What’s in a Song: Begin the Beguine (2)

[This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with long histories. Part 1 -- which focused on the song's composition and lyrics -- appeared on Wednesday.]

How many times and by which performers has “Begin the Beguine” been covered? It is to laugh.

The most comprehensive list I’ve seen was on the page of information at the WICN radio station’s site which I mentioned in Part (1) of this post. That list includes around 118 names “and many others” (I can’t swear to the count — I counted it once but am damned if I’ll put myself through that again :). Among those names — and aside from the dozens of Big Bands who jumped on the song following Artie Shaw’s success with it — were artists as varied as Chet Atkins, Liberace, Frankie Lyman & The Teenagers, Julio Iglesias, Django Reinhardt, Coleman Hawkins, Lalo Schifrin, Mario Lanza…

One thing you notice from many of these covers is how heavily their pacing and rhythm have been influenced by the Shaw swing-band version. But how close was that version to Cole Porter’s intentions?

Let’s refer again to Porter himself, who once wrote of the dance called the beguine (emphasis added): “I was very much taken by the rhythm of the dance, the rhythm was practically that of the already popular rumba but much faster.” Compare this with the writeup by the anonymous WICN writer (emphasis added): “It is similar to a rumba, but slower, with dance moves performed smoothly and deliberately. Like many Latin dances, the beguine emphasizes the ability to roll the hips to evoke sensuality while performing the steps.”

(Yeah — no wonder so many artists have covered “Beguine”: apparently there’s enough leeway for them to do whatever the heck they want with it.)

As I mentioned in Part (1), the song didn’t immediately take off in popularity, although a version by Xavier Cugat got to #13 on the pop-music chart. That version was produced in 1935 — the same year that “Beguine” was published, and three years before Artie Shaw took it on. Furthermore, Cugat claimed to have been present at the moment of Porter’s epiphany about the song’s rhythm. So let’s listen to Cugat: maybe this is as close to Porter’s intentions as anyone could have recorded:

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:15 long.]

Wild, eh? I can sort of see that hip-rolling action which WICN speaks of, but on the whole the thing sounds breezier than a straight-up rumba. So perhaps Porter’s “much faster” description of the dance was pretty close to what he actually intended to capture with his song.

(I tend to think of Cugat’s version as an instrumental, despite that weird creepy nasal-yodeling “When they be-giiiiiiiin, the be-geeeeeeeen!” which is credited to someone named Don Reid. I don’t know if Don Reid was a man or a woman — haven’t found his/her name coupled with a pronoun anywhere online — but the hair stood up on the back of my neck when I heard that.)

In trying to decide what vocal interpretations to include in this post, I wanted to offer a reasonably good range of unexpected performers and performances.

For the first, we have a little bit of a back story as well as an audio:

Among the curious artifacts of the 1960s was the popularity of an Indian mystic who went by the name Meher Baba, who died in 1969. That’s his picture at the top of this post; it’s from a card which his supporters distributed in order to promote Meher Baba’s philosophies. And yes: this particular slogan did inspire Bobby McFerrin’s hit single from 1988, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

So what’s Meher Baba doing in this post? From the mehergalore.org Web site:

“Begin the Beguine” was a song written by Cole Porter in 1930s and was Meher Baba’s favourite. In fact, He had instructed that the song be played when He would drop His physical body. Baba remarked the song had an eternal meaning. Beloved Meher Baba stated the following in May, 1958 after listening to this record…

“The First Song of the Infinite is the beginning of creation. It brings about the apparent descent of the Infinite into the domain of multiple duality. Duality implies unending sufferings.

“I am eternally happy, for I know that I am the Infinite One. I alone exist, there is nothing besides me, all else is illusion. Simultaneously, I suffer eternally. [etc. etc. in this vein]…”

(How much did Meher Baba love “Begin the Beguine”? According to Wikipedia, during the seven days between his death and burial, “in compliance with Meher Baba’s wish, Cole Porter’s song Begin the Beguine was played repeatedly on a record player.” Which makes one wonder how long his mourners lingered — I mean, I too love the song; but played over and over for seven days? Sheesh.)

But wait! (as the infomercials say) – there’s more! For among Meher Baba’s adherents was Pete Townsend of The Who. Wikipedia, again:

Parts of the rock-opera Tommy (May 1969) were inspired by Townshend’s study of Meher Baba, to whom the album was dedicated. The Who’s 1971 song “Baba O’Riley” was named in part after Meher Baba and on his first solo album, Who Came First, Townshend recorded the Jim Reeves song, “There’s A Heartache Following Me”, saying that it was Meher Baba’s favorite song.

Maybe Wikipedia is wrong about the mystic’s favorite song — or maybe mehergalore.org is, or Pete Townsend himself; I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter in the context of this post, for Townsend included on his 1970 Happy Birthday album (released on what would have been Meher Baba’s 76th birthday) his own interpretation of “Begin the Beguine”:

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:49 long.]

Breezes, the hint of surf, acoustic sound… Somehow, I don’t think the guitar got smashed at the end of that performance.

One of the more recent — and most interesting — covers I found comes from a duo I’d never heard of before. It appears on the 2005 album love me like the roses [iTunes / Amazon], by divineMAGgees (no “the,” and pronounced like “divine Maggies”). If you, like me, knew nothing of them, a summary at their Web site says: “harmony driven alt-folk rock, with a touch of bluegrass, jazz and punk.” (Whoa, right?) Danielle Tibedo plays piano and acoustic and electric guitar; Cregan Montague plays the acoustic and five-string electric violin.

Here’s a sweet, lilting “Begin the Beguine,” the divineMAGgees way:

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 6:47 long.]

(On the strength of that number alone, I now want to hear everything divineMAGgees records… even if, as their site says, they have “transformed into a new band called Osaka Pearl” — about which, again, I know nothing further.)

One more off-center little note about “Begin the Beguine” covers: In 1962, Elvis Presley wanted to record the song, but with a twist: he wanted to write his own lyrics. Perhaps not surprisingly, Cole Porter said “No, thanks” to the rewrite, so Elvis wrote a sorta kinda beguine-ish song of his own, with the help of guitarist Charlie Hodge and bodyguard Red West. “You’ll Be Gone” was released in 1965, on an album called Pot Luck:

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:25 long.]

If it’s hip-rolling you’re after, Elvis is your man.

The final bit I want to include, bizarrely (maybe) can seem like it doesn’t include any vocal or instrumental accompaniment at all. It’s an excerpt from an MGM film, Broadway Melody of 1940, for which “Begin the Beguine” is the show-stopping musical climax. The entire routine is about nine minutes long; it begins with two separate vocal performances of “Beguine.” The first is a strange solo by one Lois Hodnott — strange because of the almost operatic and certainly languorous, melodramatic packaging in which she wraps it. The second is performed in sassy Andrews Sisters-style, by a group called the Music Maids.

I don’t care about either of those vocals. What I care about is the dance number which the Music Maids’ version introduces: Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, tap dancing, with the orchestra silenced for a while as though they can’t believe what they’re witnessing. It’s flat-out amazing (especially for someone whose only “tap dancing,” ever, will be his stumbling on tiled floors), and is often cited as the best tap dance ever filmed.

(The Yahoo Video clip below is actually an excerpt from 1974′s documentary about MGM musicals, That’s Entertainment; Frank Sinatra provides the voiceover in the beginning few seconds.)

(You can catch the whole nine-minute routine on YouTube, if you’d like.)
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P.S. Two no-fooling really last tidbits of trivia, included for reasons of my own:

• Back in Twin Peaks territory, in Episode 8 (the Season 2 opener) Laura Palmer’s father Leland passes out during a dinner party at the Hayward home. Doc Hayward waves a bottle of smelling salts under Leland’s nose. He wakes up with a crazy look in his eyes, and says, “I feel good… Begin the beguine!” [source]
• You might also be interested in following the Team D.U.D.E. webcomic saga entitled “Begin the Beguine,” which began appearing earlier this year (although the artist started drawing the comic a couple years ago, but is now posting only new stuff). I asked Sheanna Molloy, the face behind Team D.U.D.E., why she chose that title for the strip. She said:
  

  Begin The Beguine is a very sweet song, and I always liked the title a lot. I’m also a huge audiophile who thinks very musically, so I have a tendency to name things after song titles and lyrics. The song frequently talks about beginning something but also remembering something, and since this is the very first comic, the beginning of the whole long story that’s about to unwind, but also a memory the character is reminiscing on, I felt it’d be at least somewhat fitting.

  (She added, “It’s kind of a dumb explanation I’m afraid!” Hmm. Not so sure about that. To me it sounded pretty smart, y’know?) The image below is an excerpt from Episode 1: