1) Two songs dueled for current musical obsession last week: Lynn Anderson’s “Rose Garden” and the Old Wedding Standard “Oh Promise Me.”
1a) The former I vaguely recall from The Lawrence Welk Show, but it had not crossed my mind in decades. Why, then, should Miss Anderson present herself now? Why should the lyric “I could sing you a tune and promise you the moon on a silver platter//But what would it matter?” absolutely captivate me? I prefer this version to the “official” recording.
1a.i) “Come along and share the good times while we can” takes on a more ominous cast in this election year . . .
1b) “Oh Promise Me” came up while I was researching my weddings talk, but also because it can be heard in the wedding sequence of Weekend at the Waldorf (1945), which some Xavier Cugat fan has shared on ye Fycebykke. A standard for so long (I think it was only supplanted by “Evergreen” in the 1970s), it has become the parody anthem that leaves all the elderly ladies and that One Aesthetic Cousin weeping in tender appreciation during the wedding. Here is Jan Peerce’s recording, complete with lush orchestra and chorus. Bring your own hanky.
2) Today was a day for doomscrolling, something in which I don’t indulge much . . . but one must keep informed. The malicious use of AI is, I fear, only the beginning.
3) Last week I had to go rummaging through Ellen Maury Slayden’s diaries, too, and found her complaining about the deference a Congressional wife wanted to show to the wife of the Speaker of the House. (That part is long and boring, never mind.) But Ellen said “One often hears of Northern or Western women in the [Congressional Club] speak of the President as ‘Our Ruler’ That and the unctuous phrase ‘Our beloved Presadunt,’ so dear to female orators, try my soul. I see no occasion to love a President. It is quite enough to respect him — if he’s respectable. To love a new man every four years is not seemly, and to say that you do is hypocrisy and cant.”