Stuck on Show Tunes

All this time spent with Sirius radio and the Broadway channel has got me stuck on show tunes. I can't get them out of my head.

I am a Readers' Digest baby--I grew up in a house filled with Readers' Digest books, the condensed ones my mother read from cover to faux-leather-bound cover. We received a shipment every month. It was through this book club that my mother ordered a song book full of all the great show tunes from Broadway and from the movies. We kept it open at the piano, so it was always available to me when I wanted to sit down and plunk out a few tunes.

I discovered George and Ira Gershwin:

There's a somebody I'm longing to see...I hope that he turns out to be ...Someone who'll watch over me

I fell in love with the tunes of Show Boat (hooray for Kern and Hammerstein--oh, and the gorgeous Howard Keel) :

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly...I gotta love one man 'til I die...So I can't help lovin' that man of mine.

I played Cole Porter:

Time marches on and soon it's plain...You've won my heart and I've lost my brain...It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely.

There was Body and Soul, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, S'Wonderful, Blue Skies, Begin the Beguine, Stardust, and one of my favorites:

You're the cream in my coffee...you're the salt in my stew...you will always be my necessity...I'd be lost without you.

Ah, now that I have discovered show tunes on the radio, it's all coming back to me--how I spent hours as a kid playing through that old book, dog-earring the pages with my favorite tunes and mooning over the lyrics and the schmaltzy arrangements. Other kids were out at parties and making out with boys, but I sat happily on the piano bench and pretended to be accompanying Fred Astaire--Someday when I'm feeling low, and the world is cold, I will feel a glow just thinking of you, and the way you look to night. What a dork.

This old wonderful book is sold used on Amazon. I think I'll order one and play me a tune or two.