MARILYN CORNWELL: blue skies

The song Blue Skies was composed in 1926 as an addition to the Rodgers and Hart musical Betsy. Although the show ran for only 39 performances, "Blue Skies" was an instant success, with audiences on opening night demanding 24 encores of the piece from star Belle Baker. During the final repetition, Ms. Baker forgot her lyrics, prompting Berlin to sing them from his seat in the front row.

According to Philip Furia and Michael Lasser, the song was added at the last minute, and it was thanks to a panicky phone call from vaudevillian Belle Baker to Berlin, who complained that the score lacked a ‘Belle Baker song.’ They also write: “Berlin resented the interpolation of songs by other composers into the score of his shows, but he must have been delighted at the chance to work one of his songs into a score by the young songwriting team who were already being compared to Gilbert and Sullivan.”

Ella Fitzgerald's version is 3 minutes and 24 seconds. So if Belle Baker sang the chorus 24 times without the introduction, perhaps it is somewhere between one and 2 minutes x 24. Wouldn't that have been somewhere between a half to almost one hour of Blue Skies? Now that was sheer joy and optimism in 1926 - when we look at the lyrics of the chorus, it is understandable.

Blue skies, smilin' at me
Nothin' but blues skies do I see

Bluebirds singin' a song
Nothin' but bluebirds all day long

Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things looking so right
Noticing the days hurryin' by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days, all of them gone
Nothin' but blue skies from now on

Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things looking so right
Noticing the days hurryin' by
When you're in love, oh how they fly

Blue days, all of them gone
Nothin' but blue skies from now on

You know your Maples now: here's an anatomically correct Sugar Maple on the Muskoka Chair.