When an artist puts a definitive stamp on a song, it can sometimes obscure the history behind its writing. Such is the case with Roberta Flack’s languorous, luscious performance of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Flack included it on a 1969 album titled "First Take," where it languished relatively unknown until it appeared in the 1971 Clint Eastwood flick "Play Misty For Me." A year later it was released as a single, becoming a #1 Billboard hit for a stunning six-week run at number one on both the pop and adult contemporary charts while peaking at number four R&B in the spring of 1972. Its success spurred the two-year-old 'First Take' to gold status. The song won Grammy for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

The song's origins, however, are neither pop nor R&B. British communist folksinger Ewan MacColl (1915-1989) wrote the ballad in 1957 for the woman he loved: American folksinger Peggy Seeger, the half-sister of Pete Seeger. There are two different versions of the story of its origins. MacColl, who died thirty years ago, used to say that he had sung it down the telephone to Peggy, who was on tour at the time in America. He had been forced to stay behind in England because the US authorities believed he was too dangerous a subversive to be given a visa, and he claimed to have composed it off-the-cuff when Peggy said she needed a two-and-a-half- minute song to fill a gap in her show.

Roberta Flack - "First Take", album 1969

Peggy Seeger had met MacColl in 1956; she was 20, he was 40 and married - for the second time - with a young son. They started an affair, and at the beginning of 1957 Seeger returned to her father's house in California. 'Things were so confused between me and Ewan that I went home,' she says. 'He used to send me tapes with him talking on them, and one of them had him singing 'The First Time Ever' on it . . . The intensity of it quite frightened me.'

Peggy Seeger

Seeger’s description of how they fell in love is far from starry or sweet. He had, she recalls, a 'hairy, fat, naked belly poking out, and was clad in ill-fitting trousers, suspenders, no shirt, a ragged jacket and a filthy lid of stovepipe hat aslant like a garbage can.' On their first night together he couldn’t get it up. The second time round there was time for a quickie. 'I was discomfited but compliant.'

Ewan MacColl

MacColl’s lyrics are an ode to the heady rush of new romance. The outsized poetic imagery in the song is perfectly in tune with that first flush of excitement and rapture. So it’s understandable that the narrator believes that his lover’s eyes command the heavens and her kiss moves the Earth. When he makes love to her for the first time, all of these assumptions are verified; there can be no doubt that “our joy/ Would fill the earth/ And last till the end of time.” Ewan MacColl must have loved Peggy Seeger very much because this description of a tentative first kiss is achingly beautiful…the “trembling heart of a captive bird” line especially so.

Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl

While the lyrics are tender and heartfelt, the tune is what elevates the song, literally and figuratively. The melodic leap it takes in each verse mirrors that emotional surge that shakes the narrator to his core every time he shares a novel experience with this woman. MacColl might have known that this leap would perfectly suit Seeger’s vocal range when she performed it, but that soaring turn in the song was likely a manifestation of his feelings for her as well.

Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl

The song entered the pop mainstream when it was released by the Kingston Trio on their 1962 hit album New Frontier and in subsequent years by other pop folk groups such as Peter, Paul and Mary, The Brothers Four, and the Chad Mitchell Trio, and by Gordon. MacColl made no secret of the fact that he disliked all of the cover versions of the song. His daughter-in-law wrote: "He hated all of them. He had a special section in his record collection for them, entitled 'The Chamber of Horrors'. He said that the Elvis version was like Romeo at the bottom of the Post Office Tower singing up to Juliet. And the other versions, he thought, were travesties: bludgeoning, histrionic, and lacking in grace."

Kingston Trio - "New Frontier", album, 1962

Roberta Flack came along, slowed the song down dramatically, and somehow connected with it in a way none of the other performers up to that point in time had. And while it’s true that Roberta Flack does something very obvious with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” by slowing it down so much, what she does is much more than that fairly superficial change. In a 2012 interview with Jazzwax, Flack told an interviewer she later met Seeger, who praised her interpretation, saying she felt Flack's version was "exactly what Ewan wanted to say."

Roberta Flack - “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, single, 1972

Seeger confessed to Mojo that she wasn’t keen on Flack’s famous take on the song, even if she appreciated the royalties they brought in to her as MacColl’s widow. While MacColl and Seeger are closer to the song than anybody else and their opinions are hard-earned, it’s still difficult to question Roberta Flack’s decision to slow the song’s pace down and luxuriate in the moments it describes. And it’s hard to mess up a tune as pretty as this. In practically any version, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” endures as a song that resonates with anyone who’s ever been floored by the initial impact of love.

Peggy Seeger

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, lyrics

The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
To the dark and the end of the skies

And the first time ever I kissed your mouth
I felt the earth move in my hand
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command, my love

And the first time ever I lay with you
I felt your heart so close to mine
And I knew our joy would fill the earth
And last, till the end of time, my love

The first time ever I saw your face
Your face
Your face
Your face

Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl

Roberta Flack - First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Donovan is often described as a hippie, lightweight Dylan, a kind of Dylan Lite. And there’s no denying the resemblance. But who wasn’t trying to sound like Dylan in the sixties? And unlike many of the imitators, Donovan actually had songwriting and musical chops to back up his imitation. Take “Catch the Wind,” a pretty little song that sounds like a “Freewheelin’” Bob Dylan castoff but is sweeter than anything Dylan has ever done. At its worst, this sweetness made Donovan sound like a sprite or naive schoolboy, but on songs like this, it was utterly charming.

Catch The Wind

It took Great Britain a little longer than America to embrace Bob Dylan, with the singer/songwriter's second album, “The Freewheelin'” Bob Dylan, not marking his chart debut there until May 1964, a year after its release. With that, however, Dylan became enormously popular, with his next albums “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and “Another Side of Bob Dylan” scoring higher than they did at home. By early 1965, Dylan had begun to record with electric instruments, but in England he was still viewed as a folksinger with an acoustic guitar hanging from his shoulders and a harmonica rack set before his mouth. Just then, a homegrown version of the same thing appeared: 18-year-old Donovan Leitch. There is little doubt that Donovan's resemblance to Dylan is what got him a pair of managers and a shot on the British TV show ‘Ready Steady Go!’ on February 6, 1965, with return engagements the following two weeks.

Donovan, 1965

Donovan Leitch started appearing on the folk scene in the mid 1960s. In fact, he performed at the famous 1965 Newport Folk Festival at which Bob Dylan went electric. He followed with a series of hits, including “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” “Sunshine Superman,” “Jennifer Juniper,” and numerous others. Many, including John Lennon, looked upon Donovan as a significant influence with his combination of melodic pop sensibility and lyrics that were a kind of epitome of the flower-child ethos of the Sixties.

Dylan & Donovan, Newport 1965

Recorded in 1964 and released the following year in both the United States and United Kingdom, "Catch The Wind" was Donovan's debut single. It was released as a single in the United Kingdom on March 12, 1965 through Pye Records and a few months later in the United States through Hickory Records. The single was backed with "Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do?" on both the United Kingdom and United States releases. The melody of the song was influenced by "Chimes of Freedom" by Bob Dylan.

Catch the Wind, single, Pye Records 1965

Employing a similar title to Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," "Catch the Wind" was also a ballad played on acoustic guitar with harmonica fills, sung in a similarly husky, if somewhat more regular voice than Dylan's. The main difference was that while Dylan rarely sang directly of romantic love (at least, he rarely did so approvingly), "Catch the Wind" was an unabashed love song in which a young man, in highly poetic language, his desire for a woman before wistfully adding, "Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

Catch the Wind, single, Hickory Records 1965

In an interview with Dierdre O'Donoghue on KCRW Radio, Los Angeles, Donovan said: "'Catch The Wind,' I wrote it for Linda (Lawrence, who he married in 1970), although I hadn't really met her yet. It is a song of unrequited love, yet I hadn't really met her, so how could I miss her? And I seem to write prophetic songs in the sense of the Celtic poet and I wrote this song before I met Linda, of a love I would like to have had and lost." The lyrical sentiment reflected a legitimate naivety, as an 18-year-old Donovan sang wistful lines including “When sundown pales the sky / I wanna hide a while / Behind your smile / And everywhere I'd look, your eyes I'd find.” That unaffected, unadorned innocence was echoed in a dulcet folk melody matched to Donovan's acoustic guitar chording and harmonica riffs. The single version featured Donovan's vocals with echo and a string section.

Donovan & Linda Lawrence

The melody of “Catch the Wind” sounds ageless, and Donovan uses this characteristic to play to the lyrics’ age-old theme of unrequited (or is it just impossible?) love. His vocal performance teeters on the edge of tweeness, but that catch in his voice when he says “would be the sweetest thing” is, against all odds, perfect.

Joan Baez & Donovan, Newport 1965

From his early troubadour songs of 1965, Donovan quickly developed into key figure in the development of music of the period. Embracing music from other cultures, composing collections of songs for children, and working with The Beatles, he defined what we now refer to as both psychedelia and acid folk. For a short period in the mid-Sixties, Donovan was seen as Britain’s answer to Bob Dylan. History, however, has not been kind. By the Eighties he was dismissed as a psychedelic novelty, a hippy-dippy troubadour who clung to Eastern mysticism while all around him the pioneers of New Wave presented a political urgency.

Donovan & Crystal Gale sing Catch The Wind

"Catch the Wind" hit the British charts in March 1965 and peaked in the Top Five (No.4). In May, it figured in the American charts, peaking in the Top 40 by July (No.23). Though it remains identified with its author, the song has earned a respectable number of covers over the years.

Eartha Kitt sings Catch The Wind

Donovan - Catch The Wind

In the chilly hours and minutes,
Of uncertainty, I want to be,
In the warm hold of your loving mind.

To feel you all around me,
And to take your hand, along the sand,
Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind.

When sundown pales the sky,
I wanna hide a while, behind your smile,
And everywhere I'd look, your eyes I'd find.

For me to love you now,
Would be the sweetest thing, 'twould make me sing,
Ah, but I may as well, try and catch the wind.

When rain has hung the leaves with tears,
I want you near, to kill my fears
To help me to leave all my blues behind.

For standin' in your heart,
Is where I want to be, and I long to be,
Ah, but I may as well, try and catch the wind.

Catch the wind

Aretha Franklin is one of the giants of soul music, and indeed of American pop as a whole. More than any other performer, she epitomized soul at its most gospel-charged. Her astonishing run of late-'60s hits earned her the title "Lady Soul," which she has worn uncontested ever since. Yet as much of an international institution as she's become, much of her work is erratic and only fitfully inspired, making discretion a necessity when collecting her records.

Aretha Franklin - Ain't No Way

Franklin's roots in gospel ran extremely deep. With her sisters Carolyn and Erma (both of whom would also have recording careers), she sang at the Detroit church of her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, while growing up in the 1950s. Years later, their church-honed harmonies would be heard on hits issued on Atlantic Records during Aretha Franklin's mid-'60s heyday. While her pumpin' million-sellers such as "Respect" and "Think" may be better known, "Ain't No Way" is one of the singer's best sides.

Father, Aretha & Carolyn Franklin

"Ain't No Way" is a song written by singer-songwriter Carolyn Franklin for her elder sister Aretha. Inspired by her sisters' successes in the secular music field in the early 1960s, Carolyn followed Erma and Aretha into a secular recording career, first recording in 1963. Like Erma, Carolyn's modest success in the industry wasn't matched by Aretha's blockbuster breakthrough in the late 1960s. While struggling to release a hit, she began to work behind the scenes as a songwriter, mainly for sister Aretha's work.

Erma Franklin

Aretha and Carolyn's bond led to several collaborations between the two and Carolyn came up with several compositions that became classic hits including "Ain't No Way", recorded in 1968. The ballad single was the b-side to Aretha's top ten triumph, "(Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You've Been Gone". The song peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #9 on the Hot R&B Singles Chart in 1968. Carolyn and members of the Sweet Inspirations performed backing vocals on the track.

Sweet Sweet Baby - Aint No Way (single)

The Sweet Inspirations were an American R&B girl group founded by Emily "Cissy" Houston, mother of Whitney Houston, and sister of Lee Warrick (herself the mother of well-known sisters Dee Dee and Dionne Warwick). The group sang backup for many stars, including Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and Esther Phillips. On March 30, 1968, the group scored their first and only top forty hit on the Billboard Top 40 Pop Chart with the song "Sweet Inspiration" on Atlantic Records. The record was on the chart for ten weeks and peaked at number 18. Previously (December 19 and 20, 1967), the group did backing vocals for the Aretha Franklin song "Ain't No Way" which was later released on her acclaimed “Lady Soul” album.

The Sweet Inspirations

The album was her second R&B chart-topper, the follow-up to “Aretha Arrives” and included some of her biggest hit singles, "Chain of Fools" (#2 Pop), and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" (#8 Pop), and "(Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You've Been Gone" (#5 Pop). It eventually sold over a million copies in the United States alone. “Lady Soul” peaked at #1, #2 and #3 on Billboard's Black Albums, Pop Albums and Jazz Albums charts respectively. The Sweet Inspirations are credited as background vocals on several tracks, along with Aretha's sisters Carolyn and Erma Franklin. In 2003 the TV network VH1 named “Lady Soul” the 41st greatest album of all time. It is number 84 on Rolling Stone′s list "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

Carolyn Franklin

The "Ain't No Way", low-key ballad has a sparse mix that highlights Aretha's aching lead vocal and the pensive tone of the lyrics. A high, reverb-drenched soprano wail gives the track an "otherworldly" feel.

Lady Soul, album 1968

Ain't No Way, lyrics by Carolyn Franklin

Ain't no way for me to love you,
if you won't let me.
It ain't no way for me to give you all you need,
if you won't let me give all of me.
I know that a woman's duty is to help and love a man,
and that's the way it was planned.
Oh, but how can I, how can I, how can I
give you all the things I can,
if you're tying both of my hands?

Oh, it ain't no way (ain't no way).
It ain't no way (ain't no way).
It just ain't no way, baby (ain't no way).
Ain't no way baby (ain't no way).
It ain't no way for me to love you,
if you won't let me.

Stop trying to be someone you're not.
How cold and cruel is a man
who pay too much for what he got?
And if you need me to love you, say, say you do.
Oh, then baby, baby, baby don't you know that
I need you.
Oh, Oh, it ain't no way.
I'll tell you that it ain't no way,
It ain't no way.
It ain't no way, baby, no.
It just ain't no way.
It sure ain't no way
It ain't no way for me to love you,
if you won't let me...

In the film Don't Look Back, Dylan sits around his room in London's posh Savoy Hotel, surrounded by hangers-on. Bored, he picks up an acoustic guitar and plays a new song he's just written: "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." He has an evil grin on his face; after the first two verses, it's the only smile in the room – everyone else looks shattered. The party's definitely over. The song was originally recorded on January 15, 1965 with Dylan’s acoustic guitar and harmonica and William E. Lee’s bass guitar the only instrumentation. The lyrics were heavily influenced by Symbolist poetry and bid farewell to the titular “Baby Blue.”

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" is a song performed and featured on his “Bringing It All Back Home” album, released on March 22, 1965 by Columbia Records. It was a huge mystery back then about the real identity of the “Baby Blue” referred in the lyrics. There were even speculations that it might be Bob Dylan himself.

Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home

“Dylan” was a self-chosen name in homage to the great, legendarily self-destructive Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, whose lush, lyric, over-the-top poetry presumably influenced many of Bob Dylan’s songs. At the time it might have seemed an act of extraordinary chutzpah for a Jewish kid from Duluth, Minnesota, named Bob Zimmerman to anoint himself with the poet’s internationally famous name.

Dylan Thomas

In the history of American popular music, Dylan is generally credited with the transforming of the folk-revival movement from its reverent fixation upon traditional ballads to the creation of new, socially engaged, and politically provocative music. The composer/songwriter becomes the performer. And what a performer!

‘Don't Look Back’ (1967), poster

Bob Dylan’s raspy voice and aggressive folk style imprinted itself upon the public when, in his brilliant album “Bringing It All Back Home,” he cultivated a more sophisticated musical idiom, synthesizing folk and rock in a way that would seem inevitable in retrospect; yet, at the time, struck folk music purists as disloyal. Dylan clearly anticipated the formal, aesthetic, and tonal limitations of folk music, even as, by way of LSD experimentation, he explored the myriad possibilities of bending music as one bends one’s mind, toward the surreal, the fantastic, the phantasmagoric.

Bob Dylan Blue

Perhaps his most haunting song, as it’s his most mysterious, is the surreal “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, with its air of a fairy tale in which the end of something (a love affair? a life?) is being reiterated in each refrain in the very face of ‘Strike another match, let’s start anew.’ Like all good poetry, this song of Dylan’s can’t be paraphrased. Like all good music it is both of its time and timeless.

Bob Dylan sings ”It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”

The words constantly at the forefront of the woman’s mind are those of the title, which are repeated in the refrain: ‘It’s all over now, Baby Blue’. The first is negative. In envisaging a time – a ‘now’ – after her anticipated death, she sees her life as a failure. Her life is gone, and with it both her chance of happiness and the opportunity for doing good. The other way of taking the claim is more positive. By the end of the song it might well be the case that ‘it’s all over now’ in that her decision to help others will have brought about the end their misery, and with it her own.

Joan Baez - It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

There’s little reason to see ”It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” as ‘about’ an event in Dylan’s life, such as his adopting a new musical style around the time it was written. Essentially it’s about the mental state of someone trying to renew their life following what they see as a calamity – the breakup of a relationship. Although the woman concerned is being addressed by the narrator, it makes sense to see her for most of the time as addressing herself.

The Byrds - It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, single

So who is Baby Blue? Well, like most of Dylan's subjects, the character is probably an amalgam of personalities in his orbit. There has been much speculation about the real life identity of "Baby Blue", with possibilites including Joan Baez, David Blue, Paul Clayton, Dylan's folk music audience, and even Dylan himself.

The Grateful Dead - It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” is a great song, with a colorful cast of characters, a plaintive chorus, and a memorable message. In a way, it treads similar ground as “Like A Rolling Stone” and the “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” The folk guitar chord changes and somber melody alone make listeners prick up their ears to listen. And there is something simply heartbreaking, allusively so, about the chorus line.

Graham Bonnet - It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" has been covered countless times by a variety of artists from bands like the Byrds, and Animals to Falco, Hugh Masekela, and Bryan Ferry. The Belfast band Them (featuring Van Morrison) recorded a cover of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" in 1966. It was later re-released in Germany in December 1973 where the single became a hit in Germany, first entering the charts in February 1974 and peaking at #13, during a chart stay of 14 weeks. The Grateful Dead and solo Jerry Garcia had the song in their extensive repertoire of Dylan songs.

Them - It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

“I had carried that song around in my head for a long time,”- Dylan has said, -“and I remember that when I was writing it, I’d remembered a Gene Vincent song. It had always been one of my favorites, Baby Blue… ‘When first I met my baby/she said how do you do/she looked into my eyes and said/my name is Baby Blue.’ It was one of the songs I used to sing back in high school. Of course, I was singing about a different Baby Blue.”

Bob Dylan (1965)

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, lyrics

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.
Take what you have gathered from coincidence.
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
All your reindeer armies, are all going home.
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Baby Blue

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is from Kern's musical Roberta, his last big Broadway venture. Based on the Alice Duer Miller novel “Gowns by Roberta,” it is a sophisticated comedy about an American football player and a Russian princess. The song that carried the show was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," which, in earlier incarnations, had been intended as a fast tap dance number in Show Boat, then as a march for an NBC radio series. It was lyricist and librettist Otto Harbach's idea to slow the song down and to add a lyric based on an old Russian proverb. Beautiful Ukranian-born Tamara Drasin was chosen to play the part of Princess Stephanie and to sing "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and it is she who we hear on this recording. In the show Tamara accompanied herself on guitar, but on this recording she is accompanied by a dance orchestra. Since Harbach's staging called for a jazz band onstage, the dance band accompaniment may not be totally out of place here.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

With music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Otto Harbach, and starring Bob Hope, 'Roberta' became one of the most popular Broadway musicals from the 1930s. Its success came in the early and worst years of the depression when poor box office receipts were mercilessly closing most shows. So well did 'Roberta' go over, in fact, that it was brilliantly adapted to the screen in 1935 in a version starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Jerome Kern, Otto Harbach - Roberta 1933

Jerome Kern (1885-1945) is arguably the father modern American musical theater. Born in New York of German heritage, he attended the New York College of Music and began to break into Broadway theater during the first decade of the century by having songs of his interpolated into shows. Kern really entered the history books with “Show Boat”(1927), the first truly modern American musical, with an integrated story and such memorable songs as "Ol' Man River" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man."

Jerome Kern

Like many of his contemporaries, Kern divided his time between Broadway and Hollywood in the '30s, after sound came into the movies. Music composed by Jerome Kern has been popular with jazz artists for so long it's hard to imagine how horrified Kern was by the liberties jazz interpreters took with his finely-crafted melodies. Kern worked steadily -- he wrote or contributed to 37 shows during his career -- and was beginning work on Annie Get Your Gun when he died suddenly in 1945. He left behind one of the richest catalogs of show music in history.

Tamara Drasin

Born in Salt Lake City, in 1873, Otto Harbach studied at the Collegiate Institute, then at Knox College before becoming an English professor. He was on the staff of Whitman College from 189 5-1901, then moved to New York. Harbach met composer Karl Hoschna and the two became a songwriting team, scoring their first hit with 1908's "Cuddle Up a Little Closer," from their score for Broadway's ‘The Three Twins.’ The duo collaborated on more successful shows until Hoschna's death in December 1911. After Hoschna was gone, Harbach began working with composer Rudolf Friml. In 1920, Harbach teamed up with another lyricist-librettist, Oscar Hammerstein II, for the most successful period of Harbach's career.

Otto Harbach

Besides his three main collaborators, Harbach also wrote with many others over the years, including Herbert Stothart, Vincent Youmans, George Gershwin, Sigmund Romberg, and Jerome Kern. Some of Harbach's best-known songs are "Every Little Movement" (1910), "Sympathy" (1912), "The Love Nest" (1920), "Rose-Marie" (1924), "The Desert Song" (1926), "Yesterdays" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," (1933). Many of the musicals that Harbach worked on were later turned into movies.

Gertrude Niesen - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, 1933

Eighty three years ago - in January 1934 - Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra had the Number One record in America. And 58 years ago - that would be January 1959 - the Platters had the Number One record in America.

Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" undertook an interesting journey before reaching the Platters. After the song made its debut in the 1933 musical Roberta, the composition was released as a single later that year by Gertrude Niesen. Two years later it appeared in the 1935 movie adaptation, this time performed by Irene Dunne. The 1952 remake found Kathryn Grayson performing the ballad, and her operatic voice beautifully graced the song's lovely melody. But the Platters' take represents a change in sound, when a more unrestrained approach courtesy of R&B found its way to popular music.

The Platters

Their version is truly marvelous, thanks in large part to Tony Williams' rich lead vocal and arranger David Carroll's lush orchestration. The group's exquisite harmonies inject doo-wop into the ballad, thereby modernizing the Broadway tune. But it's Williams' intense performance that transforms "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" into something more, a torch song oozing longing and sensuality. His voice dips and soars, alternates in tone and volume, dramatizing the lyrics. As Williams' voice reaches a crescendo at the song's end, his passion emanates through the speakers, releasing both the agony and ecstasy that previous versions do not reveal.

The Platters sing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

When the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, the museum cited the Platters for best representing a "golden era when pop, rhythm & blues and rock and roll flowed together in perfect harmony." Indeed, the Platters effectively bridged these genres.

The Platters - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Mercury 1958

This is the song at its pop pinnacle, but it also works very well with jazz singers and instrumentalists, the first being Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, with a vocal performance from Bob Lawrence. Other early covers of the song include that of the Tommy Dorsey orchestra, who released their contemporary version in 1938, with His Master's Voice. During the mid-to-late 1930s Larry Adler and Henry Hall recorded live radio performances of the song on BBC Radio broadcasts. Art Tatum performed "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in the 1930s, contributing to the song's popularity. However, it is unclear whether Tatum recorded the song during that decade.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers - Roberta, 1935

In 1941 the Benny Goodman Orchestra first performed the song during recorded radio performances with Helen Forrest, then began performing the song with her replacement Peggy Lee. Glenn Miller conducted his rendition of the song at Abbey Road Studios in 1944. Owing to his sudden death later that year, his orchestral version of the song was not released until 1995. On October 30, 1946 Nat "King" Cole recorded the song, with Oscar Moore playing guitar and Johnny Miller playing bass as the King Cole Trio.

Irene Dunne

In 1950 Charlie Parker and Jo Stafford each released versions of the song on their respective albums, Bird at St. Nick's and Autumn in New York. Thelonious Monk released the song in 1954 on his album Monk. On his 1955 album Clifford Brown with Strings, Clifford Brown released a cover of the song. Dinah Washington released the song in 1956, on her album Dinah!. In 1958 Sarah Vaughan released her rendition on her album, No Count Sarah. In 1961 Cannonball Adderley released the song on his album African Waltz. Bandleader Ray Conniff first released his arrangement of the song in 1962, on his double album The Ray Conniff Hi-Fi Companion; it became one of the signature songs of his career.

Kathryn Grayson

It was an odd song for 1959. But then it was an odd song for 1934. "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" isn't one of those "timeless" ballads, like "It Had To Be You" or "My Funny Valentine". It sounded old even when it was new. Even 80 years ago, it didn't talk the way pop songs were meant to talk. Nevertheless, it lives on in all of its numerous versions as a wonderfully romantic song that sounds like falling in love itself.

Sarah Vaughan sings Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes lyrics

They asked me how I knew
My true love was true
Oh, I of course replied
Something here inside cannot be denied

They said someday you'll find
All who love are blind
Oh, when your heart's on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes

So I chaffed them and I gaily laughed
To think they could doubt my love
Yet today my love has fade away
I am without my love

Now laughing friends deride
Tears I can not hide
Oh, so I smile and say
When a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes
Smoke gets in your eyes

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

The song “Po Dikim Stepyam Zabaikalya” was composed by convicts in Siberia. Siberia is an extensive geographical region, by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has been historically part of Russia since the 17th century. The territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. Transbaikalia, or Dauria is a mountainous region to the east of or "beyond" Lake Baikal in Russia. Dauria, is derived from the ethnonym of the Daur people. It stretches for almost 1,000 km from north to south from the Patomskoye Plateau and North Baikal Plateau to the Russian border. The Transbaikal region covers more than 1,000 km from west to east from Baikal to the meridian of the confluence of the Shilka and Argun Rivers.

Po Dikim Stepyam Zabaikalya (Brodyaga)

“Po Dikim Stepyam Zabaikalya” is a Russian folk song. The song was known since 1880s, when it appeared and proliferated among prisoners of Siberian penitentiaries. In 1908 it was published under the title of "Brodyaga" (The Tramp), by the Swedish composer Wilhelm Harteveld, who had collected it in 1906, during a trip to Siberia.

Wilhelm Harteveld

The words author was printed to be I. K. Kondratiev, an expert on songs and a Russian Empire writer, who published several studies on Russian songs. There are few data about his biography. Ivan Belousov states that Kondratyev was a member of Vasily Surikov’s circle. Both Belousov and Korney Chukovsky were highly critical of Kondratyev’s work. Kondratyev wrote a novel Saltychikha, stories, plays, poetry, translations. He also wrote the lyrics for the best known of these being “Charming Eyes.” He is also credited with the lyrics of the song “On the wild steppes of Transbaikalya”. His authorship can't be proven though, because the poem is not included in his last published volume of poems "Under the noise of the Oak Groves" (1898).

I. K. Kondratiev

Siberia is and was rich in its nature and its natural resources. But the temperatures that can reach in winters to -60°C made the living conditions almost unbearable. The first Russian prison camp in Siberia arose at the end of the 17th century as the two double tsars, Ivan V and Peter I who reigned between 1682 en 1696, made a proclamation in which was captured that some death sentences could be put into community service. This prison labour would take place in a so-called Katorga, a remote penal camp with minimum facilities. Over the next 130 years about 1.2 million prisoners were sent to Siberia, where they were put to work in the mining, but also in agriculture, because during summers the temperature in Siberia can raise up to +30°C, or in logging. Others were required to help with the construction of new infrastructure, including the 2000 km-long Amur Cart Road and the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Prisoners builiding the Ussuri Railroad

A large percentage of the political prisoners tried to escape from the camps. It was very hard to catch a runaway, but the chances were also real that the escaped prisoner would be drowned in the river, or frozen to death in the primeval forests. The passionate craving for freedom has been well described by Dostoyevski. “At the first song of the lark throughout all Siberia and Russia, men set out on the tramp; God’s creatures, if they can break their prison and escape into the woods.... They go vagabondising where they please, wherever life seems to them most agreeable and easy; they drink and eat what they can find; at night they sleep undisturbed and without a care in the woods or in a field;... saying good night only to the stars…”

Brodyaga (Vagabond)

“Po dikim stepyam Zabaikalya” (Russian: По диким степям Забайкалья) also known as “Brodyaga” (Russian: Бродяга) says about an escaped prisoner, who crosses the Baikal and meets his family. The song was recorded at the beginning of the 20th century by Nadezhda Plevizkaya and Semion Sadovnikov. A recording of this song performed by Peter Leshchenko was published in 1940s in Bucharest. In 1946 the Soviet songstress Lidia Ruslanova recorded the song. It was also been performed by the Piatnizkiy Choir. The Polish singer Czesław Niemen included the song in his Russian album in 1973. Zhanna Bichevskaya recorded the song for her album in 1980.

Peter Leshchenko

The song remains in the repertoire of various Russian artists. There are several versions, which differ slightly in words or expressions. Most musicians omit some verses. The following is the most common version. (The verses in italics are those most often omitted):

Lake Baikal

По диким степям Забайкалья (Russian lyrics)

1
По диким степям Забайкалья,
Где золото роют в горах,
Бродяга, судьбу проклиная,
Тащился с сумой на плечах.

2
Идёт он густою тайгою,
Где пташки одни лишь поют,
Котел его сбоку тревожит,
Сухие коты ноги бьют.
3
На нем рубашонка худая,
И множество разных заплат,
Шапчонка на нем арестанта
И серый тюремный халат.

4
Бежал из тюрьмы тёмной ночью,
В тюрьме он за правду страдал.
Идти дальше нет уже мочи –
Пред ним расстилался Байкал.
5
Бродяга к Байкалу подходит,
Рыбацкую лодку берёт
И грустную песню заводит,
Про Родину что-то поёт.

6
"Оставил жену молодую
И малых оставил детей,
Теперь я иду наудачу,
Бог знает, увижусь ли с ней!"

7
Бродяга Байкал переехал,
Навстречу - родимая мать.
"Ах, здравствуй, ах, здравствуй, мамаша,
Здоров ли отец мой да брат?"
8
"Отец твой давно уж в могиле,
Землею сырою лежит,
А брат твой давно уж в Сибири,
Давно кандалами гремит".

9
"Пойдём же, пойдём, мой сыночек,
Пойдём же в курень наш родной,
Жена там по мужу скучает,
И плачут детишки гурьбой".	

Zabaikayle, Uranium Mine

Transliteration

1
Po dikim stepyam Zabaikalya,
Gde zoloto royut v gorakh,
Brodyaga, sudbu proklinaya,
Tashilsya s sumoi na plechakh.

2
Idyot on gustoyu taigoyu,
Gde ptashki odni lish poyut,
Kotel ego sboku trevozhit,
Sukhie koty nogi byut
3
Na niom rubashonka khudaya,
I mnozhestvo rasnykh zaplat,
Shapchonka na nem arestsanta
И seryi tyuremnyi khalat.

4
Bezhal iz tyurmy tyomnoi nochyu,
V tyurme on za pravdu stradal.
Idti dalshe net uzhe mochi –
Pred nim rasstilalsya Baikal.
5
Brodyaga k Baikalu podkhodit,
Rybatzkuyu lodky beryot
I grustnuyu pesnyu zavodit
Pro Rodinu chto-to poyot.

6
"Оstavil zhenu moloduyu
I malykh ostavil detei,
Teper ya idu naudachu,
Bog znayet, uvizhus li s nei!"

7
Brodyaga Baikal pereyekhal,
Navstrechu - rodimaya mat.
"Аkh, zdravstvuy, аkh zdravstvuy, mamasha,
Zdorov li otets moi i brat?"
8
"Otets tvoi davno uzh v mogile
Zemlioyu syroyu lezhit
А brat tvoi davno uzh v Sibiri,
Davno kandalami gremit".

9
"Poidyom zhe, poidyom, moi synochek
Poidyom zhe kuren nash rodnoi
Zhena tam po muzhu skuchayet,
Plachut detishki gurboi".

Zabaikayle

By the wild steppes of the Transbaikalia (English lyrics)

1
On the wild steppes of Transbaikalia,
Where people dig for gold in the mountains,
A vagrant, bemoaning his fate,
Is wandering with a bag on his back.

2
He walks through the thick taiga,
Where only a few birds sing,
He carries a tin can on his side,
His feet are strapped in dry skins.
3
He wears a worn-out shirt
And a lot of different patches.
The cap on his head is a convict’s cap
And he wears a grey convict’s uniform.

4
He escaped from prison during a dark night
Where he was imprisoned for defending the truth.
But he could not go any further
In front of him was Lake Baikal.
5
The vagrant walks to the shore
And climbs in to a fisherman's boat.
He starts to sing a sad song
Telling something about his native land.

6
"I left my wife when she was young
And left her with my small children,
Now I wander aimlessly,
God knows, whether I shall meet her again!"

7
He crosses the lake,
His mother comes to meet him.
”O my dear mother let me embrace you,
Are my father and my brother well?”
8
"Your father has been dead for a long time;
He now rests in the damp earth.
And your brother is serving his sentence,
Wearing chains, somewhere in Siberia."

9
"Let's go, let’s go, my son,
Let's go home to our house,
Where your wife misses her husband,
And all your little children are crying."

Lake Baikal

Лидия Русланова По диким степям Забайкалья

Lidia Ruslanova – Po dikim stepyam Zabailayla

“Save the Last Dance for Me” by the Drifters was a joint enterprise by the two greatest songwriting teams of the early rock era: it was written by Pomus and Shuman, and produced by Lieber and Stoller. No wonder it was a massive hit in 1960 in the US and UK. And it certainly didn't hurt having Ben E King – later most famous for ”Stand By Me” – singing lead. The Drifters had already used strings on their records, most famously on “There Goes My Baby,” the first fully-orchestrated rock hit, but not like this – the soaring, swirling violins underline the yearning in King's gravelly, sad, yet sweeping vocals.

Save the Last Dance for Me

One night, Pomus found a wedding invitation in a hatbox, and back came his most vivid memory from his wedding: watching his brother Raoul dance with his new wife while Doc, who had polio, sat in his wheelchair. His wife, Willi Burke, however, was a Broadway actress and dancer. Inspired, he stayed up all night writing the words to this song on the back of the invitation. The song gives his perspective of telling his wife to have fun dancing, but reminds her who will be taking her home and "in whose arms you're gonna be."

Willi Burke and Doc Pomus Wedding

Mort Shuman had played him a soaring Latin melody that afternoon, and he wanted the words to sound like a poem translated into English - something along the lines of Pablo Neruda. By the second verse, a hint of jealousy and vulnerability creeps in with the lyrics, "If he asks if you're all alone, can he take you home, you must tell him no." Pomus ended his night of songwriting by writing down the words that would become the title: "Save The Last Dance For Me."

Save The Last Dance For Me, single 1960

Together, Pomus and Shuman wrote the words and music to such hits as "Little Sister," "Suspicion," "Can't Get Used to Losing You," "Surrender," "Viva Las Vegas," and many more. After securing their own office in the Brill Building, the team continued to crank out hit after hit; Presley alone ended up recording more than 20 of their songs throughout his career, including items like "Mess of Blues." In addition, Pomus and Shuman also wrote songs for Fabian ("Turn Me Loose" and "I'm a Man"), Bobby Darin ("Plain Jane") and Dion, for whom they wrote "Teenager in Love."

Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus

Perhaps no group in the history of Rock is more protean than The Drifters. Founded in 1953 by the late, great Clyde McPhatter as a Rhythm’n’Blues outfit, they quickly changed personnel and style to become a bunch of Doo-Woppers, before metamorphosing once again to appeal to the Rock’n’Roll market. A complicated set of circumstances put Benjamin Nelson, aka Ben E. King, in the lead spot of The Drifters, a group that started many years earlier. All the former personnel were fired and a new lineup emerged from the old Five Crowns with King as lead tenor. Leiber and Stoller produced the session that gave us this classic beauty - complete with a full-blown orchestra, previously unheard of in rock 'n' roll.

The Drifters, Ben E King left

But there is a melancholy undertone – the girl in the song is a flirt and the singer is begging her to be faithful to him at the last. But he doesn't sound too hopeful. The tune, the vocals, the narrative, the arrangement – all are perfect. It is the perfect pop song.

Lieber and Stoller

When Rolling Stone compiled the votes of nearly 200 music-industry heavyweights to create its 2004 list of the “500 Greatest Songs Of All Time,” The Drifters’ 1960 R&B ballad “Save The Last Dance For Me” secured spot #182. In the accompanying commentary, the magazine asserted the song “made the end of the party sound like the essence of true romance.”

“Save The Last Dance For Me” was the only number-one hit for The Drifters—even “Under The Boardwalk” only reached number four—and to this day, it’s a mainstay on wedding playlists. But in the harsh reality of life off the dance floor, lyricist Pomus and his dancing bride Burke divorced about five years after “Save the Last Dance For Me” sashayed to the top of the charts. Perhaps they should have seen it coming.

Save The Last Dance For Me, lyrics

You can dance every dance with the guy who gives you the eye
Let him hold you tight

You can smile every smile for the man who held your hand
'Neath the pale moonlight

Chorus: But Don't forget who's taking you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darling, save the last dance for me

Oh I know that the music is fine like sparkling wine
Go and have your fun

Laugh and sing but while we're apart
Don't give your heart to anyone

Chorus: But Don't forget who's taking you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darling, save the last dance for me

Baby don't you know I love you so
Can't you feel it when we touch
I will never never let you go
I love you oh so much

You can dance, go and carry on
Till the night is gone and it's time to go

If he asks if you're all alone can he take you home
You must tell him no

Chorus: Cause Don't forget who's taking you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darling, save the last dance for me

Last Dance, Painted by Amanda Jackson

May the year be brighter than the one gone by;

enveloped in goodness, well being, bliss and wealth.

Sometime in the early 1970s, a thief stole Leonard Cohen's old raincoat from Marianne Ihlen's New York apartment. (Marianne Ihlen was a Norwegian woman who was the muse and girlfriend of Leonard Cohen.) God only know what happened to it, but the thief almost certainly had no idea he was stealing an object that belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, if not the Smithsonian. It was that very coat that inspired Cohen to write one of his most beloved and mysterious songs. It's written in the form of a letter, possibly to the narrator's brother, who stole his lover, Jane.

Famous Blue Raincoat

The lyric tells the story of a love triangle between the speaker, a woman named Jane, and the male addressee, who is identified only briefly as "my brother, my killer." The exact nature of these relationships however, is far from clear.

Famous Blue Raincoat

The song is deeply, almost embarrassingly, personal, an epistolary song about a wounded man who cannot help forgiving the friend. The overpowering emotion of the song inhibits another look at the lyrics, but Cohen’s autobiography immediately suggests problems with this common interpretation. Specifically, it is Cohen’s life that is being described both as the narrator and the other man. It is the friend in the song not “L. Cohen,” the narrator, who has a “famous blue raincoat.” But as the real Cohen noted in liner notes to the 1975 collection “The Best of Leonard Cohen,” the blue raincoat was his. “I had a good raincoat then, a Burberry I got in London in 1959….It hung more heroically when I took out the lining, and achieved glory when the frayed sleeves were repaired with a little leather.”

Blue Raincoat

In a 1994 BBC Radio Interview Cohen remarked: “The trouble with is that I've forgotten the actual triangle. Whether it was my own . . . of course. I always felt that there was an invisible male seducing the woman I was with; now, whether this one was incarnate or merely imaginary I don't remember. I've always had the sense that either I've been that figure in relation to another couple or there'd been a figure like that in relation to my marriage. I don't quite remember (but I did have this feeling that there was always a third party, sometimes me, sometimes another man, sometimes another woman).”

Leonard Cohen, 1970

"Famous Blue Raincoat" has captivated listeners ever since it first appeared on 1971's “Songs of Love and Hate”, though Cohen admits he's not happy with the lyrics. Ron Cornelius played guitar on this album and was Cohen's band leader for several years. Here's what he told Songfacts about this track: "We performed that song a lot of places. Typically gardens in Copenhagen, the Olympia Theater in Paris, the Vienna Opera House. We played that song a lot before it ever went to tape. We knew it was going to be big. We could see what the crowd did - you play the Royal Albert Hall, the crowd goes crazy, and you're really saying something there. If I had to pick a favorite from the album, it would probably be 'Famous Blue Raincoat.’ "

“Songs of Love and Hate”, album

The song is written in the key of a-minor. The time signature is 3/4, which is slightly uncommon in the rock and pop genre, but is used by Cohen in several other songs as well, like “Chelsea Hotel #2” or “Take This Waltz.” The tempo is fairly slow and the musical arrangement is very sparse. Cohen’s guitar is predominant and carries the song; additionally there are female background voices in the stanzas and the third bridge, and in some spots there is also a string section. The lyric itself is not written in a strict meter, but, especially during the stanzas, the speech rhythm is essentially dactylic, which fits well with a 3/4 time signature.

Bob Johnson, Leonard Cohen, Ron Cornelius at Royal Albert Hall

"It was a song I've never been satisfied with," Cohen said in 1994. "It's not that I've resisted an impressionistic approach to songwriting, but I've never felt that this one, that I really nailed the lyric. I'm ready to concede something to the mystery, but secretly I've always felt that there was something about the song that was unclear."

Leonard Cohen, 1971

Famous Blue Raincoat lyrics

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton street all through the evening
I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now
I hope you're keeping some kind of record

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

On the last time we saw you, you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
You came home without Lili Marlene
You treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody's wife
Well; I see you there with a rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake
She sends her regards

And what can I tell you, my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way
If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Well, your enemy is sleeping and his woman is free

Yes, and thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried
And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear

Sincerely,
L. Cohen

Famous Blue Raincoat