entry Oct 2008

Number 11 in a series. Links to parts:

...(except these songs)

When I first came to Naples, I amazed my new friends and relatives because I knew the Neapolitan term pasta e fasule. I didn’t know what it meant (noodles and beans), just that it was from that famous “Eye-talian” song that starts “When the moon hits-a you eye, like a big-a pizza pie, that’s amore”! (And, of course, the line with my phrase: “The stars make-a you drool just-a like pasta e fasul’ ”). But —they sputtered and gasped—that’s not Italian or Neapolitan; it’s a fraud…an American caricature! Hmmm, I thought —a likely story. These poor people don’t even know their own music.

Alas, the music to the song That’s Amore, was, indeed, composed by a guy born in Brooklyn, Harry Warren (albeit born as Salvatore Antonio Guaragna!). He also wrote the music to Chattanooga Choo-choo and You’re My Everything. The lyrics to That’s Amore are by Jack Brooks, who also wrote the words to Ole Buttermilk Sky (music by Hoagy Carmichael). "That’s Amore" was composed for the film, The Caddy (Paramount, 1953), starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, in which Dino sings it. There are no Italian or Neapolitan lyrics (except the noodle part) to the song, but Neapolitans love it, anyway. They enjoy singing it in English and making fun of themselves—a great quality, by the way. It is one of a few songs in a category I call the pseudo-Neapolitan song.

Others? Here’s one, although, technically, the singer is singing about a girl from Italy (not necessarily Naples) so maybe he’s in New York and she is fresh off the boat. It’s Marie from Sunny Italy, words and music by Irving Berlin, 1907. It was the great songwriter’s first hit and, apparently, the one that gave him his surname (a typo of “Baline”).

My sweet Marie from sunny Italy/Oh how I do love you/
Say that you'll love me, love me, too/Forever more I will be true/
Just say the word and I will marry you/And then you'll surely be
My sweet Marie from sunny Italy.

(One of the later lines does mention a mandolin, so I'm sure he was thinking of Napoli. I know, they have mandolins in Genoa, too, but c’mon.) In any event, Neapolitans have never heard of—much less actually heard—that one.

They definitely know, however, ‘Twas on the Isle of Capri (that I found her). (Close enough to Naples for my purposes.) Indeed, you may be lulled into a false sense of authenticity as you are force-fed a recording of that song while you are hurried by motor-boat to, into and out of the Blue Grotto on Capri. (If you buy that, then you probably think that Miklós Rózsa’s great music for the film Ben Hur is what they really played at ancient Roman chariot races.) The Isle of Capri is from 1934 with lyrics by Irish-born Jimmy Kennedy and music by Will Grosz (aka Hugh Williams).

The lyrics start:

`twas on the Isle of Capri that I found her/Beneath the shade of an old walnut tree…

That, in itself, is very shady since there are no walnut trees on Capri. I have heard that the song may have been written for Gracie Fields, who had a home on the island. Kennedy also wrote the lyrics to Red Sails in the Sunset, South of the Border (Kennedy had some serious wanderlust!) and the fine words to John Walter Bratton’s 1907 children’s classic, The Teddy Bears Picnic. He also wrote It’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, with the wonderfully insane lines:

Evr'y gal in Constantinople/Is a Miss-stanbul, not Constantinople/
So if you've a date in Constantinople/She'll be waiting in Istanbul

His partner, Grosz was a classically trained musician and a refugee from Nazi Austria. In popular music, he is well remembered for Harbor Lights.

Lastly, The Italian Street Song, which contains these lines:

Ah my heart is back in Napoli/ Dear Napoli, dear Napoli/
And I seem to hear again in dreams/Her revelry, her sweet revelry.
The mandolinas playing sweet, the/ pleasant sound of dancing feet/
Oh, could I return, oh, joy complete./ Napoli, Napoli, Napoli.

Good grief. Surely, that one must be authentically Neapolitan (even though the authentically Neapolitan songwriter somehow forgot that grammatical gender produces 'mandolin-O', not –A).  Sorry, it’s from the operetta, Naughty Marietta, music by Victor Herbert, lyrics by Rida Johnson Young. The work opened in London in 1910. Victor Herbert needs no further comment, but Young is perhaps best remembered for the words she wrote to another song from the same operetta, Ah! Sweet mystery of life (at last I’ve found you).

Elsewhere in the area, I don’t think any foreigner has written about Bagnoli or Pozzuoli. (Thank heaven. I don’t think any Neapolitans have, either.) Elsewhere in Italy, it’s worth noting that the music to the famous song, Arrivederci Roma, was indeed by an Italian, actor Renato Rascel. The original Italian lyrics are by Pietro Garinei and Sandro Giovannini. The English lyrics are by Carl Sigman. The song was published in 1955 and made famous in the 1958 MGM film Arrivederci Roma (English title: Seven Hills of Rome), in which it was sung by Mario Lanza. But the song Three Coins in the Fountain (in reference to the Trevi Fountain in Rome), from the 1954 film of the same name is sheer American popular music by the formidable team of Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn (melody and lyrics, respectively).

Authenticity rears its ugly head in The Carnival of Venice; it is a real and very old folksong from Venice. (The origin is unknown, but it is reminiscent—if you set your plagiarism radar on "hair trigger" and get a tone-deaf judge—of the most famous Venetian "boat-song" of all, La Biondina in gondoletta.) If you don’t know The Carnival of Venice, you were never in a high school band. Every young trumpet player practices the infamously difficult variations, some of which were even written by Mr. Infamously Difficult, himself, Niccolò Paganini. I am not aware of Italian or Venetian dialect lyrics (though there may be some). There are parody lyrics in English that starts, “My hat, it has three corners…” as well as some vulgar parody lyrics, but I wouldn’t think of insulting you.

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