A look at a song’s original lyrics having new meaning, after the jump ……...
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As we prepare to bid adieu to the year 2020, there seems to be a fresh look at an old song from World War II (1944 to be exact) — whose lyrics were altered thirteen years later to reflect post-war feelings — in which the original meaning seems to reflect this year’s melancholy Yuletide more accurately. Here’s hoping.
Meet Me in St. Louis starred Judy Garland — five years after her starring role in the Wizard of Oz, and where she met her future husband: the film’s director Vincent Minnelli (they are the parents of Liza Minnelli). And while the film is set around the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904, it had overtones of the war weariness that had set into the country, with stateside audiences feeling anxiety in late 1944 upon the film’s release with yet another year of wartime separation.
Hired to write the film’s music were a sometimes-songwriting pair, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane— both of whom were later inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The film had two songs which have endured — one is The Trolley Song (initially, the breakout song from the film, recorded by many including Dave Brubeck) and the other is the (timely) focus of this essay: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
Ralph Blane died in 1995 and for years after Hugh Martin stated that — for this tune — he was the sole songwriter. It appears near the end of the film, where Judy Garland is both trying to comfort her little sister portrayed by Margaret O’Brien (as they were preparing to move from their childhood home) as well comforting herself: with Judy’s teenage character leaving behind the boy she loves.
In the first draft, Martin’s lyrics were truly dire:
Have yourself a merry little ChristmasIt may be your lastNext year we may all be living in the past
Have yourself a merry little ChristmasPop that champagne corkNext year we may all be living in New York
No good times like the olden daysHappy golden days of yoreFaithful friends who were dear to usWill be near to us no more
But at least we all will be togetherIf the Lord allowsFrom now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehowSo have yourself a merry little Christmas now
You may be unsurprised to learn …. that there was tremendous push-back on that draft, from Judy Garland and others. So, a major re-write by Hugh Martin yielded the following: which is how Judy sang it in the film that is both less depressing and also looking ahead to brighter days (I’ve highlighted key passages).
Have yourself a merry little ChristmasLet your heart be lightNext year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little ChristmasMake the yuletide gayNext year all our troubles will be miles away
Once again as in olden daysHappy golden days of yoreFaithful friends who were dear to usWill be near to us once more
Someday soon we all will be togetherIf the fates allowUntil then, we’ll have to muddle through, somehowSo have yourself a merry little Christmas now
And that is how it stood — with some success commercially as a stand-alone song — until thirteen years later in 1957, when Frank Sinatra called Hugh Martin, explaining that he was to record a new Christmas album to be entitled “A Jolly Christmas”— and couldn’t he see-his-way to “jolly-up” those lyrics? Martin obliged: changing not only the tense … but also the penultimate line:
Have yourself a merry little ChristmasLet your heart be lightFrom now on, our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little ChristmasMake the yuletide gayFrom now on, our troubles will be miles away
Here we are as in olden daysHappy golden days of yoreFaithful friends who are dear to usGather near to us once more
Through the years we all will be togetherIf the fates allowHang a shining star upon the highest boughAnd have yourself a merry little Christmas now
The re-worked version has made the song a Yuletide classic … yet, “I still kind of like ‘muddle through somehow,’ myself,” Martin admits. ”It’s just so kind of…down-to-earth.” Hugh Martin died in 2011 at the age of ninety-six.
And while most renditions since have been of the ‘jolly’ version: over the years, there have been several singers who have sung the original film version. These include Ella Fitzgerald, Luther Vandross plus most recently: the twenty-six year-old indie folksinger Phoebe Bridgers. This version’s most prominent proponent may be James Taylor— who recorded it after 9-11 and said, “In times of strife, we ‘muddle through,’ as the lyric says. As the best lyric says.”
No one has expressed this more than Charlie Pierce, who has declared, “I’m a Muddler” on more than one occasion and most eloquently in 2011:
Sinatra went to the song's composer, Hugh Martin, and asked him to jolly up the song's penultimate lyric, "Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow," which is only the most important line in the whole damn song. Because nobody ever said no to Frank Sinatra, Martin took a walk and came up with the substitute lyric, "Hang a shining star atop the highest bough," which Sinatra recorded and which, I am saddened to say, has become the almost universally accepted way to sing that song. The emotions in his version are all tinsel.
Judy's shake like evergreen boughs under the very first heavy snow of the year. His version is cheap. Hers is fragile, and that is all the difference. That's why, listening to her version on this troubled Christmas of 2011, I can begin to see again something to which we can muddle through.
Muddlers know the joy of getting through the raw, inconvenient humanity of the day ….. Maybe the baby was up sick all night. Or the paycheck's gone, and the plant's shuttered, and you're on the 94th week of unemployment. Bob Cratchit was a muddler ... There are a lot of muddlers in our country this Christmas time ... We muddle here in America, but we will find our way.
And so perhaps in 2020— where we have uncertainty yet hope for the coming year — seventy-six years after the film: perhaps we might all become muddlers.
Now, on to Top Comments:
From Denise Oliver Velez:
In my own diary about jazz drummer Max Roach, Charles Jay reveals some interesting information he garnered when he interviewed singer Abbey Lincoln, who was married to Roach ….. and then followed it up with another great comment about her.
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about governor Ron DeSantis referred to as "Florida’s mis-communicator in chief"— this comment made by Vetwife (noting other aspects of his CV).
Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo.
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(NOTE: Any missing images in the Quilt were removed because (a) they were from an unapproved source that somehow snuck through in the comments, or (b) it was an image from the DailyKos Image Library which didn't have permissions set to allow others to use it.)
And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
2) Getting scary? … by quaoar +1297) Or Caligula by quaoar +1119) Repubs: “He’ll get over it.” by accumbens +10512) Some reactions — by AKALib +9918) Trump didn’t just slap down Pompeo… … by News Corpse +9325) You’re Krakening me up. by ItsSimpleSimon +8027) Well, it’s ONE lizard leaping… … by BMScott +7930) Mary Trump warned us: … by BalanceSeeker +77