It's Only a Paper Moon

I have always loved swing music. It's just so lively and fun to dance along! The above is an audio clip of my favorite swing songs, "It's Only a Paper Moon," led by Benny Goodman and sung by Dottie Reid. While Goodman recorded this in 1945 (and the song has been recorded by numerous popular musicians), "If You Believed in Me" (as it was originally titled) was written by pianist/composer Harold Arlen and lyricist Yip Harburg for the 1932 Broadway show The Great Magoo, a straight play but in it had that one song. Lasting only eleven performances, The Great Magoo was a flop of a show. However, that was not the end for Arlen and Harburg, who continued to work together. Their song featured in the score for the 1933 film Take a Chance, when the song officially became known as "It's Only a Paper Moon." Arlen and Harburg later went on to create the music to the legendary 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

Benny Goodman, a bandleader and clarinetist, took swing music into the mainstream in 1935 once he started performing arrangements he purchased from Fletcher Harrison, one of the first real swing artists. Goodman, a white man, incorporated many black musicians into his band, helping the music industry to slowly begin integrating. Just before World War II swing jazz was the most popular music genre in America, and people danced to the music of swing bands throughout the 1940's. Swing music also showed the public that women, not just men, could be talented musicians, and many women got to make their start in music while men were overseas in the war. Sadly, though, women of the 1940's and 1950's are largely left out of the history of swing/jazz music.

http://www.jazzstandards.com/compositions-1/itsonlyapapermoon.htm

http://americasmusic.tribecafilminstitute.org/session/view/swing-jazz