For me, chapter titles, like short story titles, are both gifts to the reader, a little extra, and prisms through which the chapter can be both previewed and reviewed. If you know the song, you can hear it, playing faintly in your head. And if you don’t, you haven’t missed out—the words themselves still evoke and invite: They can’t take that away from me; Spring will be a little late this year…
My mother sang me everything from “Bicycle Built for Two” to “When You Wore a Tulip” to “Lullaby of Broadway”. She, like me, sang poorly but with great feeling and more than enough brio (and jazzhands). Thanks to her, I have been enjoying the music of Irving Berlin, Louis Armstrong, Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, Fats Waller, Jerome Kern and the Gershwins since the day I was born.
Before television, much of our public and private entertainment centered on music. Although there was, then as now, cultural divides (age, color), much of the music that was played at home on the record player, at the dance clubs and over the radio was listened to by 132 million people. The high school girl, her science teacher, the principal, the custodian and the guy who delivered school supplies all listened to the same music. The older people didn’t listen to everything the teen-ager loved and white middle-aged men may have listened to Bing Crosby more than Billie Holiday but people who listened to music could find a lot of other people who shared their musical taste, and the knowledge of every lyric, at the gas pump, at the grocery store, on the bus and at every gathering place.
Chapter Openers from Lucky Us
| Name | Year | Lyrics by | Listen |
|---|---|---|---|
| I’d Know You Anywhere | 1940-42 | Jimmy Mchugh/ Johnny Mercer | |
| I May Be Wrong (But I Think You’re Wonderful) | 1929 | Harry Ruskin | |
| Dirty Butter | 1929 | Minnie Wallace/ Memphis Jug Band | |
| My Blue Heaven | 1928 | George A Whiting | |
| If You Ain’t Got the Do-Re-Mi | Woodie Guthrie | ||
| Every Day’s a Holiday | 1938 | Sam Coslow and Barry Trivers | |
| Dream a Little Dream of Me | 1931 | Gus Kahn | |
| I’ll Get By | 1928 | Roy Turk | |
| You’re Not the Only Oyster in the Stew | 1934 | Johnny Burke | |
| Pennies from Heaven | 1936 | Johnny Burke | |
| Bei Mir Bist Du Schon | 1932 | Jacob Jacobs | |
| You Made Me Love You | 1913 | Joseph McCarthy | |
| Beginning To See The Light | 1944 | ||
| Never a Day Goes By | Donaldson /DeRose | ||
| Let’s Fly Away | 1930 | Cole Porter | |
| Harbor Lights | 1937 | Jimmy Kennedy | |
| After You’ve Gone | 1918 | Henry Creamer | |
| Hitler Has Only Got One Ball | 1939 | Toby O’Brien | |
| Going Home, Going Home | Antonin Dvorak | ||
| Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year | 1944 | Frank Loesser | |
| Buttons and Bows | 1947 | Ray Evans | |
| Not In the Day and Not At Night | 1946 | Chaim Nachman Bialik | |
| Step We Grandly | 1916 | Cole Porter | |
| They Can’t Take That Away From Me | 1937 | George Gershwin & Ira Gershwin | |
| Prisoner of Love | 1931 | Leo Robin | |
| On The Sunny Side of the Street | 1930 | Dorothy Fields | |
| Find Out What They Like | Fats Waller | ||
| Now Is the Hour | 1913 | Clement Scott | |
| It’s Been a Long, Long Time | 1945 | Sammy Cahn | |
| How High the Moon | 1940 | Nancy Hamilton |