Fred Astaire's 'Swing Time' Recordings

We continue our series of the commercial recordings associated with Fred Astaire's films with Swing Time from 1936. Unlike the last post, devoted to A Damsel in Distress, this film has Ginger Rogers as Fred's love interest.

Swing Time is considered one of Fred and Ginger's best films, and the dancing and music are extraordinary. However, the plot is contrived and the viewer has to contend with Victor Moore, who was inexplicably popular as a side-kick character at the time. That said, the cast also features the great Helen Broderick and Eric Blore. The two appeared in three Astaire-Rogers films, as did Edward Everett Horton, who is not in Swing Time.

Johnny Green

Unlike Follow the Fleet, Top Hat and Carefree, Ginger Rogers made no commercial recordings of the songs from this film (as far as I can tell). Pianist-bandleader Johnny Green took up the slack, however, with a recording of "The Waltz in Swing Time" and a two-sided medley of the movie's Jerome Kern songs, all of which are in the download.

Green's piano and orchestra also provide the backing for Astaire's records. Green is joined by future bandleader Dave Terry for the duo-piano medleys.

As with most if not all Astaire films, the score delivered a few songs that have become standards - here, "The Way You Look Tonight" and "A Fine Romance." A few others have achieved some renown - "Pick Yourself Up" and "Never Gonna Dance." All are graced by the excellent lyrics of Dorothy Fields.

As a bonus I've added a 1941 recording by the Gordon String Quartet of "The Way You Look Tonight," from the second of the ensemble's two Kern albums. Quartet namesake Jacques Gordon was a former concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony. Violist William Lincer was to become the New York Philharmonic's principal in a few years. Cellist Fritz Magg had been the Met Opera principal.

To-night vs. Tonight

If you examine the 78 labels carefully, you'll notice that the Astaire recording spells "The Way You Look To-night" with an hyphen (as does the sheet music). By the 1941 Gordon recording, that hyphen had been abandoned.  Someone has done research on this phenomenon, and found that the written usage of the hyphen in "to-night" (and "to-day") was surpassed by the simplified spellings in the early '30s, to the point that the hyphenated versions are seldom if ever seen today.

The sound on these items is good. They originated with Internet Archive and were cleaned up by me. The download includes refurbished stills, posters and lobby cards.