“You remember that day?”
“I do. What the heck was going on?”
“It was the day John Kennedy was killed.”
The other thing I remember is seeing Dorothy in a flat, black and white checkered farm dress sing a song about a rainbow next to a furry dog with an active tail. There was something about the girl. Something in her eyes. Something in the waver and power of her voice that drew me very close to our tiny television set. That voice would haunt me for the rest of my life.
And then, as I got older, I also fell in love with the song. I grew to respect composing, and as I picked up my guitar in my teens, I fancied myself a great folk songstress. Joan Baez, Grace Slick, and Elton John all rolled into one. I would write songs and force my friends at gun point to sing them with me.
Luckily, I still have cassettes with those life changing mini concerts preserved for posterity.
My posterity, that is.
And as I was reminded by one of the great writers of pop songs in my personal life, and seeing as how “Over the Rainbow” is constantly voted the number one song in America, I thought this post was relevant. Consider this:
““Over the Rainbow” went on to win the Academy Award for Best Song, and it shared an informally tabulated ranking in the days before “charts” with the unbearably opaque “Deep Purple” as the most popular song of 1939. “Over the Rainbow” topped other impressive songs that year like “Jeepers Creepers”, “And the Angels Sing” and “Stairway to the Stars.” Even though it closes out the 1930s, “Over the Rainbow” is also the last song of the Depression. It bookends “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” with its existential yearning and dreams of a better life, sentiments that were soon swept away by the obstreperous harmonies of the swing era and the patriotic ballads and bromides of World War II.”
There’s something timeless in these lyrics. Something that goes on forever. Something about the song that breathes, and gives hope, and yet, in Arlen’s fabulous brain, there’s a melancholy. A yearning that stretches beyond the eyes of a little girl, and reaches down deep inside every one within earshot that there’s something better….just right over there.
An amazing feat for one tiny song that almost didn’t happen at all. Mayer was certainly not happy about having one of his MGM stars singing in a barnyard.
Moron.
And then there’s the singer who made it famous. As she said in an interview in 1969:
“Rainbow’ has always been my song. I get emotional—one way or the other—about every song I sing. But maybe I get more emotional about ‘Rainbow.’ I never shed any phony tears about it. Everybody has songs that make them cry. That’s my sad song.”
I think that’s absolutely true. There’s something about connecting with a piece of music and owning it. Not in an egomaniacal way. but a factual one. It’s like listening to something and literally feeling it hit you somewhere and settle and knock you off your center of gravity. You *must* hear it again. And every time you do, the same thing happens. You want to share this with everyone you know. Everyone you meet. You have a goal in your life to change people with this song.
It’s the same for a singer.
When we get something that resonates in us, we need to give it away. And it becomes less about performing it, and more about sharing it. That’s when the great ownership of music comes in.
But let’s face, it’s not only about a legendary singer, and the luck of the draw seeing how she was presented with “Rainbow” itself, but it’s about the gift of the song as a whole. And....the composers of the material. Because really, without them, we’d have one less wish in the world for things to get better. And I’d have one less memory.