From the Back Room: the Music of Kay Swift

The name of composer Kay Swift is well known; her works, except for a few songs, less so.

Swift (1897-1993) achieved a certain level of fame relatively early on with a number of songs that continue to maintain their appeal.

But at the same time she was writing those songs with her husband - financier and amateur lyricist Paul Warburg ("Paul James") - she was engaged in an intense relationship with George Gershwin that would define a good part of her life, even after Gershwin's 1937 death.

In this post, we'll examine the songs that made Swift famous, along with a few others that she wrote over the years, her music for the stage, and other miscellaneous works - encompassing all the music associated with her that I could locate.

The discussion below is separated into her early songs, the Mark 56 LP set from 1975 with much of her concert music, her score for the 1952 Broadway show Paris '90, and her work preparing Gershwin manuscripts into songs for the 1947 film The Shocking Miss Pilgrim. There are download links in each section.

The Songs

Swift was classically trained - her composition teacher was Charles Martin Loeffler. But she had an interest in popular music, which grew after 1925, when she met Gershwin. In 1929, she and her husband contributed perhaps Swift's best and best-known song to The Little Show, primarily by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, but also with other songs such as "Moanin' Low" by Dietz and Ralph Rainger. Both "Moanin' Low" and Swift's "Can't We Be Friends?" were introduced by Libby Holman. That singer's commercial recording is the first selection in this set. Also included is Bing Crosby's version from the same time.

Libby Holman in the "Moanin' Low" scene of The Little Show

Swift and Warburg then provided all the songs for the 1930 musical Fine and Dandy, a showcase for vaudevillian Joe Cook. (This was the first score for a Broadway musical by a woman.) "Fine and Dandy," introduced by Cook and Alice Boulden, is another Swift song that has become a standard. A second song from that show that has achieved some currency is "Can This Be Love?" sung by Boulden in the original production.

Rehearsing Fine and Dandy: Joe Cook, Dave Chasen,
Kay Swift, James Warburg

For this collection, we have the contemporary recordings of the two songs by Victor Arden and Phil Ohman and Their Orchestra, with vocals by Frank Luther.

FYI - there is a Fine and Dandy studio recording from about 20 years ago, with a somewhat revised book. More information here.

In 1933, Kay collaborated with Edward Heyman on a good song, "A Moonlight Memory," here in a version from Freddy Martin with a vocal by Elmer Feldkamp.

The following year, she was commissioned to write the score for a George Balanchine work for the New York City Ballet. The music for Alma Mater is covered in the next section.

Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray in Never a Dull Moment

In 1939, Swift became Director of Light Music for the World's Fair. There she met a cowboy named Faye Hubbard, married him and wrote a book about her experiences at their Oregon ranch called Who Could Ask for Anything More? This then became the 1950 film Never a Dull Moment, with Irene Dunne as Kay and Fred MacMurray as her husband. Swift wrote a few songs for the film, one of which, "Once You Find Your Guy," was recorded by Margaret Whiting, among others.

LINK to the Songs

The Mark 56 Album

In 1975 the Mark 56 label issued a two-record set, Fine and Dandy: the Music of Kay Swift, with a comprehensive overview of her career, including much biographical information, included in the scans.

Louise Carlyle sang several of the songs covered above, plus "Up Among the Chimney Pots" from the failed Nine-Fifteen Revue of 1930.

Scene from the Alma Mater ballet

The second side contained "Three Dances from the Alma Mater Ballet" for small ensemble. This was the work she wrote for George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet. That side also contains a Theme and Variations for Cello and Piano, with cellist Marie Rosanoff and Swift herself in the piano part.

Louise Carlyle

Finally, there is the song cycle, "Reaching for the Brass Ring," written by Swift for her grandchildren and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Alexander Hilsberg at a 1953 children's concert. The soprano then and for this set was Louise Carlyle. She is accompanied in the recording by an orchestra under Robert Russell Bennett. A few additional songs are performed by Swift herself.

LINK to Mark 56 album

Paris '90

Swift wrote both words and music for Cornelia Otis Skinner's one-woman show Paris '90, which ran on Broadway for three months in 1952. The show was a dramatization of the lives of varied Parisian women, as portrayed in the paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Columbia issued an LP capturing the score. Swift's songs were orchestrated by Russell Bennett.

Cornelia Otis Skinner as a laundress

LINK to Paris '90 LP

The Shocking Miss Pilgrim

Swift devoted herself throughout her life to preserving the music of George Gershwin. She worked closely with Ira Gershwin to prepare unpublished songs from the Gershwin catalog to form the score of the 1947 film musical The Shocking Miss Pilgrim. The stars were Betty Grable and Dick Haymes.

Betty Grable and Dick Haymes

The results were uneven, although to my mind the soundtrack does contain at least two fine songs - "Changing My Tune" and "For You, for Me, for Evermore."

The download includes all the songs from the soundtrack, the two commercial recordings that Haymes made with Judy Garland, and a particularly good version of "Changing My Tune" from Mel Tormé and Artie Shaw's orchestra.

LINK to songs from The Shocking Miss Pilgrim

Kay Swift and George Gershwin

Libby Holman

It's no exaggeration to say that Libby Holman led a wild life. On Broadway at an early age, she became famous as a torch singer, introducing such songs as Moanin' Low, Can't We Be Friends and Something to Remember You By in her throaty contralto.

Early Libby

Later Libby

Pursued by lovers of both sexes, Holman married Smith Reynolds, the tobacco heir. Reynolds ended up dead after a wild party in 1932, shot through the head. Holman was charged with murder, although the charges were dropped. She later married actor Ralph Holmes, who committed suicide.

Holman's notoriety has faded from the days when movies were based on her misadventures (Reckless and Written on the Wind), but you can still find tales about her drinking and drub abuse, exhibitionism, hiring a stripper for her son's bithday party when he was six, and so on.

Despite the alleged excesses, she continued working and occasionally making records well into the 1950s. And although she achieved fame as a sultry pop singer, she re-emerged in 1942 as one of the early cabaret folk singers, in the company of Josh White, who has appeared on this blog before. From that point on, her sporadic records were a combination of blues, folk material and political material.

This particular record, on the small MB label, was issued in 1954 in conjunction with her one-woman Broadway show, Blues, Ballads and Sin Songs (Holman was not above trading on her own reputation, apparently). The cover is by the fairly well-known commercial artist Fred Koester, who also designed the similar theater program (below). I have no idea why he has depicted Holman as an ascending spirit wearing way too much makeup.

Holman was a commanding presence; unfortunately, she did not have the same command of singing. What we hear here is often out of tune and her approach to such material as Strange Fruit and the House of the Rising Sun is bombastic. There was nothing subtle about Holman, in life or in art. She committed suicide in 1971.