Sound Beat

Hughes Mearns wrote “Antigonish” in 1910. Composers Harold Adamson and Bernard Hanighen added the melody to the poem and crafted the song “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There” in 1939...and picked up songwriting credits for doing so. In July of that year, Glenn Miller, his orchestra, and Tex Beneke released this record on the Bluebird label.

The poem’s eerie lyrics have been used in films, tv, books and other songs, and were based on reports of a haunted house in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

This episode was co-written by Hasmik Djoulakian (Joo-lock-ee-en), part of the Sound Beat Class Partnership.Photo credit: https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/142/356275548_063f0133fd_z.jpg?zz=1

There are a couple different definitions for a blue moon, both of them kind of rare, and neither of them have to do with color of any sort. You’re on the Sound Beat.

So the most common definition of a blue moon is a second full moon in a month. As the moon orbits around the Earth every 29 days or so, those extra days in a month accumulate. As such, every 2 or 3 years we get an extra full moon slipping into a calendar month. There’s also another definition for a “seasonal” Blue Moon: the third of four full moons in one season. And believe it or not, this definition predates the other.

You’ve been listening to the incomparable Mel Torme backed up by Pete Rugolo and his orchestra on a Capitol 78 from 1949. Blue Moon was never a rarity when Mel sang: indeed, it was one of his signature songs.

.

1940 was a banner year for Alfred Hitchcock. Two of his films Foreign Correspondent and Rebecca were nominated for a total of 17(!) Academy Awards. For the latter, he was nominated for best director, though he would lose to John Ford and The Grapes of Wrath. As a matter of fact, Hitchcock would be nominated in the category 5 times over his career but would never take home a statue.

Of his 144 compositions, Franz Waxman called Rebecca his favorite. He was invited to arrange the piece for the Standard Symphony hour, a popular radio show on the NBC radio network. The arranged suite was broadcast, in the words of production manager Ray Klune “May 9^th at 8:30 PM, over the entire Pacific Northwest Radio Network as far East as but not including Chicago.”

Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address was dedicated to preventing a Civil War. Four years later as that war dwindled, Lincoln spoke not of triumph, but of the nation’s division. He wondered aloud if the staggering loss of American lives were a part of a divine retribution for the ills of slavery.