RODGERS AND HART: MUCH BETTER THAN RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN. That's right, baby. You can take your "Sound of Music" and stick it up your Alps! And we all know that the tune for "Bali Hai" from "South Pacific" is merely an unconscious plagarization of the music from "Bride of Frankenstein". It's true; in fact, "Bride" composer Franz Waxman even sent a telegram to R&H on this very point (Waxman joked that they made his song sound really good and he'd be expecting his royalty payments directly). There was always just something very remote about Rodgers & Hammerstein songs. Sort of empty. All that "corn as high as an elephant's eye" stuff never cut any ice with me. Self-consciously cutesy. "Oklahoma" and the other Rodgers & Hammerstein blockbusters are all too "Broadway musical" for me (and I definitely am NOT a fan of Broadway musicals as a rule). Many are and they're welcome to enjoy them; but not me. The songs Richard Rodgers wrote together with Lorenz Hart are beautiful and genuine whereas Rodgers & Hammerstein songs seem contrived and distant. It wasn't until Hart's mental problems got the better of him that Rodgers was forced to team up with Hammerstein (Hart died shortly thereafter). It has been said that the songs Rodgers wrote with Hammerstein became more epic or majestic; this, however, seems to be another way of calling them arty and bloodless. Rodgers and Hart songs breathe and bleed and sigh with a humanity almost painful in some cases. Take, for instance, "It Never Entered My Mind" where the woman singing realizes that the love she took for granted is gone forever. What a brilliant, funny and heartbreaking lyric occurs when she sings: "And I even have to scratch my back myself". Her shock of realization is at once trivial and mind-blowing. Her painful loneliness can be heard when she's forced to order orange juice for one. A fantastic song! Another favourite lyric of mine can be found in "Dancing On the Ceiling" where the man singing lies awake every night staring at the ceiling, eaten up by remorse for the woman who has left him. The song's narrator almost seems to be losing touch with reality as he sees his ghostly lost lover dancing up there on the ceiling. He sings: "I love my ceiling more since it is a dancing floor just for my love." Brilliant! Rodgers & Hart have always been one of my favourite songwriting teams; in a class by themselves. The songs they wrote are iron-clad standards to this day and can move you like few others. Here is a list of some of my favourites in their definitive recordings (if you listen to these versions you can't go wrong): "Manhattan" sung by Blossom Dearie (sung slowly as it should be), "Thou Swell" by Sarah Vaughan (also not sung too fast like it usually is), "Spring Is Here" by Chet Baker, "Dancing On the Ceiling" by Frank Sinatra (because the pain of Frank's recent separation from Ava Gardner is raw and palpable), "She Was Too Good To Me" by The Kingston Trio (really!), "Isn't It Romantic" by Ella Fitzgerald (the most "romantic" rendition of this song I've ever heard), "Little Girl Blue" by Nina Simone (in which she incorporates "Good King Wenceslas" on the piano as countermelody), "Glad To Be Unhappy" by Frank Sinatra, "There's A Small Hotel" by Sammy Davis Jr. & Carmen McRae, "My Funny Valentine" by Sarah Vaughan, "This Can't Be Love" by Nat King Cole, and "It Never Entered My Mind" by Sarah Vaughan. When you want real human emotion, you can't do better than the songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.