"Johnny One-Note": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"Johnny One-Note"

For a complete listing of songs used in the original production of the Broadway show Babes in Arms, see IBDB song list.

Babes in Arms was not only a typical "Come on kids, let's put on a show" musical, but perhaps the first of its kind. The idea for it emerged while Rodgers and Hart were walking in Central Park and noticed some creative children making up their own games. It's plot was slight and far fetched but the Rodgers and Hart score produced more American standard songs than any other show by the songwriting team.

The story begins when a troupe of Depression era vaudevillians are unable to get work and so decide to light out for the territories in an attempt to make some kind of living--leaving behind their kids to fend for themselves. The youngsters resist being sent to a work farm by putting on a show of their own to raise money for a local youth center. Nothing much comes of it until a deus ex machina in the form of a French transatlantic aviator crash-landing his plane in their midst generates enough publicity to make the kids' show a hit.

Babes in Arms tried out in Boston and then opened in New York at the Shubert Theater April 14, 1937. Despite its lack of the de rigueur line of semi-nude show girls to stir up ticket sales, it ran for the better part of a year (289 performances), closing December 18, 1937. Rodgers and Hart had decided they wanted this show to be all their own so they wrote the book as well as the words and music; and they brought in ballet genius George Balanchine for the choreography. The cast was restricted to youngsters, many of whom eventually became stars, including Mitzi Green, Alex Courtney, Alfred Drake, Ray Heatherton, The Nicholas Brothers, Dan Dailey, Robert Rounseville, Grace MacDonald, and Wynn Murray.

The show within the show that the kids put on is a revue, and all but one of the Rodgers and Hart songs are the focal points for its skits. The only exception is "My Funny Valentine." It is integrated into the main story, Billie, played by Mitzi Green, singing it about her new love "Val," short for "Valentine," played by Ray Heatherton. Richard Rodgers has noted that because he and Hart were so interested in writing songs that helped to develop the story, they went so far as to change the name of one of their characters to Valentine to make the song fit the story. (Musical Stages, p, 181, hard-bound Ed.).

"Johnny One-Note" is introduced in Babes in Arms by Wynn Murray aided by Douglas Parry, Alfred Drake, Elenore Tennis, The Nicholas Brothers, Bobby Lane, Mitzi Green, and Duke McHale. The vignette that features the song satirizes a show-off opera star who claims she can outsing anybody and anything even though she can only manage to produce a single note. Philip Furia and Michael Lasser in thier book America's Songs, note that the music for "Johnny One-Note" was a left-over, having been written for but not used in the Rodgers and Hart score for the movie Mississippi where it had been titled, "Pablo, You Are My Heart." For Babes in Arms, "Rodgers revised the melody by repeatedly pulling it down to middle C and then gave it to Hart, who enlivened this monotonous device with a lyric about [the] dazzling but limited vocalist who could sing only one note" (pp. 138-139).

Wynn Murray sings Johnny One-Note" in 1937. the same year as she sang it in the original production of Babes in Arms. The recording can be found on the album, The Hits of Broadway Volume 1.

Rodgers recalls in his autobiography that they were free to have fun with numbers in "the show within the show" portion of Babes in Arms, because they had no direct connection to the plot of the main story. Because "Johnny One-Note" didn't have such a connection, they set it in ancient Egypt for some reason Rodgers couldn't even recall. Their rationale was, according to the composer, that because the characters were kids operating on a shoe string it seemed appropriate "to emphasize the do-it-yourself nature of the show by having the cast come out wearing such household appliances as towels, bath mats, coat hooks, and scrub mops" (Musical Stages, p. 181, hard-bound edition).

Revivals: There have been no Broadway revivals of Babes in Arms perhaps because despite the spectacular score, the book is just too slight and too dated; however, there have been two studio albums: one with Mary Martin on Columbia Records, from 1951; and one with Judy Blazer and Judy Kaye from 1989. This production uses the original 1937 orchestrations and therefore provides a rare opportunity to hear the musical portions of the show more or less as originally performed, before so many of the songs emerged as standards creating their own indelible impressions. There was also one New York concert revival by City Center Encores! in Feb. 1999, for which there is a cast album. Despite the lack of a Broadway revival, Babes in Arms has been mounted countless times in high school and stock productions using a revised book with a summer theater as the setting and in which the interns put on the show within the show.

The Lorenz Hart Website in its discussion of the revivals of Babes in Arms offers a refutation of the notion that Babes in Arms has never been recreated in its original form because it is "too slight and too dated."

"Johnny One-Note" in the Movie Babes in Arms

"Johnny One-Note" was dropped from the film. The Hollywood forces that created the movie version of Babes in Arms (1939, with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney) inexplicably got rid of most of the great Rodgers and Hart songs leaving only "Where or When" and the title song of the show.

Johnny One-Note in the Movie "Words and Music"

Words and Music, (1948), the very much less than accurate biopic of Rodgers and Hart, is nevertheless valuable for the performances of their songs. "Johnny One-Note"" is sung by Judy Garland.

Hal Kemp and His Orchestra with Skinny Ennis vocal (Brunswick 7856): first charted 6/12/37, remained on charts for 3 weeks peaking at number #15.

Hart's lyric tells a tale of conspiracy, a comic conspiracy that produces bad theater, a conspiracy between the ham performer and the simple-minded critics who rave about him. The song portrays an opera singer who can sing only one note. He over-compensates for this defect by "overlord[ing] the place," by "yelling willy-nilly / Until he [is] blue in the face." When "he sings," the orchestra can't be heard, not even the brass or the drum. And when he "got in Aïda," made "Verdi turn. . . round in his grave!" He is cheered, ironically, by the critics who, "rave" about him -- which Hart rhymesneatly with "grave." Hart implies that the critics prefer the biggest and the loudest and in their shallowness miss all substance and subtlety. (JAC, Cafe Songbook)

Philip Furia sees the character who sings "Johnny One-Note" as "defiant," as defiant as the singer in another song from Babes in Arms, "The Lady Is a Tramp." He also calls him "primitive" --instead of merely lacking musical dexterity. Furia goes on to acknowledge, however, that the singer's cry in fact produces "ear-shattering monotony" saved only by Hart's skill with lyrics, which he demonstrates using

complex double and triple rhymes: "g usto " and " just o verlorded the place," "yelled willy-nilly " with " until he was blue in the face," and "got in Aïda indeed a great chance to be fr ee ." (Furia, p. 119)

Hart, it seems, felt that the critics would have been more on the mark praising his skills as a lyricist (the ones enumerated by Furia) rather than raving about the "overlord[ing]" performer, whom the songwriter himself was criticizing.

Click here to read the lyrics for "Johnny One-Note" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald
on the album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook

Most, if not almost all, singers do the relatively rare thing of including the verse in their performances of Johnny One-Note." This is most likely because of the combination of it being very short and being critical to understanding the rest of the song, both in terms of stating Hart's premise and of introducing that one note in an extraordinarily forceful way: Johnny could only sing one note And the note he sang was this: Ah! The "Ah" is held for countless bars, and as Alec wilder points out the "one note" in the sheet music is C, and it is "sung continuously throughout the song no matter where it goes even into F minor in the trio." ( Alec Wilder, American Popular Song The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 , New York: Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 205, hard cover edition. )

• Shirley Bassey: sas9023055
• Wynn Murray: RReady555
• Judy Garland: stevers62
• Ella Fitzgerald: mickeyfunky357
• Blossom Dearie: johnnioza1
• John Pizzarelli: jamesonfilho

Notes

• Songs from Babes in Arms other than "Johnny One-Note" included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook :
• 1. I Wish I Were in Love Again
• 2. My Funny Valentine
• 3. The Lady Is a Tramp
• 4. Where or When
• For a complete listing of songs used in the movie Babes in Arms , see IMDB soundtrack .
• Judy Garland sings " Johnny One-Note" "in a remastered radio peformance."
• Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages: An Autobiography New York: Random House, 1975 (Da Capo paper bound ed., 2002, pictured above).
• Babes in Arms studio cast album 1951
• "Johnny One-Note" on the charts:
• Victor Young (Decca 1280): first charted 6/19/37, remained on charts for 1 week at number #17.
• Source: Joel Whitburn, Pop Memories 1890-1954: The History of American Popular Music , 1986.
• Hart's Critique of Johnny One-Note amd His Critics
• The complete, authoritative lyrics for "Johnny One-Note'" can be found in:

Cite this page: "Johnny One-Note": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/j/johnny_one_note.html