Operetta star Mary Ellis renders this standard with wistful elegance…the Kern-Hammerstein partnership at its best.
I’VE TOLD EV’RY LITTLE STAR
I make up things to say on my way to you,
On my way to you, I find things to say.
I can write poems too, When you’re far away,
When you’re far away, I write poems too.
But when you are near, my throat goes dry,
When you are near, I only sigh, “Oh, dear…”
I’ve told ev’ry little star,
Just how sweet I think you are,
Why haven’t I told you?
I’ve told ripples in a brook,
Made my heart an open book,
Why haven’t I told you?
Friends ask me:
Am I in love?
I always answer “Yes”,
Might as well confess,
If I don’t they guess.
Maybe you may know it too,
Oh, my darling, if you do,
Why haven’t you told me, dear, why haven’t you told me?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In 1931, Jerome Kern was awakened one morning by a bird singing outside his window. The warbling so enchanted him that he woke his wife Eva and they listened together. When the bird flew away Jerry sang the melody over and over to himself then fell asleep.
When he awoke, he set about writing down the theme. To his dismay, he could not recall it correctly. He went to his piano but soon gave up in frustration. The song that had seemed so memorable and simple just a few hours before eluded him completely.
By a stroke of luck the bird reappeared the following morning. Kern grabbed a pencil and paper and, stealing quietly downstairs to his piano so as not to wake the sleeping household, he wrote down the tune.
As Kern noted: “It was a complete phrase and a perfectly rounded melodic treatment.”
The bird was identified as a Cape Cod Sparrow Melospiza Melodia and its warbling was the inspiration for the song I’ve Told Every Little Star.
His collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein, later wrote, ”Jerry got the melodic theme from a bird. He swears it! He heard a finch outside the window singing the first line and he built a refrain on it.” The song proved difficult to fashion lyrics, according to Mr Hammerstein, who added, ”There were times when I wished the finch had kept his big mouth shut!”
http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2004/08/ive_told_every.php
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