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Sunday, August 06, 2006

Sunday Morning Sinatra - “Ol’ Man River”

In 1946 Richard Whorf directed a film called Till the Clouds Roll By, a musical biopic of the great American popular composer Jerome Kern, who was among the founders of the Broadway musical idiom, and who added more than seven hundred songs to the American songbook. Kern co-wrote Show Boat with Oscar Hammerstein, and that remains his most lasting impression. But he was also the composer behind some of Frank Sinatra’s best tunes, including “Pick Yourself Up”, “I Won’t Dance”, “The Way You Look Tonight”, and “Ol’ Man River”. That last, of course, comes from Show Boat, from way back in 1927.

But no one has ever performed it so perfectly as Sinatra, thirty-two years old, in Whorf’s 1946 tribute. It ends the film, and here it is.

Posted on August 6, 2006 06:29 AM. Permalink | E-mail This