Saturday 16 June 2007

Two invitations

The great Nellie Lutcher, singer and pianist, has died aged 94. I had what we quaintly used to call a “record” (black disk, with a hole in the centre) of Fine Brown Frame, and on the flip side was her very best, Hurry On Down:
I love you, you love me.
A-hurry through the alley
So the neighbours don't see
..you.
Hurry on down to my house, honey,

Ain't nobody home but me. Oooh.

That was made in 1947, then four years later Rosemary Clooney had a big hit with a song on a very similar theme, Come on-a My House:

Come on-a my house, my house, I'm-a gonna give-a you candy
Come on-a my house, my house, I'm-a gonna give-a you
Apple, anna plum, anna pomegranate too, eh
Come on-a my house, my house a come on
Come on-a my house, my house a come on
Come on-a my house, my house, I'm-a gonna give you EVERYTHING
.

This was from an off-Broadway musical called The Son, by the prolific writer William Saroyan, who was of Armenian descent, and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian, (who later, as "David Seville", created The Chipmunks). Saroyan married the seventeen-years-old Carol Marcus; they had two children, Aram and Lucy; when Carol revealed that she was Jewish and illegitimate, Saroyan divorced. They remarried and divorced again. Aram became a poet, who published a book about his father, and Lucy became an actress. Carol Marcus later married the actor Walter Matthau.

So there.

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