Lyr Add: Sing for your Supper

Subject: Lyr Add: Sing for your Supper
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Sep 23 - 11:05 AM

SING FOR YOUR SUPPER

lyrics by Lorenz Hart
music by Richard Rodgers

Verse / Intro:
Hawks and crows do lots of things
But the canary only sings
She is a courtesan on wings
So I've heard.
Eagles and storks are twice as strong
All the canary knows is song
But the canary gets along --
Gilded bird!

Chorus:
Sing for your supper and you'll get breakfast
Songbirds always eat
If their song is sweet to hear.
Sing for your luncheon and you'll get dinner
Dine with wine of choice
If romance is in your voice.

I heard from a wise canary
Trilling makes a fellow willing
So little swallow, swallow now
Now is the time to

Sing for your supper and you'll get breakfast
Songbirds are not dumb
They don't buy a crumb of bread,
It's said,
So sing and you'll be fed.

Coda
Sing for your supper and you'll get breakfast
Songbirds are not dumb
They don't have to buy a crumb of bread
A spool of thread
Just sing instead
You don't have to buy even a crumb of bread
It's said
You'll be fed, if you sing (scat singing)
If you dance
So sing, and you'll be fed!

Copyright 1938 by Chappell and Company
Copyright renewed


from The Boys from Syracuse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnEgFqhD8-0

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sing for your Supper
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Sep 23 - 11:16 AM

Shy, the book of memoirs by the late Mary Rodgers, daughter of composer Richard Rodgers,
is being celebrated for dishing the dirt on everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Stephen Sondheim. It's a very opinionated book.

I was stopped in my tracks by the opinion that Mary Rodgers volunteers
about the song "Sing for your Supper".
Here she is:

"Sing for your Supper" is a 1938 Rodgers and Hart song from The Boys from Syracuse, full of bird images that double as filthy double-entendres: "So, little swallow, swallow now."
-- page 213, chapter "Fair Game", Shy.


On the previous page, the author writes of waking up to this realization:
"... she doesn't have to have sex with someone just because they buy her a meal."

As to the context in The Boys from Syracuse, here is what the website
rodgersandhammerstein.com ventures to say:
"In this swinging trio from The Boys from Syracuse,
three neglected wives commiserate about the sweet song they must sing to keep their marriages afloat."

These subtleties were lost on me when I saw a fully staged production of The Boys from Syracuse years ago.
The show has some good tunes in it, not just this one but also
"Falling in Love with Love."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sing for your Supper
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Sep 23 - 06:53 PM

I forgot to mention that
The Boys from Syracuse is loosely adapted from
Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors
with two sets of long-lost twin brothers.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sing for your Supper
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Sep 23 - 01:40 AM

I knew a bit of that, but hadn't put it together to make sense of it. That's fascinating. Rodgers was good with Hammerstein, but he was better with Hart.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Sing for your Supper
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Sep 23 - 12:24 PM

Yes, Rodgers' daughter Mary has some opinions on her father's trajectory of achievements.
She points out that he was an alcoholic, a heavy drinker.
Ironically, the word she uses for what happened to his talent over the years is
"dried up."
First with Hart, when Rodgers was young.
Then Rodgers' mature years with Hammerstein.
Then Hammerstein dies,
and Rodgers' music seems to slowly die inside of him.
Tragic, when you think about it.