MGM Song #225 is dated June 14, 1933, and was registered for copy-right as an unpublished work by MGM, JULY 10, 1933. The remarkable saga of “Prayer” epitomizes what Rodgers and Hart went througn when they were under contract to Metro.
"Blue Moon" - Melissa Sadie Wright (permission to use requested)
In its second life the “Prayer”/”Blue Moon” tune was given a new lyric and became the title song of the 1934 MGM film Manhatian Melodrama, which starred Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Leo Carillo, and was the movie that John Dillinger had been watching when he was gunned down outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. It was registered for copyright as an unpublished work by Metro-Goidwyn Mayer, March 30, 1934. So Hart wrote a lyric for the song to be used as the title song (played either before or during the opening credits of the Movie)… But before “High Noon”, you just didn’t have too many title songs, so “Its Just That Kind of a Play” AKA The Manhattan Melodrama was cut.
Rodgers liked the melody and when MGM asked for a nightclub number for “Manhattan Melodrama”, he had Hart write new lyrics and “Prayer (Oh Lord, make me a movie star)” became “The bad in every man” sung by Shirley Ross. The song made it into the film but did not become a hit. The press kit shows sheet music on the song, but I’ve never run across any.
It was Rodgers & Hart’s publisher, Jack Robbins who told them he thought the song would be a hit, if Hart could make it more commercial. Hart was reluctant to write a fourth lyric, but Robbins swore he’d plug the song from California to Maine. Hart caved in and wrote “Blue Moon”. Robbins “gave” it to the “Hollywood Hotel”, a radio program that used it as their theme, and on January 15, 1934 He had Connie Boswell record it for Columbia. Blue Moon turned up in at least seven other MGM motion pictures including “Marx Brothers At The Circus” and “Viva Las Vegas”.
PRAYER
Oh, Lord, If you ain’t busy up there,
I ask for help with a prayer,
So please don’t give me the air.
Oh, hear me, Lord. I must see Garbo in person
With Gable when they’re rehearsin’
While some director is cursin’.
Please let me open up my, eyes at seven
And find I’m looking through the Golden Gate
Watch the Video: Singer Louise Howlett and Pianist Albert Combrink perform the ever-popular Bésame Mucho at the launch of their recent CD Night Sessions , 7 October 2010 in Cape Town.
Singer Louise Howlett and Pianist Albert Combrink perform the ever-popular BésameMucho at the launch of their recent CD Night Sessions , 7 October 2010 in Cape Town.
Louise Howlett
Download Free Video of BésameMucho:
As is her trademark, Louise Howlett doesn’t provide just a surface glitz to this “Latin Anthem”, but gets to the heart of the dreams and ambitions of the storyteller. Her version of the song tells the story of someone, blindly and madly in love and just wanting to shower her lover with kisses. But there is a niggling feeling, that she is afraid that this happiness might not last.
Mexico's beloved "Consuelito" Velázquez
This song was composed in Spanish in 1940 by the Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez. Born in either 1916 or 1920, depending on which of her autobiographies you chose to believe, she was in her early twenties – and according to herself – had never yet been kissed.
“She was inspired by the piano piece Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor“from the 1911 suite Goyescas by Spanish composer Enrique Granados, which he later also included as Aria of the Nightingalein his 1916 opera Goyescas. When asked, years later, whose love had inspired the powerful lyrics, she replied that she had written it before she had ever been kissed, and said that the entire song was a “product of imagination”.” [Margalit Fox: New York Times Obituaries, 30 Jan 2005]
“Consuelo Velázquez was born in Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco, on August 21, 1920, but grew up in Guadalajara. She began playing piano when she was 4, gave her first public recital at age 6, and moved to Mexico City in her teens to attend the National Conservatory and the Palace of Fine Arts. She became a concert pianist and started writing popular songs shortly afterwards, while overseeing classical music programs for the pioneering radio station XEQ.
“Bésame mucho”(Kiss me a lot) was first recorded in 1941 (by Emilio Tuero and Chela Campos) and became a huge Big Band hit during the Second World War. In 1999, the song, the only Mexican song ever to have topped the U.S. hit parade for 12 straight weeks, was declared the “Song of the Century” at a Univisión event in Miami, Florida.
In addition, “Bésame mucho” featured in several movies, including “A toda máquina” (1951), “The moon over Parador” (1988), “Sueños de Arizona” (1993), and “Moskva Slezam ne Verit”, a Russian movie which won the 1980 Oscar for Best Foreign Film”. [Tony Burton: Mexconnect, 14 March 2008]
BésameMucho – Original Spanish Lyrics by Consuelo Velázquez
Bésame, bésame mucho,
Como si fuera esta noche la última vez.
Bésame, bésame mucho,
Que tengo miedo a tenerte y perderte después.
Quiero tenerte muy cerca,
Mirarme en tus ojos, verte junto a mí.
Piensa que tal vez mañana
Yo ya estaré lejos, muy lejos de tí.
Bésame, bésame mucho,
Como si fuera esta noche la última vez.
Bésame, bésame mucho,
Que tengo miedo a tenerte y perderte después
Vocalist and Storyteller Louise Howlett
BésameMucho – Rough English Translation by Albert Combrink from the original Spanish by Consuelo Velázquez
Kiss me, kiss me lots
As if this night were the very last time.
Kiss me, kiss me many times
Because I ‘m afraid that I will have you – and then lose you.
I want to hold you so very close,
To see myself in your eyes, to see you next to me.
Think that maybe tomorrow
I might be far, far away from you.
Kiss me, kiss me lots
As if this night were the very last time.
Kiss me, kiss me many times
Because I ‘m afraid that I will have you – and then lose you.
Below, you can view a News Feature on Consuelo Velázquez, which was aired in 2003 by American Univision Broadcast Network. (Produced and directed by Ruben Carrillo)
Listen to the late great Spanish Pianist Alicia de Larrocha perform the work that inspiredthe writing of Besame Mucho: Quejas, o la maja y el ruiseñor/The Maiden and the Nightingale by composer Enrique Granados.
This song has come to mean many things to different people over its 70-odd years life-span. Today it resonates with the urban-chic and world-trendy, but many older generations still associate it with the love and loss of World War II.
“The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville,” taken in Paris in 1950. (Photo: Robert Doisneau)
Alfred Eisenstaedt’s image of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day in 1945. (Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt, Time-Life/Getty Images)
Read more about these photographs in Sewell Chan’s article for the New York Times.
