Song Lyric Sunday/Song of the Day: “Stella By Starlight”

Jim’s theme for today is "Songs that have a girls’ name in it which starts with an S." My choice is the jazz standard "Stella By Starlight," a song Victor Young wrote for the 1944 film The Uninvited, which starred Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, and Donald Crisp. Ned Washington wrote lyrics for it in 1946. Numerous instrumental and vocal versions of it have been recorded.

There are two singers who sing the standards better than anyone, in my opinion: Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. Here are both of their versions.

The lyrics, per AZLyrics:

The song a robin sings,
Through years of endless springs,
The murmur of a brook at evening tides.
That ripples through a nook where two lovers hide.

That great symphonic theme,
That’s Stella by starlight,
And not a dream,
My heart and I agree,
She’s everything on this earth to me.

That great symphonic theme,
That’s Stella by starlight,
And not a dream,
My heart and I agree,
She’s everything on this earth to me.

And that’s Song Lyric Sunday and Song of the Day for April 18, 2021.

Song of the Day: Señor Wences with Johnny and Pedro

Not a song today, but I wanted to recognize the 125th birthday of Wenceslao Moreno, better known as ventriloquist Señor Wences. His most-familiar characters are Johnny, who is drawn on Wences’s hand and speaks with a falsetto, and Pedro, who is a disembodied head in a box who mostly just says "S’awright!" Not sure where or when this television appearance is from, though it could be from The Ed Sullivan Show.

Song of the Day: Ray Ventura, “Ménilmontant”

French jazz pianist and bandleader Ray Ventura was born on this day in 1908. "Ménilmontant" is a song by Charles Trenet to honor the Paris neghborhood in the 20th arrondissemant which was the birthplace of Maurice Chevalier. Ventura recorded it in 1941 with the lyrics sung by Coco Aslan.

Song of the Day: Dave Edmunds, “I Hear You Knockin'”

Happy birthday to singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer Dave Edmunds, who turns 77 today. He’s mostly associated with pub rock and new wave, but he actually leans toward ’50’s rock and rockabilly. "I Hear You Knockin’" went to #4 in the US, #3 in Canada, and #1 in the UK in 1970.

Song of the Day: Shorty Rogers and His Giants, “Chances Are”

Milton "Shorty" Rogers played trumpet and flugelhorn, was a composer, arranger, and bandleader, and was one of the creators of West Coast Jazz. Here he and his Giants add a little swing to Johnny Mathis’s "Chances Are." It’s from his 1959 album Chances Are It Swings.