Harold Arlen: Magic!

Harold Arlen may be one of the best kept secrets of the American Songbook.

He composed some masterful songs, on a par with George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter, and yet he is seldom mentioned in the same breath with them, much less on his own.  I’ve had a nodding acquaintance with him as the writer of the lovely Over the Rainbow, but even so I’ve hardly paid attention to him.  Here is a tiny glimpse of his output: Stormy Weather, all of the music for The Wizard of Oz, That Old Black Magic, Get Happy,  It’s Only a Paper Moon, Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive, One for My Baby (And One More for the Road), and hundreds more.  It’s only as Master Chorus Eastside has been preparing for our Great American Songbook concert, which includes some of his numbers, that he has come into focus for me as one of our most underrated Songbook composers.

Take his That Old Black Magic for example, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, who crafted the words in 1942, apparently with Judy Garland in mind.  I’ve heard it off and on over the years but haven’t really appreciated it until I began rehearsing an arrangement of it with the MCE Chamber Singers.

Here is Garland herself in a ballad-like 1942 recording.

The number suggests a love affair that is overpowering, magnetic, maybe even dangerous—after all, it is black magic!—and Arlen adroitly expresses that sense through some downright mesmerizing music.  The A section begins:

That old black magic has me in its spell,

that old black magic that you weave so well.

Those icy fingers up and down my spine,

that same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.

Notice the magical words: “black magic,” “spell,” “weave,” “witchcraft.”  Notice the melodic note repeated over and over on “That old black magic has...in its spell,” almost like a snake that  has immobilized its intended victim with its hypnotic gaze.  The harmony enhances that image; it remains an unchanging undercurrent until the word “weave,” and then stays with the new chord until the word “witchcraft,” where it begins a dissonant rising tension that finally resolves on the word “eyes.” Notice the narrow compass of the melody; the first phrase uses only two notes confined to the interval of a sixth, and the second phrase only adds two more notes.  It all creates a sense of capture, confinement, helplessness!

He returns to that hypnotic sense with, “That same old tingle that I feel inside,” but melody and harmony are now slightly agitated.  The agitation increases with a melody line that matches the rising elevator of the second phrase, strengthened by a brand new chord on the word “ride,” one foreign to the key of the piece.  And then melody and harmony gradually descend in “Down and down I go, round and round I go,” still with those repeated notes and harmonies, but now broken up in excitement by occasional passing notes.

The music comes suddenly to life in the B section, “I should stay away, but what can I do?” as if trying to break away from the spell: the melody frantically leaps here and there, repeated notes are mostly gone, harmonies change more rapidly.  Most interesting is the disturbance evident in “I’m aflame, aflame with such a burning desire...”: “aflame” is repeated (the first time words recur back-to-back), the melody plunges as if crashing in fire, then dizzyingly ascends on the word “desire” over a remarkable minor chord, perhaps a last gasp and somber recognition that escape is impossible.  For then it begins to settle back into the repeated notes of the spell and the kiss that puts out the fire.

The hypnosis reasserts itself in the return to the A section with “You’re the lover I have waited for,” but then something new happens: the melody soars skyward on “the mate that fate had me created for,” still with repeated notes but over harmony that suggests a new key, at least for a few measures.  And somehow this time, when lips meet and the singer is once again pulled downward into the spin of love over that last, long stretch of mesmerized notes, there is certainly acceptance, perhaps partnership, maybe even triumph.  For even though the melody clings to its  static statement, the harmonies move and change, as if they are in control!

Since we began rehearsing That Old Black Magic I find that it runs almost unceasingly in my head, over and over, as if...I were under a spell!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and Conductor

Master Chorus Eastside