There are singers and there are songs and there are songwriters I can’t wait to write about here at Word & Song, but oh! the riches, the riches. I’ve been at this project for over three years and have barely skimmed the surface of that treasure trove we have to draw from. Those of you who have followed Sometimes a Song will remember that I’ve referred to my experience with music of the early to mid-century as a gift passed on to me by my parents, particularly my mother, who kept the great music playing at our house throughout my childhood. My father also loved music, though his favorites were somewhat different from my mother’s. His mother was a classically trained organist who studied with Leopold Stokowski when he was newly arrived in Philadelphia in the 1920’s. I’ve heard from plenty of folks here who, like me, consider this gift of music a sort of inheritance that was passed along to us when we were children — and with it, the cultural heritage of Western music.

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I’ve struggled all week to find a song that suits our week of focus on heirs and inheritances. And nothing obvious came to me. Instead, I kept circling back not just to a particular song, but to a song written by a particular person and sung by a particular singer. AND it also happens that this song is written about a particular inheritance that many of our readers also look forward to.

“Get Happy” was composed by a great songwriter whom I have discussed before on these pages: Harold Arlen, son of a cantor, born in 1905 in Buffalo, NY. You’ve all heard his music before, from the film which earned him an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song, for “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” ALL of the songs for The Wizard of Oz are his work, and as it turns out, a decade or so later, Arlen crossed paths again with Judy Garland, who was filming a less-memorable musical, “Summer Stock,” with co-star, Gene Kelly.

All the songs for “Summer Stock” were written by Harry Warren—whom I have written about here —except for “Get Happy,” the show-stopper that gave audiences an idea of what the grown-up Judy Garland could do. And I think it’s notable that someone behind the scenes at MGM understood the value of a show-stopping song enough to import a twenty-year-old number from a late Vaudeville revue to showcase Judy Garland’s talent in a most memorable way. However, it’s also notable that MGM gave Judy the boot after this film, her last of many many many movies for the studio.

Harold Arlen was 24 years old when the wrote “Get Happy,” in 1929, 34 years old when he wrote the songs for “The Wizard of Oz,” and 45 when Judy Garland turned his great old song into a legacy of her own, as well. Garland performed “Get Happy” in every concert she gave for the rest of her life.

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And talking of musical legacies, Harold Arlen published over 500 songs in his lifetime, including such standards as “Ac-Cen-Tu-Ate the Positive,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “That Old Black Magic,” “Paper Moon,” “Let’s Fall in Love,” “Stormy Weather,” “The Man That Got Away,” and the list goes on.
I hope to revisit both Judy Garland and Hal Arlen again. But for now, let’s find out what it is we are supposed to “Get Happy” about!

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