A 111-Year-Old George M. Cohan Song Gets the Punk Rock Treatment!
Sheet music cover of the original song.
As I’ve mentioned in other blog entries, one of the things I do a lot when making animations is find music that is 100+ years old and adapt it to modern styles. An example of this is Single, a punk rock song that was adapted from the 1908 burlesque showstopper, “Gee! Ain’t I Glad I’m Single.” This was done expressly for an animation I made which was featured in the first episode of The Rectangle Show. (If you click the link, it will take you there so you can watch it.)
What I really wanted to talk about, however, is another song that recently got the same treatment, and will be featured in the next episode of The Rectangle Show. And while I was the one with the idea, full credit for the execution thereof goes to Rick Sims, former singer and guitarist of The Didjits. I contacted his business, Rick Sims Sound Design, through Fiverr, and asked him to craft a punk adaptation of That Haunting Melody by George M. Cohan. (Btw, Rick Sims is also the musician behind Single. I discuss his involvement in greater detail in a previous blog entry.)
For some background, That Haunting Melody was written for a light opera called Vera Violetta, which opened at The Winter Garden Theater on Broadway in 1911. Al Jolson sang this song on the stage, and he recorded it soon after. Jolson’s recording is noteworthy for being the very first record he ever made.
Here’s the original recording:
You can probably tell that this was no easy task, but I trusted the right guy for the job. As you’ll see in a moment, there are two recordings of it because, while the lyrics needed to be rewritten, Rick’s original vision was to write explicit lyrics. While I enthusiastically approved of this, I was kind of hesitant because I was afraid YouTube would demonetize my animation if there was too much cursing. He proposed throwing in a clean version free of charge, which really eased my mind. So here are the explicit version and the clean version:
As for the animation itself, I’ve been strongly considering using a Dadaism style for the artwork, and was inspired to do so by this video:
But I’d like to know what you think. This is really just a jumping off point, and nothing is set in stone as yet. (In fact, with my current animation being very long and involved, I don’t expect to actually start working on this until around June or July.) Anyway, if you have better ideas for how I can style the artwork in the animation, I’d love to hear them. Sound off in the comments!
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