Some Xmas-y Nostalgia

Here's a couple of stories I didn't include in my earlier Nostalgia series
because they're not directly about Alec. But they're Alec-related, and sure
feel like Santa Claus.

One July, Alec suggested I talk to Mabel Mercer and set it up for me to see her
a couple of nights later. She was working Upstairs at the Downstairs on 52nd
Street then, and I showed up fairly early in the evening, figuring things would
be less busy then.

Mabel was close to legendary even in the mid-fifties, but still much more than I
could have expected. I've only met two other women like her (Jo Baker and Helen
Stevenson Meyner, Adlai's niece, and wife of a Governor of New Jersey) in my
life: absolutely regal without being in the least imperious. The sort of woman
one automatically wants nothing more than to be of service to. I was sort of
dumbstruck, but we chatted for 20 or 30 minutes; I remember bringing up the
rather apocryphal tale of Alec's having shambled into whatever club she was in
at the time at three o'clock one morning, soaking wet through both shirts and
jackets after walking about in the rain, and thrusting a manuscript at her:
"Here" and walking out again. Thus was born a "While We're Young" legend. She
denied it all, of course.

When she went back to singing she sort of apologized for the next song, but
explained it was a favor to a friend. Some years earlier Alec had spent some
time in Hollywood writing the music for a Fred Astaire vehicle, "Daddy Long
Legs": it included a Christmas song. Before the film got made, however, it
changed producers and the new one threw out all the music and ordered a whole
new score. No problem, except that the studio owned all the music Alec had
written and had no interest in releasing it.

So there I sat on a hot July night in Manhattan, listening to Mabel Mercer sing
a bootleg Christmas song for me.

Other times, I'd drop in on Howie Richmond and he would lay stacks of sheet
music and occasional demo records on me. One of them struck me as one of Alec's
most poignant ballads, but existed only as sheet music. Why hasn't this been
recorded, I asked. Well, it's an evergreen, Howie explained, and that means
once it is recorded it will be around forever (we really believed that then:
Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart; that music would never lose its
dominance) so it didn't really matter that it wasn't around like right today.
It did to me, I insisted, because I want to hear it, not just look at it. And I
kept on insisting that to anyone that would listen.

Some months went by until one afternoon as I came back to my office at United
Press, my boss said casually "Mitch Miller called. He wants you to come to the
East Side studio at 3 o'clock". So I asked for the time off and went down there
as requested. The studio, apparently a former theater, was empty and black when
I got there, except for a large orchestra on the stage, a bunch of technicians,
and Mitch about ten rows up. I said hello and sat. He said "That's Percy Faith,
and Don Cherry. Shut up and listen." So I did and they came up with one of
Percy's most incredible arrangements, walking that delicate tightrope between
inspired craftsmanship and godawful kitsch, while Don (a singer more known for
having married Miss America than his own talents) gave a fairly pedestrian
reading of "April Age". But at least, I thought, it's been recorded. "I hope
you're satisfied," Mitch growled when it was done, and left without waiting for
my response.

So I've always thought of it as my song, and not been too terribly bothered by
the fact that it is not as well known as, say "While We're Young," which it is
sort of another version of. Eileen Farrell recorded it a few years later, and
that was enough to justify it all. And with luck, Marlene will too -- since it
could have been written for the girl I knew then, but he
hadn't yet met -- and close another circle for me.

And a Happy New Year to all, too.

Dirk Schaeffer