Today is National Old Stuff Day, and tomorrow is I Want You to Be Happy Day, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to pull an old song from the last roaring Twenties: I Want to Be Happy from the musical No, No, Nanette.
I’m a very ordinary man
Trying to work out life’s happy plan
Doing unto others as I’d like to have them doing unto me.
When I find a very lonely soul
Soon be-kind becomes my only goal
I feel so much better when I tell them my philosophy.
I want to be happy,
But I won’t be happy,
Till I make you happy, too.
Life’s really worth living,
When we are mirth giving.
Why can’t I give some to you?
When skies are grey, and you say you are blue
I’ll send the sun shining through.
I want to be happy,
But I won’t be happy,
Till I make you happy, too.
The show is called frothy, and sounds pretty ridiculous, no surprise given how Broadway musicals were in 1924; lots of songs threaded together with little to no plot. Two of the songs were considered hits: I Want to Be Happy, and Tea for Two.
The music was written by Vincent Youmans, who had a very short career, dying at the age of 47 from tuberculosis in 1946. He only published 100 songs. But of those 100, 18 are considered standards, putting him at a very high percentage of hits.
His lyricist for this show, Irving Caesar, became one of the founding members of the Songwriters Guild of America. He lived to the ripe old age of 101! One of his hits from 1929, an adaptation of the Austrian tango, Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo, became a hit again in 1985 for David Lee Roth as I’m Just a Gigolo.
Are you feeling nostalgic today? How’s your happiness-factor? Let me know in the comments below. I’ll be posting various versions of I Want to Be Happy and maybe a few other Vincent Youmans’s songs on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check them out.
Until next time!
I’m a very ordinary man
Trying to work out life’s happy plan
Doing unto others as I’d like to have them doing unto me.
When I find a very lonely soul
Soon be-kind becomes my only goal
I feel so much better when I tell them my philosophy.
I want to be happy,
But I won’t be happy,
Till I make you happy, too.
Life’s really worth living,
When we are mirth giving.
Why can’t I give some to you?
When skies are grey, and you say you are blue
I’ll send the sun shining through.
I want to be happy,
But I won’t be happy,
Till I make you happy, too.
The show is called frothy, and sounds pretty ridiculous, no surprise given how Broadway musicals were in 1924; lots of songs threaded together with little to no plot. Two of the songs were considered hits: I Want to Be Happy, and Tea for Two.
The music was written by Vincent Youmans, who had a very short career, dying at the age of 47 from tuberculosis in 1946. He only published 100 songs. But of those 100, 18 are considered standards, putting him at a very high percentage of hits.
His lyricist for this show, Irving Caesar, became one of the founding members of the Songwriters Guild of America. He lived to the ripe old age of 101! One of his hits from 1929, an adaptation of the Austrian tango, Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo, became a hit again in 1985 for David Lee Roth as I’m Just a Gigolo.
Are you feeling nostalgic today? How’s your happiness-factor? Let me know in the comments below. I’ll be posting various versions of I Want to Be Happy and maybe a few other Vincent Youmans’s songs on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check them out.
Until next time!
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