This album is typical of Ella's concert repertoire in the mid 50's, singing swing standards, and songs referencing her recent 'Songbook' series, in this case, the Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart songbooks.
Babes in Arms is a 1937 musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Rodgers and Hart.
The remaster also contained two additional tracks from the studio session, but not included on the original vinyl release - 'Nobody's Heart' (Rodgers and Hart) as track 13 and 'Don't Ever Leave Me' (Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern) as track 14.
Reference to the Beaux-Arts Ball is made in the verse of the popular Rodgers and Hart song "The Lady Is A Tramp" from Babes in Arms (1937).
Set ten years after the events depicted in Wilson's much better known The Boy Friend, it is a pastiche of 1930s musicals (in particular those of Cole Porter) rather than the "Roaring Twenties" shows (mostly early Rodgers and Hart) that inspired the earlier show.
Of the recordings chosen for the album, the only remake of a previous recording by Sinatra himself is the medley of Harold Arlen's and Ira Gershwin's "The Gal that Got Away" with Rodgers and Hart's "It Never Entered My Mind".
In 1927, Smith toured England, performing with the Blue Skies Theater Company singing tunes such as "Manhattan" by Rodgers and Hart and songs by Gershwin, when he was suddenly replaced by a new all-girl singing trio, the Hamilton Sisters & Fordyce.
Billy Hart | Richard Rodgers | Mickey Hart | Gary Hart | Hart to Hart | Rodgers and Hammerstein | Melissa Joan Hart | Lorenz Hart | Moss Hart | White Hart Lane | Paul Rodgers | Rodgers and Hart | Aaron Rodgers | Bret Hart | Thomas Hart Benton | Miranda Hart | John Rodgers | Adam Hart-Davis | Hawker Hart | Hart Crane | Carey Hart | William Hart | Jimmy Hart | Hart House | Angie Hart | Alvin Youngblood Hart | Will Cullen Hart | Thomas Hart Benton (painter) | Stu Hart | Nancy Hart |
Robert Waltrip "Bobby" Short (September 15, 1924 – March 21, 2005) was an American cabaret singer and pianist, best known for his interpretations of songs by popular composers of the first half of the 20th century such as Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, Noël Coward and George and Ira Gershwin.
Nevertheless, American operetta largely gave way, by the end of World War I, to musicals, such as the Princess Theatre musicals, and revues, followed by the musicals of Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and others.
Joan Morris and William Bolcom recorded it for their 1981 LP, "The Rodgers and Hart Album," and later included the track on "The Rodgers and Hart CD."
During the filming, Cohan would sarcastically refer to Rodgers and Hart as "Gilbert and Sullivan".