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Fred Astaire: More Than a Dancer · Timeless Songs with Eileen Ponich

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Picture a recording studio in Los Angeles.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's December, 1952.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Six outstanding jazz musicians have gathered,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: including Oscar Peterson at the piano and Ray Brown on bass then.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: The seventh man walks in.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's 53.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And although he has spent his life making music, the world knows him best.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Fred Astaire They're recording an album called The Astaire Story.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: He has a light singing voice, and here he is recording with some extraordinary musicians.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: But they aren't the first to hear something special in him.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Berlin, Kern, the Gershwins, Porter, Mercer, They had been writing songs for him for years.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: What did they hear?
• 1:04
  [music]
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Timeless Songs, where great songs live on.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eileen Ponich.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Today, let's give Fred's feet a little rest and listen to his voice.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: To hear the music selections we're talking about today,
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: visit the companion blog post on Timeless Songs on Substack.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find the link in the show notes.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now just think about some of the songs he introduced.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Night and Day, Cheek to Cheek, The Way You Look Tonight, They Can't Take That Away From Me,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: According to the documentary The Fred Astaire Songbook,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: as described by Turner Classic Movies,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: he had more songs written expressly for him than any other singer.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Irving Berlin said that when he wrote for Fred, he wrote with Fred specifically in mind.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Cheek to cheek gives us a good place to start.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: In Top Hat, Fred sings as he and Ginger Rogers begin dancing slowly together.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to follow their movement and hardly notice his voice.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: But listen to how intimate he makes the song feel,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: as though he's telling her something meant only for her.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they open into that sweeping dance.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling keeps growing.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Ginger's responses are part of the conversation.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that was something Berlin understood.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: With Fred, a song could keep unfolding after the singing stopped.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: But he could draw us in while sitting at the piano, too.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: In the movie Swing Time,
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Fred introduces Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: the way you look tonight, and Ginger has shampoo in her hair.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I certainly wouldn't want someone wooing me while I was shampooing my hair.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'd want a little warning and time to make myself presentable.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps that's part of the charm.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: We associate the song with candlelight and evening clothes.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Jinju gets Fred Astaire singing it to her in a bathrobe.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: The song imagines how remembering someone can bring comfort when light feels cold.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Fred gives it that conversational closeness.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Curran certainly trusted him.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: He is quoted as saying, Astaire can't do anything bad.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have a difficult time with this conversational kind of singing.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Fred makes it sound so natural.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of what fascinates me.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: The song won Kernanfield an Academy Award, but I think it's lasted for a simpler reason.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Fred singing to Ginger in her bathrobe.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's about loving someone just as they are.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: George Gershwin's admiration apparently took more time.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: According to a steer biographer,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph Epstein,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: George was initially unimpressed by Fred's voice,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: but came to appreciate the clarity of his interpretations.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the partnership kept producing wonderful songs.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: In Shall We Dance in 1937, George and Ira gave him the song, They Can't Take That Away From Me.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: It gathers the little things that make someone unforgettable.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: A smile, a familiar gesture, the sound of a voice.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's something we recognize as we get older,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: that little things can become the things we treasure most.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Being together may not last, but the memories will.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Twelve years later, Fred returned to the song with Ginger in the Barclays of Broadway.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: For audiences who remembered them, It was a reunion with a beloved partnership too.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Cole Porter gave Fred night and day for the Broadway show The Gay Divorce.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: We explored that song recently here on Timeless Songs.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: On the Astaire story, Fred revisits it.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Johnny Mercer brings another side of Fred into view.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Astaire wrote music, too.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Mercer supplied the words for one of his tunes.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm building up an awful letdown.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And on Not My Girl, Fred takes a turn at the piano.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Before he begins,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: he explains that the piano playing was a serious hobby,
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: so he was bound to fit some of it into the album somewhere.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: He sings, he dances, he writes songs, and now he's playing the piano.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Some people do make the rest of us feel just a little unproductive.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So back to the studio, back to Los Angeles.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: No ginger, no ballroom, just Fred.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Six jazz musicians and...
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: They can't take that away from me one more time.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: In 1937, he sang it to Ginger.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: In 1949, it became part of their reunion.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here, it can feel like a man looking back through his own life in music.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: The song is about the memories we keep.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it seems to hold some of Fred's memories, too.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do the songwriters hear?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps this.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: He could make a carefully written song feel like a thought of his own.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Tony Bennett called these standards the Fred Astaire Songbook, and I can understand why.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: To hear these recordings and watch Fred and Ginger dance, Visit the companion blog post.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: All the listening links are there, and the blog link is in the show notes.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Try listening without watching Fred.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to know what you hear.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you enjoyed our visit,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: follow Timeless Songs on Apple Podcasts or Spotify,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: or subscribe free on timelesssongs.substack.com.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Share it with someone who loves these songs too.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eileen with a song in my heart.
• 9:15
  [music]