song-a-and-dance

[grip at netcom.com]

On Fri, 19 Jan 1996, Gillies, Lindsay wrote:

> 
> from grip:
> On Thu, 18 Jan 1996 sybil at celtic.co.uk asked:
> 
> >       Is anyone aware of any of TRP's lyrics having been set to music and
> > recorded?
> 
> Not me. But I will confess to making up tunes for some of the lyrics. A
> while back when the discussion about taping GR came about, I thought
> again about the reader singing tunes to those lyrics...
>  -----------------------------
> Thing I find is, the lyrics strongly suggest popular songs (mainly vaudville 
> and b'way) without much effort on my part---they just get up and dance by 
> themselves.  which is why I was pondering on the extent to which my 
> particular musical expose would make that easy or less so...the songs for me 
> are part of the layer of GR that is a b'way musical, but one that somehow 
> only appeared in film format.  As with many musical films of the late 30s 
> and early 40s, song settings pop up in the most peculiar places, 
> song-and-dance applied to almost any content whatever..

Yes, exactly! I grew up at the same time as TRP and recall fondly the 
hours spent playing with toys while my mother ironed or cooked with the 
radio dialed to all music stations. The songs were sad and wistful, 
reflecting the feelings of people at home with loved ones far away.
I still remember lyrics and melodic styles. When I read TRP's lyrics, 
melodies appeared almost magically in my mind. 

grip