No matter how mankind is chasing stock quotes, kilometer-long yachts and cozy family nests in the neo-colonial style - we are singing about love.
On both sides of the ocean.
All oceans.
On all continents known to us.
And even - on the islands.
Not excluding the smallest ones.
Uninhabited.
Just awful.
Stratification, bifurcation and multiplication of personalities - outwardly we desire one thing, inwardly we long for another.
Singing about love is good.
Even good.
Despite the worldwide depression, wars ... What kind of people are we?
And are our smaller brothers singing about love, or is the experience of living a spiritual and mental identity with a dissimilar and therefore even more attractive creature of a different sex - the lot of thinking upright people?
In the 20th century, our fluffy, like snow, and fabulously velvety, like the most exquisite lie, the wrong side - musical films, the lightest of drugs, a means of short rest and peace - in the midst of wars, misfortune, hatred and betrayal, was especially strongly and even furiously revealed to the world.
In the midst of a struggle between two or more systems.
And there was such a man, Al Dabin, who was born already in 1891 - you can imagine what he saw enough there. But, despite his childhood in Switzerland, and after the emigration of the family - in Philadelphia, he wrote poetry. At 14, he visited New York, wishing to conquer and charm the city of sin and idle madness, saw enough, having seized on to happiness, Broadway shows, got a job as a singing and dancing waiter and wrote everything, wrote endlessly - the lyrics. More and more about love. What else can a young poet write about?
In 1917, he was drafted into the field artillery, in 1921 he married and, as they say, finally, in 1925, he met through the heavenly angels - and no one else can do such accidents - with the composer Harry Warren.
That's all - a brilliant creative union has developed, you hear their hits every day all your life.
You may not notice, but you hear - for sure.
By the way, Warren was born in 1893 into an ordinary family (11 children) of Italian emigrants from Brooklyn.
Presumably, there was simply no such significant (as is now accepted) attention to the personal space of each sweet kid, to her psycho-emotional health against the background of the ever-increasing pressure of the information society - they lived as they lived, ate what was.
From which we conclude - like Al Dabin, Harry Warren in the same way - has seen enough of all.
And all this did not deprive those who were brought together by fate of the main thing - the enduring joy of life, when over the edge, when without looking back at the past.
They wrote Lullaby of Broadway - a lullaby for never-grown adults ...
The band begins to go to town
And everyone goes crazy
You rock-a-bye your baby round
'Til everything gets hazy
"Hush-a-bye, I'll buy you this and that ..."
You hear a daddy saying
And baby goes home to her flat
To sleep all day ...
Lullaby of Broadway was sung by literally everyone.
Jazz mother Ella gave the exquisite thing an inner heat and fire, Tony Bennett - a leisurely and a little sleepy passion, but, perhaps, Doris Day sang better than you can imagine - the look of a blond teenage girl who ran away from prom coincided with the sweetest, alien voice. .. And we're on Broadway.
And we go to bed only at dawn.
And the milkman who met us on the way looks at us with some reproach.
There is no secret to living in despair.
There is a secret - a secret hidden in the middle of the soul, hidden in a small hot palm: to live in the happiness of every day, regardless and in spite of.
And then the heavenly angels will rule.
In 1936, for the film Melody for Two, Harry and Al created a masterpiece, unchanging in the refinement of emotions, never aging September in the Rain - a battle cry, a marching anthem, a lyrical chant of all suffering from the sugar powder of love - we know, not forever like that, a gust of wind - and the white cloud disappears before our eyes.
All that remains is to rub the sticky nose and sigh, dreamily looking at the windows of the confectionery mother-life.
The leaves of brown came tumbling down
Remember, that September in the rain
The sun went out just like a dying ember
That September in the rain
To every word of love I heard you whisper
The raindrops seemed to play a sweet refrain
Though spring is here,
To me it's still September
That September in the rain.
The first staked out the infinitely refined and beautiful, like a purring radio set smoldering in the darkness with amber and evening sun, Guy Lombardo - violinist and leader of the Royal Canadians ensemble.
Guy's brother Carmen Lombardo performed the vocals.
And September in the Rain has become a particularly revered relic, an irreplaceable attribute of the romantic style.
The Lombardo brothers in general were the foundation of the world, the pillars of the very powdered sugar on which the Western idea of "a window of happiness in the midst of the storm of everyday life" was held for decades.
Judge for yourself - for 33 years the Lombardo Orchestra played in the famous Roosevelt Grill club in New York, constantly gave concerts on central radio CBS and NBC.
Guy Lombardo's New Year's concerts were absolutely traditional for US radio listeners, and especially the incredible in terms of internal plasticity and shrill performance of Auld Lang Syne, which always began with the last beat of the clock striking midnight: at that moment millions, tens of millions were listening to them!
But what about September in the Rain?
Did it all end with old Guy?
Oh no!
Frank Sinatra, as if surpassing himself, partly boring, partly saloon and out of place ornate, writes down a melancholic version, a version that comes through with autumn bad weather, the last rays of the sun in the middle of a leaf fall of time, a version of languid parting with the illusions of love and the illusions of life itself.
Julie London, diva of jazz and sweet pop swing, makes her September in the Rain - deliberately transparent, trembling and icy, with a slightly breaking voice that lures us into a non-existent something, while leaving a loophole for hot tea, mulled wine and light evening snacks - maybe , and it happened, and the story is real, but forget about that, forget and listen to the melody of the wind outside the windows ...
To the gallery page
There is no equal to a woman who believes in her calling.
Perhaps that is why Dean Washington, who departed early and was unlike anyone both in expression and in the strength of her talent, who had been married no less than eight times in her short life, recorded a version of September in the Rain that was not at all like the marzipan-fruit source : the text is sharp, the melody is mobile and lives in itself - you will not listen to this in the background, you will certainly stop, prick up your ears that have chilled in the fall.
Old Bing Crosby, the best friend of all singers in his soul, a man with a voice simple and insinuating to the point of impossibility, turned September in the Rain into a sparkling swing, into a glass of moderately chilled champagne, into a small letter to himself as a keepsake.
Who have we forgotten?
Scotswoman Annie Lennox - doesn't she know about the rains and leaves in the midst of the early autumn twilight?
In 2014, Lennox released Nostalgia, a very personal collection of hidden treasures, the standards of a golden age, something that cannot be returned back.
12 diamonds of the first magnitude, including September in the Rain.
In a classic, almost academic performance.
Turned by the wise years and stormy life Lennox into an epic ballad, a legend of ancient times, into a picture from the textbook of our history with you, which is not destined, is not given to be repeated ...
Let's get back to the origins.
During his career, Warren Harry wrote about eight hundred songs.
Very different.
And Al Dabin - about the same number of poems.
And also - very different.
Both of them worked at the same confectionery factory - dreams and dreams of happiness and love during their lifetime, if, of course, anyone succeeded.
And this very life, passing the creations of a creative couple through the meat grinder of show business, very successfully weeded out everything conditionally superfluous, everything that was unable to feed the golden calf.
But still...
Yet.
There is no force in the universe capable of defeating the human dream of happiness.
And poetry ...
Sometimes this happens to them - unnecessary quatrains are discarded, they freeze on paper or in thoughts, the light of fame, chart peaks, screams of critics will pass them ...
September in the Rain was once deeper and more philosophical.
It began with lines that cannot be found in any of the world-renowned performances.
And nevertheless they are beautiful and exist, and it is in them that everything is contained that cannot be held by hands, but only by memory, heart, beating of eternity on the tip of a sharply sharpened pencil ...
My daydreams lie buried in autumn leaves,
They're covered with autumn rain.
The time is sweet September,
The place, a shady lane.
I'm riding the wings of an autumn breeze,
Back to my memories ...
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.