By Steven Suskin
25 Dec 2005

WILLIAM BOLCOM, JOAN MORRIS, MAX MORATH & ROBERT WHITE SING GUS KAHN [Original Cast]
It is a long, long way from Mel Brooks to Gus Kahn. They both lived (at least partially) in the same century, and both wrote song lyrics in English. Their vocabulary, though, seems to have been a little different.

Kahn (1886-1941) was one of those semi-anonymous Tin Pan Alley wordsmiths. As is typical with these guys, he has some enormous hits to his credit but is all but forgotten today — and I don’t suppose he was ever as well-known as Johnny Mercer or Sammy Cahn. (Kahn did, though, rate one of those Hollywood biopics. “I’ll See You in My Dreams” starred Danny Thomas and Doris Day, as Gus and his wife Grace).

Readers of this column are forgiven if they can’t name a single Kahn song other than, perhaps, “Makin’ Whoopee” from the Ziegfeld-Eddie Cantor hit Whoopee. When discussing standards of this era, one tends to give most of the credit to the composers; when you wrote with people like Walter Donaldson, Jerome Kern, Richard Whiting and George Gershwin, sure you had some hits. But a quarter of the way through William Bolcom, Joan Morris, Max Morath & Robert White sing Gus Kahn you realize that this guy was not merely lucky, walking into the room when inspiration struck; Gus Kahn was quite a lyricist. Who knew?

Before we proceed, the CD-with-the-unwieldy-title is — well, the four named singers sitting at a piano, running through 26 songs in a brisk 61 minutes. Bolcom, Morris, Morath and White all have their fans, and the first three — at least — have long specialized in performing songs of this era. This program was assembled as a four-performance event at the Lortel Theatre in 2004, produced by The White Barn Theatre (Donald Saddler, artistic director). As a celebratory reunion, I suppose it was perfectly fine. As a recording, one must point out that the CD sounds like a group of old friends sitting around the piano, impromptu style. Old is the operative word; Morath, Bolcom and Morris sound 30-odd years older than they did when they first delighted us, and they clearly didn’t have the advantage of multiple takes in a recording studio. So let it be said that this recording is decidedly not polished, and let’s leave it at that. Except to add that the singers are not identified on a track-by-track basis. I can tell you when Ms. Morris is singing, and I suppose I could easily differentiate Mr. Morath and Mr. Bolcom 20 years ago. But don’t ask me which of the men sing what.

Now, back to Gus Kahn. These are not simply words that fit catchy tunes; time and again, he provides the turn of phrase that makes the song (or at least must have inspired it). Consider, for example, the phrase “yes, sir, that’s my baby/no, sir, don’t mean maybe.” It positively sings out to you. “Nothin’ can be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning.” “Toot, toot, tootsie, goo’bye.” “Love me or leave me, and let me be lonely.” “Ev’ry morning, ev’ry evening, ain’t we got fun?” “Ev’rybody loves a baby, that’s why I’m in love with you, pretty baby.” These are not just words that fit; they are phrases that listeners instantly remember. And, of course, there’s Kahn’s incisive paean to matrimony, “Makin’ Whoopee,” a title phrase that went right into the contemporary phrasebook.

As an added bonus, Gershwin fans will find an extreme rarity that I don’t believe I’ve ever heard recorded. “I Must Be Home by 12 O’Clock” is not a great song, but the music sure is interesting. Following the success of Whoopee, Ziegfeld hired George and Ira and assigned them to work with Kahn on the 1929 musical Show Girl, which also brought forth the more familiar “Liza” (“All the Clouds’ll Roll Away”).

Other long-ago standards on the Kahn CD include “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” “San Francisco,” “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” “Memories,” “I’m Through with Love,” “My Buddy” and “It Had to Be You.” Not bad for some guy that few of us remember.

-- Steven Suskin, author of “Second Act Trouble” [Applause Books], “A Must See! Brilliant Broadway Artwork,” “Show Tunes,” and the “Opening Night on Broadway” books. He can be reached by e-mail at Ssuskin@aol.com.