"My Old Flame": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"My Old Flame"

Other songs written for the movie Belle of the Nineties currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook: none

The sheet music for "My Old Flame credits both Coslow and Johnston for music and lyrics, however, various other references, including Robert and Robert Kimball in their book Reading Lyrics suggest Johnston wrote the music and Coslow the words. Coslow himself in his autobiography Cocktails for Two just says he and Johnston "collaborated" on the song. However, in his comment quoted below on Duke Ellington congratulating him on writing "My Old Flame" there is an implication that Ellington is referring to the music, as he almost never wrote the lyrics for his own songs.

In his autobiography, Coslow gives some background on the Mae West performance of "My Old Flame" when he points out that having her do "a torch ballad" was something new for her. Coslow goes on:

Her rendition established what was to be a song standard. . . . [and] I don't suppose it hurt her one bit that she had the backing of Duke Ellington and his band in the scene. We had suggested Duke to Mae. When the studio objected because the band had become too expensive by then , Mae insisted, and got her way.

Coslow also recalls that during a visit he later paid to Ellington he received one of his greatest compliments: "Duke volunteered the statement that if there were one song by another writer he wished he had written, it would be 'My Old Flame'" (Coslow, p. 151).

Alec Wilder calls "My Old Flame" "A very fine song!" taking particular note of several devices used by the composers: how "beautifully" they employ a technique, used in many other songs, of "dropping down to a note not in the scale of the key in which the song is written"; contrasting the opening measures by having the melody go into a "small dance for itself"; and finally "moving into the key of B fat quite unexpectedly. The whole release, again returning to B flat for a moment is a particular prize."

(To illustrate, Wilder reproduces the portions of the score in which these techniques are used.) --see Wilder, pp. 483-484, hard cover edition.)

Currently no source for providing the lyrics is available; however Ella Fitzgerald sings the lyric, including the verse, exactly as it was written.

• Carmen McRae: cminor7add9th
• Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins: susypeti

Notes

• For a complete listing of songs used in this movie, see IMDB Soundtracks .
• Belle of the Nineties (DVD)
• Sam Coslow. Cocktails for Two: The many lives of giant songwriter Sam Coslow New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1977
• (This section remains in preparation.)
• Ted Gioia The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire New York: Oxford University Press, 2012 .
• The complete, authoritative lyrics for "My Old Flame" can be found in:

Cite this page: "My Old Flame": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/m/my_old_flame.html