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...(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
the wonderfully insane lrics to It’s Istanbul, not
Constantinople:
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.
(Published credits say that Nat Simon
wrote the music to that, but if you don't think it
sounds like Irving Berlin's Puttin' on the Ritz, you're not
listening.)
Kennedy's 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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Jeff
Matthews 2002-2012 entry Oct 2008