Well, this week’s tune is something different!  I expect you’ve never heard it before but the story behind it is interesting.  Our song found  its way here today – in a circuitous way – via Patty Leswing in Philadelphia from the California home of the songwriter Hugh Martin.

Patty Leswing’s name may ring a bell to NPR listeners since she is an associate producer of WHYY’s Fresh Air radio program.  And Hugh Martin’s name you will know as the songwriter who, collaborating with Ralph Blane, wrote, for example, The Boy Next Door, The Trolley Song and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, all sung by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM movie Meet Me in St. Louis. Those songs in themselves might suffice as a passable contribution to popular culture but Martin’s credits go on and on, as songwriter, vocal arranger and even as a performer.  He is now, if his dates and my arithmetic are correct, approaching 93.

  Anyway, Terri Gross of Fresh Air interviewed Martin in December of 2006.  (Indeed the interest may have helped to re-invigorate his singing career since I note that Martin made a CD in 2006.)  In any case, in the acquaintance struck up through the interviews, Patty Leswing and Martin discussed music and he later sent Patty a copy of a song he was fond of and thought was unfortunately overlooked.  Modestly, it is not a Hugh Martin song but a Richard Whiting one (he the writer who wrote Too Marvelous for Words and others), and its title is It Seems to Be Spring, written in 1930.

  Patty, who has a fine voice which I think has something of that pre-war style to it, showed me the tune at Cascamorto a couple of weeks ago and we thought it would be fun to give it a whirl.  I confess at first I was not bowled over by the song, but as we did it we both got to like it more and more.  Who knows, if the Fates had overslept, it might have been a hit.  Anyway, here it is sung by Patty for you, the happy few.  The lyrics are below.  They were written by George Marion Jr. who, let us say, might not have been having his best day at the escritoire.

 Verse:

It’s a January morning,

We two meet without a warning

And I hope my eyes will say for me

That you made the day like May for me.

From now on ‘twill be my failing

Not to know when it is hailing,

Ev’ry storm is unavailing,

Now you’re a part

Of my heart.

Refrain:

It seems to be spring

Little songbirds form in quartets.

This calendar thing nature forgets;

The snow must have felt

It was rather wise to melt

The warmth of your voice

Had left it no choice.

It seems to be spring

Little larks are larking about.

Come closer and cling,

Not a person parking about;

Those cold loves

All my old loves from me I fling

It seems to be spring

In my heart.