I loved this man waay back in the fifties and I was just a kid. The neighborhood kids joined me and my brother and two sisters to watch his show. We all looked forward to hearing him play and sing.
I'm taking an American music history class right now and we are learning about the beginnings of the sheet music industry. Because these songs existed not only in our ears, but as notated sheet music, these popular tunes could be played and replayed by many different musicians during many different eras, spanning the entire country and abroad. This particular tune would have come out of Tin Pan Alley, a publishing business located on 28th St. in NYC. Many of the songs we know and love today are still around because they were written down for others to perform and enjoy. Fun fact, Irving Berlin, the composer of this tune, worked as a "song plugger" for this particular publishing company.
Tin Pan Alley was not one particular publisher. There were many publishers in Manhattan's Brill Building. If you stood outside on a summer day with many windows open there was a cacophony of sounds from pianos, other instruments, and singers. Thus the reference to the sound of tin pans being banged. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brill_Building I think this article puts the start of the importance of the building and its occupants a few decades too late. Oh, well.
This was a record Liberace made in a recording studio, and in this television clip he is doing a lip sync with himself. In my opinion, Liberace was the greatest pianist ever. Nobody else could even come in a close second place next to him. Why he would consent to doing something as tacky as a lip sync after numerous phenomenally successful live television appearances in the 1950's is beyond me. There must have been some type of provision in his contract that he was not aware of at the time he signed it. He certainly was not the only performer that happened to. Performers ALWAYS come off much, much better when they are 100% live -- even the ones that stink.
I love that "throwaway" piano notes 'addition' in the last instrumental iteration, it seems both dramatic and a part of the music (it is part of the musical progression but most musicians don't make it stand out) at the same time.
although liberace is a sweetheart, i still do prefer billy's version, only because this tune is a bit changed here to fit the 1950s music standards. the 1911 version has that classic ragtime feel!
