"Right as the Rain": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"Right as the Rain"

Bloomer Girl, a musical comedy with a political point-of-view, opened on Broadway as World War II was raging abroad. The show focused on heroic themes of the nation's present as will as its past, including The Civil War, slavery and women's rights. Yip Harburg, the show's liberal-minded lyricist was and still is well known as a songwriter deeply committed to progressive political causes. Evalina Applegate, the musical's heroine, shares his views and is created in the mold of her aunt Dolly (Amelia) Bloomer after whom is named the garment she invented to help women liberate themselves from Victorian restraints. Jeff Calhoun is the southern gentleman Evalina's father picks out for her but whom she refuses until he supports her political views and comes over to the Union side.

"Right as the Rain," the only love ballad in the score, was introduced in the original 1944 production of Bloomer Girl as a duet sung by David Brooks and Celeste Holm playing Jeff Calhoun and Evalina respectively. (Listen in Record/Video Cabinet at left).

Barbara Cook and Keith Andes sing two courtship songs from the February 28, 1956, NBC Producer's Showcase TV production of Bloomer Girl. First comes "Evalina" (a song from the show not currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook) and then "Right as the Rain."

Harold Meyerson and Ernie Harburg, Yip Harburg's biographers, write that Yip's approach to love songs was an attempt to include emotion while excluding banality. The songwriter himself wrote that like Ira Gershwin he eschewed "mushy love songs."

Mine may be a bit more emotional than his (Ira's--with whom he grew up] but still avoid the clichéd metaphor. . . . I needed a love song in Bloomer Girl, so I wrote "Right as the Rain." I didn't want to say, "Oh I love you forever. You are the spring and the blossoms." I said it more poetically: "Right as the rain that falls from above. . . ." It's a good, mature evaluation of a love situation not an attempt to compare feelings associated with love to a clichéd notion of romance . . . . It didn't say it's a miracle, sent by God, only something between us two. . . . It's a feeling on a plane of person to person, not riddled with myths or miracles (Myerson and Harburg, p. 201, Hard-bound Ed.).

Edward Jablonski, Arlen's biographer, makes the point that Bloomer Girl was different from more conventional musical comedies of the period and one of those differences was that there were only two ballads in the show and only one was a traditional love song.

"Evalina" (not the love ballad) is a "slightly comic but seductive" song, and true to Arlen's way the music is "witty" and "sophisticated" in its "variations on barber shop harmonies." But it is "Right as the Rain" that fits the more traditional idea of a love ballad even though its form is less than conventional:

Though it has the conventional thirty-two bar length, it divides, not into the usual A-A-B-A sections, but into even halves, each spinning variations on the initial (or "front" phrase) that gives the song its title. The second half introduces a rising sequence that reaches an emotional climax (measure 25) with the return of the initial phrase an octave higher. The chorus is followed by an eight-bar tag in which Evalina and Jeff blend their voices in a lovely closing statement that "this love, this love must go on" (Jablonski, pp. 194-195) . (Both Evalina and "Right as the Rain" can be heard in the video from the 1956 production above.)

Just before returning to the West Coast from New York in 1944, Arlen appeared (from his parents' home in Syracuse, NY), on Andre Kostelanetz' radio show "The Coca-Cola Hour" to introduce a medley from Bloomer Girl, which was followed by Eileen Farrell, before her career at the Metropolitan Opera, singing "a fine rendition" of "Right as the Rain" (Jablonski, pp. 194-195, hard cover edition)."

The lyric for Bloomer girl does not include a verse , which is not unusual in Arlen songs. Instead it launces directly into the refrain which begins with the title, and like a freshman composition begins with a thesis statement (albeit more poetic than most freshman work): Right as the Rain That falls from above So real, so right is our love The complete, authoritative lyric can be found on p. 200 of Harold Myerson's and Ernie Harburg's biography of Yip, Who Put the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz?: Yip Harburg, Lyricist .

• Barbra Streisand, Third Album: StreisandTribute
• Barbra Cook and Keith Andes: boinx1234
• Jack Jones: divadcrab12

Notes

• Other songs written for Bloomer Girls currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook :
• 1. The Eagle and Me
• Bloomer Girl original 1944 cast album

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