When did the song Happy Days Are Here Again come out?

Original version(s)

• Written in 1929 for the movie Chasing Rainbows (1930)

FZ album(s) in which song has appeared

Conceptual Continuity

More Ager & Yellen:

Get Happy / Happy Days Are Here Again is a mashup song written by Milton Ager, Harold Arlen, Ted Koehler, & Jack Yeller, and sung by Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand on The Judy Garland Show. In 1986, the American singers Roy Orbison and his love interest Kenny Loggins sing their mashup song on the soundtrack American Anthem.

Lyrics

Credits

• Roy Orbison – lead vocals
• Kenny Loggins – lead vocals
• Nelson Riddle – orchestration, conducting

She then duplicated the tapes so she could give copies of them give to possible employers as demos. Dennen grew enthusiastic, and in the spring of 1960 he convinced her to enter a talent contest at the Lion, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. There, she performed two songs in the contest, after which there was a “stunned silence” from the audience, followed by “thunderous applause” when she was pronounced the winner. She was invited back and sang at the club for several weeks without pay, but with audiences. It was during this time that she dropped the second “a” from her first name, switching from “Barbara” to “Barbra.”

In the summer of 1960, Streisand auditioned at the Bon Soir, a nightclub on 8th Street in Greenwich Village. She got the gig there, which paid $125 a week. It was her first professional engagement as a singer. In the club’s show she was the opening act for comedienne Phyllis Diller, who was the headliner. She later recalled that was the first time she had been in that kind of “plush” environment: “I’d never been in a nightclub until I sang in one.” During her run at that venue, she became something of an underground sensation in Greenwich Village.

She discovered that her ironic Brooklyn sense of humor was received favorably by her audiences, so she began inserting light-hearted comments, always with a hip Brooklyn edge, between songs. During the next six months appearing Bon Soir, she began to get noticed by mainstream media. Newspaper reporters and columnists began comparing her singing voice to those of Judy Garland, Lena Horne and Fanny Brice. Her ability to charm audiences with spontaneous humor during performances became more sophisticated and professional. Theater critic Leonard Harris wrote: “She’s twenty; by the time she’s thirty she will have rewritten the record books.” By late in 1960, Barbra Streisand’s career was beginning to take-off.

In early 1962 she participated in the Columbia Records cast recording of the Harold Rome Broadway show I Can Get It for You Wholesale. This recording was produced by the president of Columbia Records, Goddard Lieberson. Lieberson was a well-schooled musician who had worked his way up to the presidency of Columbia from the position of A and R man, where he started in 1939. Although his accomplishments at Columbia Records were manifold, his particular favorite activity was in introducing cast recordings of Broadway shows to the pop music market on LP records, which started in the early 1950s. He loved every aspect of doing this, including acting as producer at the recording sessions. In order to ensure a constant flow of new material for Columbia Broadway cast recording LPs, Lieberson also pioneered in having Columbia Records invest in promising Broadway musical shows. (Above right: Goddard Lieberson and Barbra Streisand at the signing of her first contract with Columbia Records.)

As one would expect, Lieberson, though he couldn’t help but to appreciate Barbra’s singing, was less enchanted with her behavior in the recording studio on that date. At age 19, she clearly had huge talent as a singer, and the beginnings of an artistic temperament to match. Nevertheless, Lieberson showed no inclination to have any involvement with Barbra Streisand’s singing career.

But as president of Columbia Records, Lieberson was at the epicenter of the pop music business then, and increasingly, various people were coming to him with the same recommendation: sign Barbra Streisand NOW!  Eventually, Lieberson agreed to attend one of Barbra’s performances at the Blue Angel. Her singing “…knocked him to the canvas. ‘It takes a big man to admit a mistake,’ Lieberson told Barbra’s manager Marty Erlichman, ‘and I made a mistake. (Now) I would like to record Barbra.'”(3) Barbra Streisand signed with Columbia Records on October 1, 1962.

The music:

Streisand first recorded “Happy Days Are Here Again” in October 1962 at Columbia’s 30th Street NYC studio, some months before her first album sessions. This version, arranged and conducted by George “The Fox” Williams (shown below left) (3), became Streisand’s first commercial single in November 1962, with the Harold Arlen/Ted Kohler standard “When the Sun Comes Out” on the B side. Only 500 copies of this single were pressed for the New York market, and no copies were sent to radio stations. Nevertheless, the record flew off the shelves of the record stores where it was available for purchase. This 1962 version was re-released as a single in March 1965 as part of Columbia’s “Hall of Fame” series.

Streisand re-recorded the song in January 1963 for her debut Columbia LP album, The Barbra Streisand Album, the music for which was arranged and conducted by Peter Matz.

Barbra sang the song opposite Judy Garland, who performed “Get Happy,” during an October 1963 broadcast of The Judy Garland Show on television. That performance was recorded and was first included on Streisand’s 1991 box set Just for the Record, and then again on her 2002 Duets compilation.

The song has become a signature part of Streisand’s concert repertoire, and she has performed it live on numerous occasions. I was fortunate enough to her sing it at a concert in her home town Brooklyn in 2013, and she stopped the show with it, as always.

This George Williams-conducted track of “Happy Days Are Here Again” was Barbra’s first successful record release, pre-dating the commonly reissued (but different) re-do of the song from her 1963 debut album, and the various live performances cited above.

The recording presented with this post was digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.

Notes:

(1) Much of the information above about Barbra Streisand’s early life is derived from the Wikipedia post on her.

(2) The Label …The Story of Columbia Records by Gary Marmorstein (2007), 320-321

(3) George Dale Williams (1917-1988) was born in New Orleans but grew up in California. He studied at Chico State College from 1934 to 1937. His first involvement with a swing band came in 1939, when he began working for bandleader Bob Astor as pianist and arranger. In early 1940, Williams began submitting arrangements to Jimmie Lunceford. Later that year, he wrote much of the initial library for Lionel Hampton’s first big band. In 1941, Williams worked as trumpeter Sonny Dunham’s pianist and sometimes arranger. In 1942, he began placing some arrangements and originals with Glenn Miller. From 1943 to 1946, Williams was in military service (Merchant Marine). From 1946 until 1950, Williams acted essentially as Gene Krupa’s assistant, writing arrangements and doing many other musical tasks. In the early 1950s, he worked for Ray Anthony. By the mid-1950s, Williams was a successful free-lance arranger and conductor in Manhattan. He had a long association with comedian and would-be musician Jackie Gleason from the mid-1950s through the 1960s, writing many of the arrangements for Gleason’s highly successful mood music albums. He acquired his nickname “The Fox” as a result of an original composition by that name that he wrote for Ray Anthony, which was recorded and successful.

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