RE-jiggered songs

[samhexum]

ABBA recorded two different songs with the same tune. Does anyone have any other examples of something like this?

[+ Charlie]

The Star-Spangled Banner?

[kewtex]

My Country, 'Tis of Thee and God Save The Queen (or King)

 

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; The ABC Song; and Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

[bostonman]

"Goodnight My Someone" and "76 Trombones" from The Music Man. Deliberately, of course - she sings the first song (ballad) , he sings the 2nd one (uptempo), and at the end of the show, when the two have finally admitted their love for each other, the 2 songs merge in a back-and-forth duet.

 

Many church hymns over the centuries have recycled the same tunes. (Look up the tune "Old 100th" for one example). Sometimes the tunes were originally from other kinds of sources - for instance, "Londonderry Air" becoming "Danny Boy" becoming the hymn "He Looked Beyond My Fault."

 

Or - "Greensleeves" to "What Child Is This" to Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam."

 

Classical music is full of examples. Bach, Handel, Rossini...they all borrowed from themselves without shame. There's an aria that Rossini wrote for The Barber Of Seville, sung by the tenor lead toward the end, that often got cut, so he reused the refrain later, with totally new lyrics, for Cinderella's last aria in La Cenerentola. Nowadays, that tenor aria does get done a fair amount, so you can indeed hear that same tune in both operas.

 

Also, Broadway. There's a term "trunk song" which refers to a song that gets unused or cut, and stored away, maybe never to be heard again - but sometimes to find a way into a new show. And sometimes the trunk life is actually rather short.

 

Here's a song from a very obscure 1957 TV musical written by Jule Styne (called Ruggles Of Red Gap) -"I'm In Pursuit Of Happiness" (the refrain in question starts at 0:42)

 

...and here it is with considerably better lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, 2 years later in a show called Gypsy...

 

OR - some songs have the darndest journeys. The hit ballad "I Don't Know How To Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar started off as a song called "Kansas Morning" ("I love the Kansas Mor----ning----- / Kansas mist at my win---dow----"), which had been used in a TV commercial for breakfast cereal.

[bostonman]

Another crazy example - the Rodgers and Hart standard "Blue Moon" was actually the 4th attempt at finding a lyric for that tune.

 

First, it was "Prayer," to be sung by Jean Harlow in the 1933 film Hollywood Party ("Oh Lord/if you're not busy up there/I ask for help with a prayer/So please don't give me the air...") - but the film was never released, and the song went into the metaphorical "trunk."

 

Then, it went into the 1934 film Manhattan Melodrama - the song was in a fast tempo with the lyrics "Act One:/You gulp your coffee and run/Into the subway you crowd/Don’t breathe, it isn’t allowed." Before the film was released, that version of the song had been cut...

 

...and was rewritten as a slow torch song called "The Bad In Every Man" ("Oh, Lord/I could be good to a lover/But then I always discover/The bad in every man").

 

But the song didn't catch on until version #4 ("Blue Moon/you saw me standing alone...") which has always been a standalone song, not associated with any of Rodgers and Hart's original musicals or films.

[samhexum]

The hit ballad "I Don't Know How To Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar started off as a song called "Kansas Morning" ("I love the Kansas Mor----ning----- / Kansas mist at my win---dow----"), which had been used in a TV commercial for breakfast cereal.

 

I love Helen Reddy's version. Yes, I admit... I have her greatest hits CD. I AM WOMAN is really a terrific song, if you listen to the lyrics and keep in mind the societal context at the time it was recorded.

 

BTW, WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN by The Carpenters started out as a bank commercial, before Richard saw it & asked the authors to adapt it into a full-length version.

[kewtex]

@bostonman, thank you for the Blue Moon history lesson.