The year is 1963. The hemline on the miniskirt is just starting to rise upwards. Betty Friedan had just published The Feminine Mystique. A young woman whose hits had been It’s my Party and its sequel Judy’s Turn to Cry, came out with a new song: You Don’t Own Me.

Lesley Gore, born Lesley Sue Goldstein, was 16 and a junior in high school when she recorded her first hit: It’s my Party (and I’ll Cry if I Want to). It was produced by someone who was new to producing by the name of Quincy Jones. Jones would go on to become (among other things) one of the most influential producers and performers of the last century. Lesley would go on to record several more pop girl songs with Quincy as her producer. When she was 17 she brought him You Don’t Own Me.

Musically, this is an interesting song. The verses are all in a minor key. (Remember – a key is just the framework for the song. A minor key usually makes us think of something sad or nostalgic. The Christmas carol What Child Is This is in a minor key.) The chorus of You Don’t Own Me is in a major key. Major keys are often associated with happiness or strength.

This song is such a change from not just Lesley’s other songs but a change from the other songs being sung by women at the time. He’s So Fine, My Boyfriend’s Back, I Will Follow Him (I loved the version of this in Sister Act!) I’m Leavin’ It All Up to You, the list goes on and on. These are songs where the woman is completely subservient to the man. Now, yes, there are a lot of songs about men being hopelessly in love with women, but the men are not treated like objects by the woman.

You Don’t Own Me turns everything on its head. In 1981 I helped a friend escape from her controlling boyfriend. She had to call me in secret while he was out because he had forbidden her from even calling me. One day, she managed to make that call and asked me to come right over. We threw all of her things into a few trash bags and got in my car as quickly as we could. She was terrified that he would come back before we could get her out. This scenario plays out daily all over the country.

According to the National Coalition on Domestic Violence 20 people each minute are abused by an intimate partner. While this is carefully worded to include men and gender fluidity, most of the abused are female.  

Many people look on 1963 as the start of the Second Women’s Movement. (The First was the suffrage movement starting shortly after the Civil War and more or less ending in 1920 with the passing of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote.) Betty Freidan’s book The Feminine Mystique shook the world, beginning a decades-long fight for equal rights, equal pay, and equal protection under the law. Many think that this second wave of feminism ended in the 1980s, to be taken over by the third wave, which was then taken over by the fourth. Good heavens! It’s Feminism! Let’s not worry about which wave we’re in!

At the beginning of this was a little song, sung by a very young woman. You Don’t Own Me.

You don't own me
I'm not just one of your many toys
You don't own me
Don't say I can't go with other boys

And don't tell me what to do
Don't tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display 'cause

You don't own me
Don't try to change me in any way
You don't own me
Don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay

I don't tell you what to say
I don't tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That's all I ask of you

I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please

And don't tell me what to do
Oh, don't tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display

I don't tell you what to say
Oh, don't tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That's all I ask of you

I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free

While Lesley had other hits, this was her last one to make it into the Top 10.
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I will be playing different version of You Don’t Own Me this week on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check those out.
 
Until next time!
 

I love Broadway musicals. Sometimes, like Showboat, they can touch on some serious subjects, like racism. Othertimes, they can be uplifting, like The Sound of Music. And sometimes they can just be ridiculous bits of fun. Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, falls into that third type. There are some issues involving sexism, and infidelity in this musical that deserve a separate blog. But today I don’t feel up to anything that serious. Briefly, Kiss Me, Kate is a musical based on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. However, we also have a play within a play. We are looking at a company that is putting on a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew. We see them backstage. We see the issues that they have with each other. Our two leads are a divorced couple. She is on the verge of marrying someone else. Of course, by the end, they will be together again, after they have dealt with some mistaken gambling debts and mobsters. (Trust me, this is a comedy!)

But for right now, I give you I Hate Men.

This is sung by Katherine in one of The Taming of the Shrew sections.
​
I hate men
I can’t abide them even now and then
Then ever marry one of them, I’d rest a virgin rather,
For husbands are a boring lot and only give you bother
Of course, I’m awfully glad that mother had to marry father,
Still, I hate men.
 
Of all the types of men I’ve met within our democracy
I hate the most the athlete with his manner bold and brassy
He may have hair upon his chest, but sister, so has Lassie
Oh, I hate men!
 
If thou shouldst wed a businessman, be wary, oh be wary
He’ll tell you he’s detained in town on business necessary
The business is the business that he gives his secretary!
Oh, I hate men!
 
I hate men!
Though roosters they, I will not play the hen
If you espouse an older man through girlish optimism
He’ll always stay at home and night and make no criticism
Though you may call it love, the doctors call is rheumatism
Oh, I hate men!
 
Of all I’ve read, alone in bed, from A to Zed about ‘em
Since love is blind, then from the mind, all womankind should rout ‘em
But, ladies, you must answer to, what would we do without ‘em?
Still I hate men!
 
There are other verses, but I think you get the idea. Every company adds some verses or takes some away. Vocally, there is not much to the song, but it is so much fun to perform.
 
Ages and ages ago, I was playing Kate in a community theatre production. I got to storm about the set, yelling, throwing things, hitting high Cs. It was a blast. I Hate Men was a highlight of the evening. One evening, there was a woman in the audience who had just signed her divorce papers that afternoon. She and some friends had gone out for dinner. She had had quite a bit to drink before they came to the show. As I was singing, I Hate Men, she stood up on her seat and shouted: “You tell ‘em, sister!  Men are rats!” before her laughing friends could pull her back down. The joys of live theatre.
 
Have you ever seen Kiss Me, Kate? What about its source – The Taming of the Shrew? Do you have a performance story you’d be willing to share? Let me know in the comments below. I’ll be posting this and some of the other songs from Kiss Me, Kate this week on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check those out.
 
Until next time!
 

I was going to one of our local hospitals every Wednesday morning to volunteer. (In the time BC – Before Coronavirus) But not volunteering way most people would think of. This particular hospital has a grand piano in one of its lobbies. I was going there to play the piano and sing for four hours once a week. It was so much fun and so rewarding.

When I was growing up, I was a lonely child. My brother was nine years older than I, and there were no other kids in my neighborhood. My best friend lived blocks away. I spent a lot of time alone. The piano was my biggest solace. I would sit at the piano, and play and sing for hours. Mostly Broadway, because that’s what we had the most music for. We had a canary named Hansel. He and I sang some glorious duets.

So, playing and singing for hours is something that I have always done. What was new about singing at the hospital was how softly I had to sing. I have a big voice, and all of my training has been to utilize that and make it even bigger. But, at the hospital, I was background music, not the main attraction. People needed to be able to hear themselves over me. So, I had to develop new ways of changing the dynamics of a song. Oh, and high notes were simply not an option.

I turned to what is known as the Great American Songbook, which in spite of the name, is not a specific songbook. Wikipedia defines the Great American Songbook as: the canon of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century. Is there a list? No, there is not. In fact, there is a lot of debate on which songs are in the Songbook. I think most would include the song Fever.

I remember seeing Peggy Lee sing Fever on a wide variety of variety shows throughout the 1960s. I thought this song, and Peggy Lee, were so very sexy. I sing Fever at the hospital every week. This is a part of the same sense of humor that had me singing My Cup Runneth Over for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union years ago. (People at the hospital seem to appreciate my sense of humor more than the WCTU did.)

I was surprised to find out that Peggy Lee was not the originator of Fever. She was singing a song that had been a hit in 1956 for a singer named Little Willie John. It has saxophones and guitars along with drums and finger snaps. It’s not bad.

You never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a feelin’ that's so hard to bear

(Chorus)
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the mornin'
Fever all through the night

Listen to me, baby
Hear ev'ry word I say
No one could love you the way I do
'Cause they don't know how to love you my way (To Chorus)

Bless my soul, I love you
Take this heart away
Take these arms I'll never use
An' just believe in what my lips have to say (To Chorus)

Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
My eyes light up when you call my name
'Cause I know you're gonna treat me right (To Chorus)
 
If you are familiar with Ms Lee’s version, most of these lyrics do not look familiar. That’s because she wrote new ones. She also wrote some lyrics for the 1955 movie Lady and the Tramp. Most notably the song He’s a Tramp, which she sang as Peg the dog. (She also provided the voices of Darling, and the two Siamese cats.)
Here are Peggy Lee’s lyrics:
​
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
 
(Chorus)
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the mornin'
Fever all through the night
 
Sun lights up the day-time
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
'Cause I know you're gonna treat me right (To Chorus)
 
Everybody's got the fever
That is somethin' you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long time ago
 
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said, "Julie baby you're my flame"
Thou givest fever when we kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever I'm on fire
Fever yea I burn forsooth
 
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said "Daddy oh don't you dare"
"He gives me fever with his kisses"
"Fever when he holds me tight"
"Fever, I'm his missus"
"Daddy won't you treat him right?"
 
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade

We give you fever when we kiss you
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
 
Quite a few differences here. This became Peggy Lee’s signature song, and these are the lyrics most often done. Peggy also dramatically changed the accompaniment. Gone were the saxophones and guitars. Her version had stand-up bass, drums and finger snaps. Nothing else. This stripped-down instrumentation puts all of the attention on the rhythm and the singer. There are three key changes that happen in the bass first, but the singer must have a very good sense of pitch to pull them off well. (Sadly, not all singers have a good sense of pitch.)
 
I love her Romeo and Juliet verse. Thou giveth fever, strikes me as funny.
 
However.
 
There is the Pocahontas verse. Sigh. I leave that one out. It is a relic of a hopefully bygone era. We do not need to continue that myth. The true story of Pocahontas is a sad one. She was somewhere between 10 and 13 when she met the English colonists in 1608. We only have the story of her saving John Smith from him, bringing it up 8 years after the event allegedly took place. What we do know for certain was that after helping the colonists, she was taken captive by them during the First Anglo-Powhatan War of 1609. During the year that she was a prisoner, she was converted to Christianity and given the name Rebecca. She married an Englishman named John Rolfe and went with him to England. There she was a curiosity as the “civilized savage.” She died in 1617 at roughly the age of 21, leaving behind her husband and a young son. No passionate love story with John Smith. Nothing like the Disney cartoon, either. I just skip that verse.
 
Since Ms Lee’s time, Fever has been done by many other artists, including Madonna, Bette Midler and Beyonce. What do you think? Whose version of the song do you like best? What should I do about that troublesome verse? Let me know what you think in the comments below. I’ll be posting some versions of Fever on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check those out.
 
Until next time!

There is an idea out in the world called La mort de l’auteur. Not to be confused with La mort d’arthur. Both are French. The first translates to the death of the author, while the second is the famous Thomas Mallory work The Death of Arthur. La mort d’arthur is the basis for the wonderful stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. We are not talking about that one today. We are going to talk about the death of the author. Sort of. More like La mort du compositeur. Death of the composer.

Like much of the world, I have been living in quarantine for the past few weeks. The first week, my days were brightened by seeing some wonderful operas on metopera.org. I saw Carmen, La Boheme, La Traviata, Il Trovatore, and several others, all favorites of mine. I went to the Met website the second week to see what was on and found Tristan und Isolde, a Wagnerian opera. I have seen Wagernian operas in the past. I’ve even sung a little Wagner. And there are some meltingly beautiful melodies in Wagner’s operas.

But.

When Wagner built Bayreuth (his festival concert hall outside the German city of Bayreuth) he put in two proscenium arches. Now, in most theaters, there is one proscenium arch. It is the square that frames the stage. Wagner wanted two to create an extra layer of effects and distance from the audience, trying for a dreamlike experience. (Of course, with operas running over 4 hours, some audience members’ dreamlike experience might be more sleeplike than others!)

He also started turning out the house lights in the auditorium. He wanted to once again enhance the dream quality. And he wanted the focus to be on his opera, not what jewels the lady in the next box was wearing, or the new gown that other lady had on.

But.

Richard Wagner (Ree-card Vahg-ner) was born in 1813 in Leipzig, Germany, in, oddly enough, the Jewish Quarter of that city. (He was baptized in one of the Lutheran churches in Leipzig.) Six months after greeting their ninth child, Wagner’s father died of typhus. His mother married not long after, and the new family – now named Geyer – moved to Dresden. Until he was 14, Richard thought that Herr Geyer was his birth father. Despite this confusion, they remained close throughout Geyer’s life.

Wagner became one of the Romantic era’s greatest composers. The stereotypical opera singer – a Rubenesque woman wearing a horned helmet with long blond braids falling in front of her metal breastplate – is taken from Wagnerian opera. In truth, most Wagnerian singers do need to be large, in height and tend to be a little plumper. But do not take that for being out of shape. Singing in any opera requires great stamina. Singing in a Wagnerian opera is an Olympic event.

But.

In 1850, Wagner wrote an essay called Judaism in Music. In this, (I have lifted this next bit straight out of Wikipedia. I cannot even type these words myself without feeling nauseous.) “Wagner claims that the work was written to:
explain to ourselves the involuntary repellence possessed for us by the nature and personality of the Jews, so as to vindicate that instinctive dislike which we plainly recognize as stronger and more overpowering than our conscious zeal to rid ourselves thereof.

Wagner holds that Jews are unable to speak European languages properly and that Jewish speech took the character of an "intolerably jumbled blabber", a "creaking, squeaking, buzzing snuffle", incapable of expressing true passion. This, he says, debars them from any possibility of creating song or music. He goes on for 8278 words in this general vein. Far, far too long.

Sadly, in 1850, this was nothing new. But, after his death in 1883, his work was read by someone who took this antisemitism to a whole new level. While Wagner did not live to meet Adolph Hitler, his widow did. And his son and daughter-in-law became great buddies with Hitler. Hitler was a fan.

I grew up in a small town in West Virginia. The closest synagogue was over an hour away. I did not know or understand that antisemitism was still a thing. I thought that WWII had taken care of that. Even living in Germany for 7 years, I didn’t see any antisemitism there.

When we moved to Albuquerque, my husband had some young airmen serving under him. (Bill was in the Air Force for 21 years.) There were three that were particularly difficult. They had gotten in with a bad crowd. A neo-Nazi-KKK crowd. They got caught burning crosses on the lawns of African Americans and Jews. The young men were jailed and booted out of the military.

This brings me back to La mort de l’auteur – the death of the author. In 1967 Roland Barthes printed an essay with this title. He was not advocating for the death of any particular author. He was advocating for a change in how we interpret a novel or a play. Before this, to understand a play it was felt that we needed to understand the playwright’s background, the history of his subjects. An example would be to say that without knowing J.R.R.Tolkien’s history, what his experiences were regarding WWI, his dislike for the Industrial Revolution, we cannot really appreciate The Hobbit. Which simply is not true. Knowing those things can add to your enjoyment of the story, but they are not essential. In this newer way of looking at an art, the idea is that once the author has written their novel, interpretation is left to the reader to take what they will.

Sometimes we need to think before we enjoy an art form. I used to be a huge Johnny Depp fan. I thought that he was one of the great actors of our age. And, for a time, I still think he was. Past tense. Benny and Joon, Ed Wood, Pirates of the Caribbean, (the first one!) and so many others, were works of sheer genius. Then things went downhill. I don’t watch movies that have him in them anymore. There are stores where I do not spend my money because I disagree with their policies – either political or in how they treat their workers.

I had for years believed that Wagner had nothing to do with Hitler’s fascination with his music. And that is true. But I have been doing some reading this past year and found out that his widow and children did have a lot to do with that. And many of their ideas were formed by Richard himself with his writings.

I realized earlier this week that I cannot listen to a Wagnerian opera right now. Perhaps another time I will be able to. Just like I may someday be able to enjoy some of Johnny Depp’s earlier work. (Admittedly, huge difference there – alcoholic, alleged wife-beater as opposed to anti-Semite whose works inspired one of the most murderous tyrants the world has ever seen.)

I guess I am not quite ready for le mort du compositeur. At least not for this compositeur.
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What do you think? Should we still be enjoying Wagner’s music? There is a lot of problematic music out there if we are going to start looking at the lives of the (mostly) men who were writing it. How should we address this problem? Let me know what you think in the comments below. I’ll be playing some music that wasn’t written by Wagner this week on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check them out.
 
Until next time!