In one songwriting handbook, can’t remember which, I read that a distinguishing characteristic of this song (the real one) is that it — and a handful of others — ends in a different key than it began in. In the abstract I know what this means; but I wish I knew enough about listening to music to be able to detect the fact, without being told. I don’t even know if starting and ending in different keys is more or less difficult than in the same key — for singers or instrumentalists — let alone if it’s audibly perceptible.

[Political reCaptcha du jour: berkeley SAIGON.]

I’m listening to her sing now, and it’s sublime. I love her own description of her voice: “Oversmoked.” I’d have to disagree with ‘ol Bosley.

One of my favorite things about the Mickey-Mouse club rendition here is the way she sort of prefixes each letter starting with a vowel sound, with a breathy “h.” So it comes out “Hem, hoe, Hugh, hess, heeeeeee…”

Froog: With his somewhat lumpy, hangdog look, Tom Ewell seemed almost destined for the part of an ordinary guy fantasizing about impossible-to-obtain women. The characters (and outcomes) of his roles were very different in The Girl Can’t Help It and The Seven-Year Itch (from a few years before), but the similarities were almost too bizarre.

On He Needs Me, good catch. I knew almost nothing about the song (besides the title!) when I started this comment, but yep, that’s a Nina Simone number. (She sings it on a couple YouTube videos.) Oh, and as for finding music/lyrics attributions, a good site can be discogs.com; you can search on a composer/lyricist just as if they were the performer. After “Cry Me a River,” “He Needs Me” appears to have been Mr. Hamilton’s most-recorded song.

Ed: Thank YOU! I was struggling with how to describe that scene succinctly — not just what happens, but its effect on the Ewell character — when I stumbled across Laughing Hysterically. Your writeup fit the bill perfectly.

(And a wonderful topic for a book, by the way. Congratulations!)

cynth: You must know that as I worked on this, I thought, I know somebody who’s gonna bring up the Streisand version before I get to it… :) Her version is one of the ones featured in Part 2.

Other than “Cry Me a River,” my only clear memories of Julie London leftover from kid-dom are (a) her singing of the Marlboro commercial jingle (“Filter… flavor… pack or box!”); (b) her beauty; and (c) Dad’s over-the-top wolfishness whenever he saw her on TV. (I can hear him growling, “Yeeeeeeeah…!)

Although I’ve heard Julie London’s version and I like it, I love the Barbara Streisand version at a club early in her career. She puts a lot of oomph into it and it’s got the audience right behind her.

I always remember hearing Julie London sing You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To on the radio station that our dad and I listened to. That and My Heart Belongs to Daddy (whew, it was sultry!). I miss being able to hear those randomly on a station anymore, but time marches on, I guess.

Thanks…

–Ed

And there’s still a Part 2? Well, I look forward to it eagerly.

Julie’s pretty nifty with those costume changes, huh? I can’t help feeling that running out of the bedroom was the wrong decision for Mr Ewell!

I wondered if Hamilton’s He Needs Me was the one sung by Nina Simone? That’s a great song. I’m afraid I don’t have the patience for this kind of Net-rummaging, though – there are too many songs with this lyric in them; and the lyric resource websites tend to be not always very punctilious about their attributions.

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