Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Citation bot (talk | contribs) at 19:19, 28 April 2020 (Alter: url. Removed parameters. | You can use this bot yourself. Report bugs here. | Activated by Ost316 | Category:Articles for deletion | via #UCB_Category). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

It has been suggested that this article be merged into Peter DeRose. (Discuss) Proposed since July 2019.

This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "On a Little Street in Singapore" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

"On a Little Street in Singapore" is a jazz song written by Peter DeRose and Billy Hill. Though now obscure, it had some measure of popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, marked by a number of high-profile performances. Artists to cover the song included Frank Sinatra with Harry James, Dave Brubeck & Paul Desmond, Glenn Miller, Bert Kaempfert, Jimmy Dorsey and most recently Bob Dylan. Manhattan Transfer covered it again in 1978. The song features a haunting, lazy hook in a minor key, with numerous diminished chords. The overall impression is both languid and wistful.

The music writer Will Friedwald places the song in a "long list of intercultural, interracial romances-that-can-never-be" likening the theme of the song to the "tragic mulatto syndrome" as identified by the film critic Donald Bogle. Friedwald categorises the song in this context with other Orientalist compositions such as "Poor Butterfly" and "Japanese Mammy".

Patrick Burke discussed Charlie Shavers May 1940 recording of the song in his 2008 book Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street writing that Shavers "evokes an exotic Orientalist atmosphere through the combination of an unusual melodic mode and a repeated figure in the bass and drums".

"On a Little Street in Singapore" was one of the earliest recordings made by Frank Sinatra. It was recorded at a session with the Harry James Orchestra on 13 October 1939 at the same time as "Who Told You That I Cared?". It was later issued as a 78 rpm single. Sinatra's version of the song was the first Sinatra recording that the future Frank Sinatra discographer Vito Marino heard. Will Friedwald, in his 1995 book Sinatra! the Song is You: A Singer's Art wrote that the recording finds Sinatra and James "making like two American sailors in a Far East opium den". Friedwald feels that Sinatra "plays it cautiously" on the song, staying close to the melody and beat, perhaps intimidated by the bolero rhythm of the song.

Reviewing Bob Dylan's album Fallen Angels which included the song, Michael Hann wrote in The Guardian that "On a Little Street in Singapore" was a "throwaway number" whose "strength is all in the melody" and lacked the "romantic profundity" of the other songs on the album.

References

1. ^ Will Friedwald (1995). Sinatra! the Song is You: A Singer's Art. Simon and Schuster. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-684-19368-7.
2. Patrick Burke (August 2008). Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street. University of Chicago Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-226-08071-0.
3. John Frayn Turner (2004). Frank Sinatra. Taylor Trade Publications. p. 22. ISBN 978-1-58979-145-9.
4. Put Your Dreams Away: A Frank Sinatra Discography. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2000. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-313-31055-3.
5. https://sinatrafamily.com/single-list/
6. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. (20 November 1965). Billboard. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. p. 117. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
7. Michael Hann (18 May 2016). The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/may/18/bob-dylan-new-album-fallen-angels-sinatra-fitzgerald-holiday. Retrieved 28 April 2020. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

This article about a jazz standard or composition written in the 1930s is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Articles to be merged from July 2019
• Articles lacking sources from October 2008
• Jazz compositions
• Songs written by Billy Hill (songwriter)
• Songs with music by Peter DeRose
• 1930s jazz composition stubs