You Make Me Feel Young Again Frank Sinatra

On January 9th 1956, Frank Sinatra went into the not all the same famous Studio A of Capitol Records at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles for the first of a handful of sessions for a new album. Released that March, Songs For Swingin' Lovers would become not merely a bestseller but the neat defining title of the LP era. It declares itself in its opening number - a brusque, brassy Nelson Riddle vamp in what he liked to phone call "the tempo of the heartbeat", and then:

You Make Me Experience So Young
Yous brand me experience 'so bound has sprung
And every fourth dimension I run across y'all grin
I'thousand such a happy in
-dividual...

And past the 2nd chorus he'south an even happier in-di-vi-du-al: every bit Frankologist Will Friedwald puts information technology, "Yous Make Me Experience So Young" "modulates from mere cheerfulness to exalted rapture".

In that week later on January 9th, Sinatra recorded some songs past household names - Cole Porter ("I've Got You Under My Skin"), Johnny Mercer ("Besides Marvelous For Words") - and some by bottom-known writers but with big bluish-chip catalogues - Donaldson & Kahn ("Makin' Whoopee"), Warren & Dubin ("You lot're Getting To Be A Habit With Me"). Simply who wrote the number that kicks off the whole shebang and embodies the spirit of the enterprise? Who was the happy in-di-vi-du-al who provided Frank with "Y'all Brand Me Feel So Immature"?

Respond: Josef Myrow.

Who?

Josef Myrow, born on February 28th 1910 in Tsarist Russian federation. By the time he was 12, Russia had ceased to exist Tsarist, and Mom and Popular Myrow had ceased to be Russian. Similar many others earlier them, they sailed westward. Usually when ane contemplates the many musical gifts the Romanovs bequeathed to the Usa - Irving Berlin, say, or Irving Caesar or pretty much whatever other Irving of that era - information technology's a tale of penniless Jewish immigrants finding their feet in the teeming tenement houses of the Lower East Side: You go a lucky break as a singing waiter, and peradventure graduate to song plugger at a Tin can Pan Aisle publishing house. But the Myrows settled in Pennsylvania, and immature Josef went to the University of Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, and then the Curtis Constitute of Music. And by the time those fine institutions were through with him he was an accomplished concert pianist, who solo-ed with the Philadelphia and many other symphony orchestras.

And and then his big classical career took a detour. He started writing songs for nightclub revues, and before y'all know information technology he had a hit - "Haunting Me", Number 14 for Boil Duchin in 1935 - and then a few more - "V O'Clock Whistle", a triple bestseller for Glenn Miller, Ella Fitzgerald and Erskine Hawkins; "Autumn Nocturne", Number 16 for Claude Thornhill in 1941; and "Velvet Moon", Number Two for Harry James in 1943. They were pop hits rather than lasting standards, and very redolent of the era: they sounded, to quote some other Josef Myrow title, "Overheard In A Cocktail Lounge". And, if you lot could do that well enough, you'd always be able to brand a living. And and then by 1946 Myrow was out in Hollywood, his concert days far behind him, under contract to 20th Century Play a joke on and writing for whatsoever property they tossed his manner. The first was If I'k Lucky, and Myrow certainly wasn't: The pic starred Perry Como every bit a vocalizer who decides to run for governor in social club that his musical pals will discover information technology easier to get employment. Young Como was never much of an histrion, but it'due south hard to believe anything with Phil Silvers, Carmen Miranda and Harry James could exist such a yawneroo.

Myrow got luckier with film number two: Three Trivial Girls In Blue. This was a plot the studio remade every couple of years under a new championship. Previously seen as Moon Over Miami (1941) and before that as Three Blind Mice (1938), information technology's the one about a trio of gals setting out to ensnare millionaire hubbies. In this case, the eponymous 3 picayune girls in blue were 1 of the less lively combinations of Flim-flam blondes: June Haver, Vivian Blaine and Vera-Ellen. Miss Blaine landed her wealthy aristocrat (Frank Latimore), Miss Haver found true love with penniless George Montgomery, and Vera-Ellen wound upwardly with the wine waiter, played by an actor chosen George Smith, just not earlier they serenade each other with :

You Make Me Feel So Immature
You make me experience 'so jump has sprung
And every time I see y'all grin
I'chiliad such a happy in
-dividual

The moment that you speak
I want to go play hide-and-seek
I want to go and bounce the moon
Just like a toy balloon...

To be technical well-nigh information technology, neither Vera-Ellen nor George Smith actually "serenaded" anybody: Ballad Stewart dubbed Vera-Ellen's singing voice, and Del Porter dubbed Mr Smith'southward phonation (rather alarmingly). But both actors did a fine chore twirling around every bit overgrown infants in the (by and so) obligatory dream ballet that followed the song's song refrain. Myrow'southward melody was given words past Mack Gordon, a biggy hitting-maker of the day. He wrote ii of the all-time great big-band train songs ("Chattanooga Choo-Choo" and "I Got A Gal In Kalamazoo"); a beautiful wartime ballad ("You'll Never Know"); a song from the aforementioned menstruation that went on to enjoy a second life, right down to our day and Céline Dion's version, every bit a kind of semi-soul/r'north'b ballad ("At Final"); plus "Time On My Easily", "(I Yi Yi Yi Yi) I Like You lot Very Much")", and on and on. Sinatra sang Mack Gordon's "This Is The Beginning Of The End" way back in 1940, which turned out to be merely the stop of the beginning of his relationship with Gordon lyrics: Over the next twoscore years he recorded "Mam'selle", "There Will Never Be Another You", "I Had The Craziest Dream", and a mildly disappointing have on that magnificent brooding masterpiece, "Serenade In Bluish". Most scholars don't rate Gordon very highly, in part considering of lines like this from mayhap his about popular song :

Can y'all imagine
How much I love you?
The More I Run across You
As years go by
I know the only one for me
Can simply be you...

Sure, just, if you're gonna get that route, why non "I merely know the merely one for me can merely be y'all only..." On the other paw, fools rush in where wise men fear to tread, and Gordon's double-only has been honey past singers for two-thirds of a century. It looks dumb on paper, but somehow sounds right when it'due south sung. He was very good at that. And he certainly served Josef Myrow'southward tune. It starts with a little known verse :

Do I seem as cheerful
Equally a schoolboy playing hooky?
Do I seem to gurgle
Like a infant with a cookie?
If I exercise
The cause of information technology all is you lot

You Make Me Experience And so Immature...

Nobody bothers with that these days. In fact, they didn't bother with it in the movie. It's not really needed, and it spells out a scrap over-literally the premise of the chorus, with its "hide-and-seek", "toy balloons" and...

You and I
Are just similar a couple of tots
Runnin' across the meadow
Pickin' upwards lots of forget-me-nots...

Merely it's not just the imagery. Gordon underlines the theme stylistically. There's what Will Friedwald calls the "schoolkid-awkward isolation" of "in-di-6-du-al", making a five-syllable repast of a 25-cent word. (Pairing the "in-" with the "smile" of the previous line is an example of apocopated rhyme. Hey, at that place'south another 25-cent word!) And, in dissimilarity to that extension, there'south the compression of:

You Make Me Feel And so Young
Yous make me experience 'so spring has sprung...

Which is a contraction of:

You brand feel as though spring has sprung...

And information technology sings just beautifully, not least the climactic echo of "leap" and "sprung" in "A wonderful fling to be flung!" Of grade, Myrow'due south tune is terrific. Alec Wilder chosen it "a just bang-up rhythm song" with "irresistible vitality" that says "leave of my fashion till I end". Tin't argue with that - although you lot do wonder why the composer never wrote anything remotely like it ever again. Then adverse, you could say the same of Cliff Boland, with whose "Gypsy In My Soul" Wilder compares "You lot Brand Me Feel So Young".

At the fourth dimension, it didn't do much. Dick Haymes made a dull record, which didn't even cleft the Top 20. So how did it come up to Sinatra's attending to the point that, a decade later, he decided to make it the opening cut on what turned out to be the first full-length, total-throttle celebration of his new band-a-ding-ding persona? I e'er wanted to ask him that, and I in one case got close enough to bring information technology up, more or less casually. But it was a crowded room, and, but as he was well-nigh to answer, someone cut in and that was that. What I didn't know then was that Sinatra had recorded no fewer than four Josef Myrow tunes. To put that in perspective, that's every bit many as he recorded by Duke Ellington. You might not be able to become one of those Ella-length box sets out of Frank Sinatra Sings The Josef Myrow Songbook but yous could get a pretty decent EP. The first runway comes right from the dawn of his career - March 1940, two months into young Frank'due south big break with the Tommy Dorsey band. Music by Myrow, words past Bickley Reichner:

Starry night
This is The Fable Of The Rose
The rose I gave my honey
Then young and tender
So in flower...

Y'all might experience so young, only that'southward the kind of number that makes you feel real erstwhile real fast, although Sinatra and Dorsey glide beyond it gorgeously. The 3rd Myrow song Frank recorded is but lovely. Every year, round about April, I notice myself pottering most singing it. It'south from a forgettable baseball movie with Ray Milland. To be honest, the tune is no more than good plenty, simply Mack Gordon'southward lyric is pure mid-century Americana, and Sinatra's recording - from 1949, with an Axel Stordahl arrangement - is then sincere he seems to be summing up some idealized recollection of his Hoboken boyhood:

It Happens Ev'ry Leap
The world is young again
We're children on an ups-a-daisy swing
A carousel with horses freshly painted
The oom-pa-pa that says let's get acquainted

What is that cheer I heard?
A young man stealing third
Your neighbor's boy became a home-run king
Your dad rolls upwards his sleeves to clean the attic
Your xvi-twelvemonth-sometime sister goes dramatic...

I always like those baseball game lines. Simply in between "Legend Of The Rose" and "It Happens Every Spring", what was the 2d Myrow song Sinatra recorded? Well, one twenty-four hour period in 1946 he went into the studio to take his beginning fissure at the "Soliloquy" from Carousel, and then at the stop of the session did a song from Three Trivial Girls In Blue. But not "You lot Brand Me Feel So Young". He sang, beautifully, a charming carol called "Somewhere In The Night". But how come he and Axel Stordahl took all the trouble to turn through the score to the motion-picture show - and then decided to do not "Y'all Brand Me Feel And so Young" but an plain inferior song? Was information technology considering of the Haymes record?

A decade subsequently he rectified the error, and "You lot Make Me Feel So Immature" stayed in his book all the manner to the very cease. He sang it memorably at the Kennedy inaugural in 1961, dedicated to the youthful president. For a while, he liked to employ it as an opening number, simply, even when he didn't, he'd usually use it early on in the act, equally 1 of those mid-tempo numbers that helped him relax into a show, and the venue, and the oversupply, before getting into the ballads and the difficult swing. He modified the Nelson Riddle arrangement, getting Billy Byers to punch it upward for his run at the Sands with Count Basie and Quincy Jones. Byers gives the chart a trivial more than bulldoze in the intro, providing the actress level of energy y'all want at a live performance. He helped the number live up to its title: The older Frank got, the younger information technology made him feel, as he brindled the renditions with outr é grace notes, and the big bellowed "Yoooooooooo...." with which he liked to ride into the final section of the second chorus. If you lot want to know the difference between Sinatra and everyone else, it comes down to i word. Compare Ella's recording of the song. When she wants to become and bounce the moon, "bounciness" is a pretty sound, that'south all. Then become back and heed to Frank: He all merely literally bounces the word off the rhythm section. And, past the way, isn't the notion of "bouncing the moon" an ingenious wrinkle on ane of the oldest of Tin Pan Aisle lyrical props?

In 1993, almost four decades after that original recording, Sinatra was dorsum in Studio A at the Capitol Tower for i of the very last times, recording a new "Immature" for his Duets project. They called in Charles Aznavour, and it'due south fun to listen to 1 onetime geezer trying to go on up with the other, Aznavour reveling in shadowing all of Frank's verbal tics, similar the emphatic staccato extension of "today" to "this - hither - day!" or the "be-cause" he liked to throw in, swaggering beyond the fill up between the chief theme and the middle section.

Did he ever not experience immature singing the song? At to the lowest degree in one case, formally - when Nancy Sinatra got engaged to old youth idol Tommy Sands, and Daddy and daughter teamed up on Television for "You Brand Me Feel So Onetime", courtesy of special lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Just other than that, across 4 decades, the song kept its hope. And non for the first time he planted the song in the repertoire. Everybody's done it since, from Rosemary Clooney to the Malm ö Fire Brigade Big Band and its Nordically-voweled vocalist ("You lot and I are just like a couple of toots"). Simply, without Sinatra in '56, at that place wouldn't be a song to comprehend.

The Swingin' Lovers recording was more or less a swan song for Josef Myrow. Just it did well enough to enable his son to take the kind of career his dad might take preferred: Fredric Myrow studied with Darius Milhaud and became an advanced serious composer, funded by royalties from that Sinatra track. And when young Fred brought his highbrow pals back to his parents' pad, they always asked Dad to become to the piano and play "Y'all Make Me Feel So Immature". My Maclean'south colleague Jaime Weinman thinks Josef Myrow is the near boring composer in the Corking American Songbook. But he was with Sinatra in March of 1940, and withal at that place every dark in the mid-Nineties, in some bearding aircraft hangar of a vast stone stadium on the edge of town somewhere on the map. Over a quarter-century later his expiry, this song in Sinatra'south easily still makes Josef Myrow sound young:

Yous make me feel in that location are songs to be sung
Bells to be rung
And a wonderful fling to be flung!
And even when I'm old and grey
I'thou gonna feel the way I do today
'Cause Yous Make Me Feel Then Immature!

~For an alternative Sinatra Hot 100, the Pundette has launched her own Frank countdown . She has another Songs For Swingin' Lovers track at Number 61: "Erstwhile Devil Moon." Bob Belvedere over at The Army camp Of The Saints is also counting downward his Top 100 Sinatra tracks, and he has a favorite Swingin' Lovers song at Number 41: "Too Marvelous For Words."

~You can find the stories behind many more Sinatra songs in Marker Steyn's American Songbook, while Steyn's original 1998 obituary of Frank, "The Voice", tin be found in the album Mark Steyn From Caput To Toe. Personally autographed copies of both books are exclusively bachelor from the Steyn store.

SINATRA CENTURY
at SteynOnline

1) IT WAS A VERY GOOD Twelvemonth

2) THE Vocal IS YOU

3) HOME ON THE RANGE

iv) Later YOU'VE GONE

5) IT HAD TO BE YOU

6) THE ONE I Dearest (BELONGS TO SOMEBODY ELSE)

7) Beloved'S BEEN GOOD TO ME

8) STARDUST

9) MY FUNNY VALENTINE

10) WHAT IS THIS THING Called LOVE?

11) CHICAGO

12) THE CONTINENTAL

xiii) ALL OF ME

xiv) WHEN YOUR LOVER HAS GONE

15) NIGHT AND Twenty-four hour period

16) I WON'T DANCE

17) I'VE GOT YOU Under MY SKIN

eighteen) SOUTH OF THE BORDER

xix) EAST OF THE SUN (AND Due west OF THE MOON)

20) ON THE Route TO MANDALAY

21) A FOGGY DAY (IN LONDON TOWN)

22) I GET A KICK OUT OF You lot

23) I'M A FOOL TO Want YOU

24) OUR LOVE

25) ALL OR Nil AT ALL

26) I'LL NEVER Grinning AGAIN

27) FOOLS RUSH IN

28) MY One AND But LOVE

29) EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO ME

thirty) I'LL BE SEEING YOU

31) THE WAY Yous LOOK TONIGHT

32) I'LL Be Around

33) THE NEARNESS OF YOU

34) PENNIES FROM Heaven

35) Dejection IN THE Nighttime

36) Guess I'LL HANG MY TEARS OUT TO Dry out

37) NANCY (WITH THE LAUGHING Face)

38) SOMETHIN' STUPID

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