![]() It's not even clear Weiss needed to rhyme it. What's odd is that the obtrusive Larry Hart-like Ira Gershwinesque coinage of "wordland" is plunked in the middle of otherwise entirely conventional love-song language and imagery. But, of course, Weiss just pulled it out of the air, and then has to justify it with a sideways rewrite of "You're just too marvelous, Too Marvelous For Words". "Never in my wordland"? We're in I-can't-believe-what-I've-just-heardland! When I bashed the tune out as a child, I assumed "wordland" was some sort of hepcat talk - a popular vernacular term beatniks used as a synonym for "vocabulary" or "dictionary". Okay, what next? Weiss then decides to rhyme the title: What would such a lyric be about? The club? Charlie Parker? A land of especial ornithological significance? In the end, Weiss decided to write basic boy-meets-girl and shoehorn the title in as necessary. In Weiss' case, he was additionally handicapped by the pre-existing title: "Lullaby of Birdland". So he turned to, as we noted above, "a man by the name of George David Weiss".Īs we've had cause to remark on several previous occasions, the trouble with putting words to an existing jazz instrumental is that it tends to come out sounding less like a song than as an instrumental somebody's singing a lyric to. But the number's fame spread way beyond the club: If you were at Massey Hall in Toronto in '53, you could have heard Bud Powell play it with Charlie Mingus and Max Roach.Īnd then Morris Levy got to thinking: What's more lucrative than a hit tune? A hit song. In 1953, a year after its composition, the Count Basie Orchestra was playing Birdland and delivered a performance of Shearing's tune that's as great as any in the years since. The show and the tune did well - so well that acts booked into the club quickly began including the theme as a tip of the hat. It was a late night radio show from Birdland so they called the theme "Lullaby of Birdland". Shearing told Levy to forget the first tune, and sent him the new one. "I went back to that butcher many times," he told me years later, "but I never got a steak that did the trick again." ![]() At the end, he turned to Trixie: "What do you think of that?" This time, though, he ran to the piano, sat down, began to play, and ten minutes later had the whole of "Lullaby Of Birdland" mapped out. Shearing had been known to leap from his chair when presented with a meal not to his taste. ![]() That evening, in the middle of eating his char-broiled steak at their home in Old Tappan, New Jersey, he suddenly jumped up from the table. So after a few days he stuck it in the mail and sent it to Levy. But as much as he wrestled with the assignment he couldn't come up with anything better. "That's terrible," Trixie told her husband. She cheered up when she heard his new tune because it was so bad she was pretty confident there'd be no royalties to lose. Mrs Shearing was none too happy about the arrangement, because at the time she was running George's publishing company and she didn't like the idea of losing out on the publishing royalties. So Shearing agreed that he'd get the composing rights but Levy would get the publishing rights. "Well," said Levy, thinking of his own comfort levels, "we would feel comfortable about you playing a tune that we own." He couldn't record a theme for the club unless "I can feel comfortable about playing it." Shearing insisted it was entirely for artistic reasons. "Because you have your own music publishing company, haven't you?" "I'll bet you'd like to write one," he said. "Why don't I write one for you?"Īs one wily businessman to another, the club owner figured the pianist was working his own little angle into Levy's deal. "Look, I can't relate very well to this theme you've sent me," he told Levy. So he had one rustled up and asked George Shearing to record it. But Levy figured it would help to have a theme tune, which would be played every hour on the hour. ![]() ![]() Not live music, just a disc-jockey spinning platters from 11pm into the small hours. But three years later Levy came to an arrangement with the radio station WJZ to host a nightly show from Birdland. It wasn't much of an honor: The room was nothing special, just another little New York jazz joint that at capacity held maybe 150, 175 customers. The following year the club changed hands and the new owner, Morris Levy, decided to rename it after Charlie "Bird" Parker. Back in late 1948, the British pianist George Shearing had a residency at the Clique Club on Broadway and 44th Street. Being George David Weiss is different from being Cole Porter or Irving Berlin, but it's a rare talent, and in demand. ![]()
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