The Public Domain Song Anthology

Public Song Project
( All Of It )

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Allison Stewart. Our next guest is a jazz composer, a ranger, and the co-author of The Public Domain Song Anthology. He's the perfect person to have on as we count down to the deadline for the All Of It public song project. Submissions are due next Monday. This is your chance to get creative and send us a recording based on work in the public domain. A few creators who submit their work will come on the show and talk about it, even WNYC's David Furst has gotten involved.

David Furst: Hi, I'm David Furst with the cover of My Blue Heaven for All Of It's public song project. Then it goes something like this.

[music]

When All Of It calls, it says play a song.

I hurry along to my My Blue Heaven.

Surely you can do better than that.

Alison Stewart: Oh David. I loved it. The original version of My Blue Heaven was published in 1927, and its copyright expired at the beginning of this year. The same is true for other works from 1927, including a bunch of Gershwin tunes, a final Sherlock Holmes stories, books by Agatha Christie, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway. All of these works have now joined centuries of music and literature in the public domain, meaning you can record or adapt them to versions of your own without permission and totally free The Great Gatsby, Little Women, works of Shakespeare, and we want you to make something new out of them.

Go to wnyc.org/publicsongproject. For more info and resources, you could check out our next guest book called The Public Domain Song Anthology. Jazz musicians David Berger and Chuck Israels put together a book featuring sheet music for more than 348 popular songs in the public domain. Many of them are songs, you know well. When The Saints Go Marching In, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Hello My Baby. David Berger, who is also an arranger and former conductor for the jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra joins me now to talk about some classic tunes. David, thanks for the time today. What led to the idea to compile a songbook of public domain compositions?

David Berger: Public domain which was created at the beginning of our nation so that artists could make a living with their work. It was to be protected for a period of time, which was meant to only be a short amount of time. I think it was nine years. It got extended and extended and extended. Finally Disney they were afraid of Mickey Mouse going into the public domain and they wouldn't own that anymore. Anybody could use Mickey Mouse. I guess they got Sonny Bono who was in remember Sonny & Cher.

Sonny Bono he was in Congress. He was in the House of Representatives, and so he put forward a bill to protect Disney which extended the public domain, so it just stopped at 1922. It moved on to 1923 a few years ago. To celebrate that, the Library Association of America hired me and Chuck Israels to compile a book of public domain songs which went through 1580 to 1923 which we did. It's online and people can download it. Now we've just completed an extended version of the book with a number of songs that could not be included before that are in there now and plus a lot of information on the songs which we will be publishing later this week.

Alison Stewart: You sent along some recordings of the songs in this book. Let's listen to one of the 1914 Kern & Reynolds songs. They Didn't Believe Me.

[music]

And when I told them how won-der-ful you are

They did-n't be-lieve me! No they did-n't be-lieve me!

Your lips, your eyes, your chins your hair

Are in a class be-yond com-pare,

You're the hand-sum-est man I have ever seen!

And when I tell them,

Alison Stewart: Where does that recording come from?

David Berger: I recorded it with my band and with the woman who was our singer at the time, Champian Fulton. We've done quite a few public domain songs. I did a show called Harlem Nutcracker that was based on the Tchaikovsky Nutcracker all that material is public domain. That's 1895. That's old. [unintelligible 00:05:23] the thing about public domain songs there's so many of them are great melodies that just taught us how to compose great melodies, when I was growing up, everybody knew all those songs. It's like my grandmother knew him, my mother knew, everybody knew them.

Now I don't think the generations younger than me know-- they don't know I've Been Working on the Railroad. They don't know She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain. They didn't grow up with all these folk songs and popular songs from the 1890s and 1910s. Which is too bad because they're great songs, great melodies. To not know how to create a great melody means that you're going to have to reinvent the wheel every generation. It's a lot easier to not have to do that, but to build on or what they say, stand on the shoulders of giants.

Alison Stewart: You published this book as an open educational source. What does that mean exactly? Why did you make this choice?

David Berger: The online version that we did for the Library Association people can download for free. They can download the whole book if they want. They can download any one of the songs. Why do we do that for free? Because everybody should have access to these songs and want to create new versions of them. These songs are ageless. The content of them is ageless. The style that they're in can sound very dated. Like I did with the song that we just heard, I made it into a more contemporary style than when it came out in 1914.

It's something that is relevant to us. We put out a version now that's in hardcover that people can buy. You could just put the book on your piano or on a music stand in front of your guitar or whatever instrument you play or sing, and you can have it in front of you. You don't have to print out every page and bind it yourself. This way, it's all there.

Alison Stewart: My guess is David Burger, jazz composer, ranger, and co-author of The Public Domain Song Anthology. I did want to take a quick little detour and ask you about your life as jazz at Lincoln Center. When the idea of jazz at Lincoln Center for a while in the beginning, people thought, "That's interesting," was usually associated with classical music. What strikes you about the way jazz has become an essential part of Lincoln Center?

David Berger: I was there at the beginning actually. The idea was to have some programming at Alice Tully Hall in the summertime when the hole was empty. Alina Bloomgarden, who was a producer for Lincoln Center, she suggested a short jazz festival, three nights, three concerts, and it was rejected. Then she came back the next year at the same meeting and said, "Okay, I'm going to say the same thing, except that I'll get Wynton Marsalis to be involved and he'll the figurehead for it." They said, "If you can get Wynton Marsalis, we want him, you got it."

There were three concerts the first year, and then the next year we did five concerts, one of which was a Duke Ellington concert which got a lot of attention. Everybody was excited. They could see we were going someplace. We're going to be able to build this into a whole program to present Jazz the same way that opera is presented at the Met and that the philharmonic is presented in their hall.

Alison Stewart: When you think about this project, this Public Domain Song Anthology, what did you learn putting this together?

David Berger: I compiled about 400 songs. I knew about 300 of them, and then I found another 100 that I didn't know that are fantastic. That's one thing. The other is my appreciation for all these songs just went sky high. They're just such great melodies and they inspired me. One of the things that we did in these books is that we give you the original melody. I researched them all to get the original melody and the words and the chords that go with them, the harmonies. Then Chuck and I wrote modern harmonies so that we'll give people an idea of how you can transform these songs into something that's more contemporary sounding.

Alison Stewart: There are so many in there, Scarborough Fair, I've Been Working on the Railroad, London Bridge is Falling Down, so many songs that we all know. Do you have a favorite? Totally unfair question. [laughs]

David Berger: Gee, that's a tough one. We're just finishing up the next volume. That one goes up to 1923. We just finished 1924, '25, '26, and '27. Now, that's all coming out soon, this year. It'll be out this year. My favorite?

Alison Stewart: I'll jump in.

David Berger: That's like, "What's your favorite color?" I like them all.

Alison Stewart: I'll jump in with an Irving Berlin standard. How about that? Can't go wrong.

David Berger: Irving Berlin.

Alison Stewart: I got one, A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.

David Berger: I love that one. That's a great song. I grew up hearing that. It was always used for beauty pageants. I thought, "Oh, that's so corny." It's really a great song. It's so hip. We recorded that with Denzal Sinclaire and had a lot of fun with it.

Alison Stewart: We'll take a listen to it. Once again, the book is called The Public Domain Song Anthology. David Berger, thank you so much for spending time with us.

David Berger: Anytime.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen, A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody, Irving Berlin.

[music]

A pretty girl is like a melody

That haunts you night and day,

Just like the strain of a haunting refrain,

She'll start up-on a marathon

And run around your brain.

You can't escape she's in your memory.

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