My Funny Valentine (1937)

Rodgers/Hart

But don't change a hair for me

Not if you care for me

Stay, little Valentine stay

With Valentine's Day around the corner, and a new bio-pic of Lorenz Hart now out, let's remember Lorenz Hart, who never found love in his own life although he wrote about it so well. Together with his musical partner, Richard Rogers, they wrote over 500 songs together, until Hart's death at age 48. Hart was very self-conscious and insecure about his looks: he was under five feet tall with outsized, facial features and ears. He was also habitually late and alcoholic, which led Richard Rogers to select another lyricist (Oscar Hammerstein) to write the lyrics for Oklahoma!  The 2026 bio-pic Blue Moon, with Ethan Hawke as Hart, focuses on the later part of Hart's life, when he is unemployable and drowning in both drink and sorrow. Sad as his life was, his collaborations with Rogers produced some of the loveliest music of the era. Hart's lyrics, always clever and poetic, often contain a hint of sadness in them. 

VERSE

Behold the way our fine-feathered friend
His virtue doth parade.
Thou knowest not, my dim-witted friend
The picture thou hast made.

Thy vacant brow and thy tousled hair
Conceal thy good intent.
Thou noble, upright, truthful sincere,
And slightly dopey gent - your're --

CHORUS

My funny Valentine

Sweet comic Valentine

You make me smile with my heart

Your looks are laughable

Unphotographable

Yet you're my favourite work of art

Is your figure less than Greek

Is your mouth a little weak

When you open it to speak

Are you smart?

But don't change a hair for me

Not if you care for me

Stay little Valentine stay

Each day is Valentine's Day

Is your figure less than Greek

Is your mouth a little weak

When you open it to speak

Are you smart?

But don't change one hair for me

Not if you care for me

Stay little Valentine stay

Each day is Valentine's Day

Lush Life (1938)

Strayhorn

"So I'll live a lush life in some small dive

And there I'll be, while I rot with the rest

Of those whose lives are lonely too"

Billy Strayhorn. His name can't be brought up without mentioning that of Duke Ellington: the two were bound together in work and life. Ellington "kept" Billy, in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, blocks from his own. Billy was gay, shy and desperately unhappy; Ellington was his opposite. This is a one of the saddest and most difficult songs to sing or play. Strayhorn wrote the song while still a teenager and it remains elusive to the most seasoned interpreters. Frank Sinatra tried and never came up with something he liked.  Ella Fitzgerald (accompanied by Duke Ellington),  Johnny Hartman, and John Coltrane (without the lyrics) all have versions. Yet the lyrics are especially important in this song: they stand on their own as poetry.  And here is Billy, doing it himself (as well as accompanying himself on piano.) I hope he found peace away from the "wheel of life."

I used to visit all the very gay places

Those come-what-may places

Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life

To get the feel of life

From jazz and cocktails

The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces

With distingue traces

That used to be there

You could see where they'd been washed away

By too many through the day

Twelve-o'clock tails

Then you came along with your siren song

To tempt me to madness

I thought for awhile that your poignant smile

Was tinged with the sadness

Of a great love for me

Ah yes, I was wrong

Again, I was wrong

Life is lonely again

And only last year

Everything seemed so sure

Now life is awful again

A trough full of hearts could only be a bore

A week in Paris could ease the bite of it

All I care is to smile in spite of it

I'll forget you, I will
While yet you are still

Burning inside my brain

Romance is mush

Stifling those who strive

So I'll live a lush life in some small dive

And there I'll be, while I rot with the rest

Of those whose lives are lonely too