Same tune, different lyrics (very long post)

Date: 13 Jun 2003 08:07:33 -0700
Newsgroups: rec.music.rock-pop-r+b.1950s
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Well, my post on "Just Because" still hasn't really gotten the desired
response: one guy seems to think I don't want to be educated, though
my whole point in the post was to find something out about this song
and the artist who recorded it other than just that the song was based
on the same original tune as "Here" and the artist's name was Lloyd
Price, while another seems to be dumbfounded that I've never heard of
Lloyd Price, but still won't say who he was! But this still leads me
to bring up the question about songs with the same tune, but different
lyrics.
There seem to be 4 categories:
1. Independent compositions based on a (usually Classical) original.
Two pairs (besides "Here" and this mysterious "Just Because") come to
mind:
The song "This Is My Beloved" (like everything from the musical
"Kismet," of course) derives from a piece by the composer Alexander
Borodin. That same piece was used, many years earlier, as the basis
for a song called "Spring Magic." I've only heard it once (played by a
local DJ whose program was devoted to '30s, '40s, and '50s music) and
it was a weird experience because the melody was so familiar and the
lyric so unfamiliar.
The best-known pair (counting both songs together) is the two songs
deriving from the Italian "O Sole Mio." "There's No Tomorrow" (was
this recorded by Tony Martin? I think so) and "It's Now or Never" (a
hit for Elvis) have titles that mean about the same thing (and nothing
like the original Italian!) but very different lyrics.
I'm not sure whether to include this in this category, because the
_original_ version was recorded by a Pop artist (around 100 years
after it first came out), but this one involves another of Elvis'
hits: "Love Me Tender." I know that Connie Francis recorded a version
of "Aura Lee," the original, which I've heard, and I think it's quite
good. I don't know if it ever made it onto a single, but it is in an
album of hers.
2. Follow-on or otherwise-related songs.
The best example of this is "Slipping Around" and "I'll Never Slip
Around Again," both recorded by Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely
(now, is this Pop or Country? She was a Pop singer, and he was
Country!) Doris Day recorded the second one, but I have never heard of
her doing the first. And the lyric of the second is clearly a
follow-on to the first, set at a later time in the life of the subject
of the first song.
There was also "Woman" and "Man" - the same idea from the man's and
woman's point of view, recorded back to back on the same single by
Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney (who were married to each other in
real life at the time!)
3. Doubles by the same composer.
Usually from the same play or movie, a composer might do the same
tune, often in styles so different that they don't _seem_ like the
same tune. I had to be told by a friend that "76 Trombones" and
"Goodnight My Someone" from "The Music Man" were the same tune; even
the clue where in a later reprise the lines from the two are
interleaved didn't give that away to me.
It took me less to discover that "The Glass-Bottom Boat" and "Soft as
the Starlight" from the Doris Day movie of the same title as the first
song were the same tune. It was in fact when I mentioned this to my
friend that he told me about the pair from "The Music Man."
4. "Moon over Naples" and "Spanish Eyes," a category all by itself.
Because it charted as an instrumental, I've never heard the actual
lyrics of "Moon over Naples" _sung_ (except when I sang them myself,
to get a feeling for the sound!) but there _are_ such lyrics, I saw
them on a piece of sheet music, and I _like_ them probably better than
the lyrics of "Spanish Eyes." I'd _love_ to know the story there. The
sheet music shows the _same_ three names as composer/lyricists for
both. I'll bet that one lyricist wrote one and one the other, and
arranged to put both names on both songs' sheet music for royalty
reasons, but I have no proof.
I invite anyone to name more pairs. Bruce