Someone to Watch Over Me

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts Oh the piano! Have a guess what name the piano is? No prize is anybody, it's Ella. Hi, my name is Lynn McKay, I'm also known as Lynn Lawrence when I perform, I'm a professional entertainer and this is my 50th year of entertaining people. These days I mostly entertain on cruise ships and I love it, I love travelling the world, meeting amazing people, go to amazing places all because I can sing a bet. I love a ballad, I like making them cry, I like telling the story, I like gripping them, I love the challenge of walking into a room that's loud and noisy and making them listen. My mum and dad loved music, they were really extensive record collection of old 33s. One of the albums they had, they bought, I think it was 1959, it came out, Ella sings Gershwin and every Sunday when my mum was cooking a dad would come in from the garden, that album would go on. (piano music) ♪ There's a saying old says and love is blind ♪ ♪ Still we're often told seeking you shall find ♪ Maybe it was the Tomb Raver voice and maybe it sounded to me as a little toddler like she was actually telling me a story, but for some reason even as a little toddler, I don't know why, someone to watch over me had a huge impact on me and I started to sing along with Ella Fitzgerald. ♪ I cannot forget ♪ ♪ Only man I ever think of with regret ♪ Nobody sings it like Ella Fitzgerald. ♪ I'd like to add his initial to my monogram ♪ It's a narrative song, you know, it's all about the story and I think as a little child, I must have tuned in to that, it sounded like the same Tomb Raver that my mum and my dad would use when they were telling me a nighttime story. The soft voice, the soft music. It was lovely, I loved it. ♪ There's a somebody I'm longing to see ♪ ♪ I hope that he turns out to be ♪ ♪ Someone who watch ♪ ♪ Over me ♪ When I started to have piano lessons, I remember I couldn't wait to be able to play it. It took a while, it took several years, but the day I think I must have beaten about 10 or 11, and I remember being so thrilled myself that I could play it and my mum and dad clapped and they were singing and I remember they started dancing as well. And I remember thinking, "Are they dancing?" 'Cause I played in the piano and I was singing this song. I was only 10 or 11, but I remember the feeling was profound. ♪ Although he may not be the man song ♪ ♪ Girls think of his handsome ♪ ♪ Too mighty carries ♪ When it was first written, it was a duality up tempo number. It was 26th, 20th, 26th, something like that. - It's from musical, yeah. I'm Juliet Pochen and I'm a music producer and composer. - And I'm James Morgan and I'm a music producer and a conductor. (piano music) When it was slowed down, Sinatra slowed it down to the Vorella, but particularly Ella's version has become possibly the best known version of the song. This was the first actual album she did for "Verve" in 1950. (piano music) - It was Ira Gershwin, who said once he'd heard Ella's version of the song, he hadn't realized how good his songs were. - When Ira Gershwin wrote it, he wrote it from the point of view of his wife. He was very empathetic to how a woman sought. So I think him and his wife must have had a great relationship 'cause they were together a long, long time. And I think because of that, he divided this intuitive way of writing for a woman to sing and words that a woman would be able to get away with singing, whereas maybe a man, not quite so much. (piano music) The song was originally written for a musical called "O, K," separate words. And the star of that was a British musical theater star called "Gurtrude Lawrence." So this is in 1926, it was pre-second World War. And in the scene where she sings the song, she holds a rag doll close to her. And she sings the song to her. It's a sad sounding song, you know, but it's not a sad song, it's about hope. She's hoping that there is somebody out there for her, whoever that might be, you know. And we all think that, and we, he won the Pulitzer Prize for writing. It's like a poem, the song is like a poem. And he uses words that would be using a poem, not in a song. Ye, ye shaw. I mean, that's such an old school thing to do, but in context of the song, it absolutely works perfectly, you know? ♪ There's a saying on ♪ ♪ She says the love is blind ♪ ♪ Still we're off at all ♪ ♪ Seek any shall find ♪ ♪ So I'm going to seek a certain land ♪ Back in 2017, we had just made actually a very successful record for Dame Vierilin, where we'd extracted her voice and added on a New Orchestra to it. And it had gone very well, and we thought, "What else could we do this with?" And we have both, ever since we met, had a love of Ella Fitzgerald's music. We always used to listen to it as students. My sister used to go to Mac, because we only had about six CDs. And one of them was Ella Fitzgerald and I used to play it every time anyone came around for dinner or lunch. We played that song to death over a period of decades. We knew it all backwards, you know. We had all the harmony in our head, because we lived with it for so long. So we contacted Verve, they own all of the masters. So they gave us her vocals, all of her back catalogue, and we were able to go through all of her songs and select the songs that we wanted to use. It's not quite true that we were able to select the songs that we wanted to see. There was a bum fight about it a little bit. The track that we managed to win was someone to watch over me. That was the one that we really absolutely loved. I think we traded Misty for that one, didn't we? Then the whole album was actually called "Someone to Watch Over Me". So we recorded this with the London Symphony Orchestra in Abbey Road 1, the big massive studio at Abbey Road. I was in the control room and James was out front conducting the orchestra and I said let's record the introduction separately because it moves around so much and then we'll start a fresh from the chorus. So we did that and umbernates to us because of that ending where you just have to go to the G major chord. The orchestra put down their instruments and went "It all sang it!" And it was incredibly moving and to my horror even today I'd press stop. So we can't play you that but we can tell you that it was incredibly moving. You can imagine it because we've just got the violins on their own. [Music] Hearing her vocal pretty much on its own with just a piano in the background it was extraordinary experience. It was eerie. Eerie and you also realise what a fantastic vocalist she was because of course nowadays when we record somebody we've got all sorts of tricks. We can edit anything, we can tune anything, we can move anything. [Music] There was one note that we thought was out of tune so we thought we'd now have the technology we should tune it and so we did and then it didn't sound right. It wasn't as good. It wasn't as good so we went back. Yeah. [Music] Someone do watch me. [Music] [Music] My name is Nika Strunk. I'm a lawyer in Southampton, New York. I love music and I love writing and I love the song "Someone to Watch Over Me." My first recollection of hearing someone to watch over me was my dad playing it at the piano. I think I was around 12 years old. My dad was a pianist, he was a composer, professor of music, and we spent a tremendous amount of time together. At the piano, he played songs we sang together and I remember very well when he introduced me to the song "Someone to Watch Over Me." He loved it. He had developed a phrasing or harmony and chord progression for the verse, which was very beautiful the way he played it. My dad was someone who was a very unique person, certainly was not the easiest father for me to have. He was different in amazing and wonderful ways and he was different in very, very problematic ways. I remember when I was in high school and he said to me, "You know, it's great that you have friends. I never had friends." He was a person who I think really had a difficult road in life. We're talking late 1970s, early 1980s and I don't think there was any understanding at all of neurodiversity or the autistic spectrum. I think he had emotional disabilities, social disabilities. Within the family, that was very problematic. There was just tremendous conflict, especially between my parents. He didn't get it. He didn't get my mother's emotions. If she wanted to speak to him, he told her to make an appointment. He couldn't deviate from his routine to have a conversation with his wife about something that was important to her. And at that time, my parents were in the process of getting divorced. It was an emotional time, but he didn't really express his emotions. And he was my dad and I had complete love for him, just adored him as a young child. As I became older and I started to notice his differences and I needed more support from him, it became very difficult. You couldn't appeal to him emotionally. But there were other ways in which he was very supportive and really it came down to our connection, primarily through music. Those hundreds of hours together at the piano, sharing songs. To me, it begins in a kind of light way. There's a saying old says that love is blind, so we're often told, "Sikinisha, I'll find." And then it says, "I'd like to add his initial to my monogram. Tell me where is the shepherd for this lost lamb." To me, that's kind of a turn. I heard him singing, "Tell me where is the shepherd for this lost lamb." It was so poignant, it was almost like he was crying. Your father is supposed to be someone to watch over you. In most ways, he was not someone to watch over me. He was not someone who was really capable of watching over me in the way of a typical father. He just mentioned casually, "You know, I really never wanted to get married and have kids. I just did it to avoid the draft." I thought, "Oh, he doesn't realize that that might make me feel bad." Didn't occur to him. But there are many ways in which I know he loved me. He himself, in his own way, needed someone to watch over him. And so when I heard him sing the song, I was able to appreciate him on a different level and to really hear in his voice. It was like a credecker. Tell me where is the shepherd for this lost lamb that he needed guidance. There were things that he didn't understand and he felt ashamed of not understanding things that other people understand as easily as they breathe air, social and emotional signals. And I did hear it when he sang that song. I really heard it, how difficult his road had been and how much he wanted help and kind of cried for help. He died about ten years ago. I knew that we did have a deep connection and that he did love me deeply and that he did want me. And as a child, when I heard him sing that line in particular, I saw him in a new light. It was so deep and so longing and so sad on my dad's part. He struggled. But he also had access to immense musical beauty. Really. It has a sense of longing. Unrecorded love and longing about it. And yet it doesn't feel sad particularly once you get from the verse into the chorus. Is that amazing transition? It's the introduction actually. It's a bit darker than the verse when she gets into the chorus. It suddenly goes to the major. You could even play it. So the original transition from verse into chorus is. But the version we used, "Ely Slarkins" that Lesbury Pinnest did a kind of darker thing. You get a lovely melting into the chorus. Melting is amazing. The slowing of the tempo and adding some eluscio harmonies just gives you that sense of longing and nostalgia. See it into nostalgia. What I love about it is the positivity haven't met yet, but you know that when you do meet them and the right one, it's going to be amazing. We all know what it's going to feel like, but you just are waiting for the right person to come along. What I like about it. I think a big part of me finally acknowledging my sexuality was allowing myself to find a man to fall in love with and to declare that and also far more challengingly to allow myself to be loved by another man. And that was a huge part of my journey. My name is Nicholas McAnone. I'm a writer and a teacher. I met my now ex-wife at university. I think when we got married, I told her I thought that I was bisexual, but I wasn't one of those gay dads that felt trapped in a marriage from the off-off from it. I think we had a successful marriage and we have two really amazing children. My ex-wife's a psychologist, so she was really brilliant at creating a safe space in which the inevitable separation could happen and also how he would tell the children. So I'm incredibly grateful for that, but undoubtedly there was a transitional period that was very difficult. How could it not? Both my children, I think, looked at my ex-wife and myself as somehow having a kind of ideal relationship. I've always been a huge music fan and my taser incredibly varied in Catholic. I bought a copy of Elephant's Childs Things Gershwin and I think I was introduced to the song that way. I went to see Sarah Vaughan in concert. She sang a version of this that really, really made a deep impression. I've had it in my mind. Looking everywhere, haven't found him yet. He's the bigger fan. I can't. I separated and got divorced and then in 2014 about six months after it was made legal. I got married to my husband, Jordan. We had a wonderful ceremony at Wonsworth Town Hall and then a reception. I'd ask friends to do certain things. Say for example, my dear friends, Tony and Sarah, enacted this extraordinary ritual where they got everybody to message someone they loved whilst we were there in a circle. Messes someone you love and tell them how much you love them right now. And in the silence, you could just hear all the little phone messages going off. It was a wonderful kind of magical quality and then my daughter Grace, who has a wonderful voice, stepped up and sang this song and so it has huge personal resonance for me, watching my daughter sing that song at an event where I was finally allowed to completely be myself declare my love for this man and be amongst a group of friends. Who could see that? It was very powerful. There's two lines I picked out, one which is the little lamb who's lost in the wood, which again for me carries that wonderful kind of tension. A little lamb is something to pick up and fluffy and cuddly, but also a little lamb is what the wolf pounces on. So I felt that was really powerful. And I love also that line put on some speed. So my lead, it's like a gentle encouragement. I'm here, I'm waiting for you. I will always be waiting for you. Never doubt that I'm here. Come to me now. It feels to me that it's a song about finding someone to protect and guard and cherish and nurture you. My husband is younger than me, he's 15 years younger, so there's that element where I feel that I'm the someone watching over him, caring for him, nurturing him, but also it express my yearning to be that someone whom somebody else could watch over, nurture and love. And I think after 45 years that was quite a struggle to get to that place. This song feels to me like part of the soundtrack to managing to get there. Whenever I hear it, I always have to sit down and listen to it. It marks a moment in time that was really, really important to me. It brought together family, friends, my husband, and a declaration of love. So like a lot of musicians that are places that I've always wanted to play, and I'm very, very fortunate. I'm old enough to have played most of them. But one of the places I always dreamt of playing was Birdland in New York. And I thought, 'I'll be great to go there.' My friend who lives in New York, she said, 'Well, we can go there.' Because if you can stay till Monday, they've got what they call the cast party, where all the cast come in from all the Broadway shows as they close, they all do a party piece type thing, you know. And we went there on the Monday night, and Jim Caruso is legendary in New York, and he hosts this party. He's been going since 2004. So we went in and we put my name on the list. And I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was like a really 1970s old cabaret room with the lamps on the tables and the chinch tablecloth. I loved that sort of place. But as the night wore on, it became apparent to me that I wasn't going to be called, because there was too many people, too many names on the list. So I didn't hold out about Chop. And then he said, 'There are only two more singers to come on before we have our grand finale.' And then he said, 'Well, that's it. We're going to finish it out tonight with a lady who's flown all the way from Wales.' And I looked at my friend and she looked at me and said, 'Oh my God, that's me, you know, oh my goodness.' As he said it, I vividly remember thinking, 'Rong song.' And then it came to me in a blinded in flash. I know this sounds stupid, and I know it sounds over dramatic, but I swear it's absolutely true. I felt like a warm blanket, just lowered itself onto me and wrapped me up. I only thought somebody to watch over me.' And I started to say, you know, 'There's a saying old, and literally within the first two bars of silence, the whole room and God's, I could feel the silence.' And I thought, 'Oh, this is going to be good. This is really going to be good.' And it gave me one of the best nights of my life. That song is responsible for one of my best memories ever. Because there I was, this girl from Swansea that nobody had ever heard of. And I'm singing out of this jarred in New York at Birdland, where she also performed. So I've got a lot of thank the Gershwin's for, and I've got a lot to thank that song for, because I'll never forget that night and I'll never forget the feeling. And when I finished, it was that classic thing where there was like a split second silence and then the place just erupted and they were on their feet, the band were clapping. And I couldn't get back to my seat because people were stopping me and introducing themselves. And people were saying, 'You've got to come back, you've got to play here. You need to come and play at my place, you need to come over.' And I thought, 'This is it. This is my way into America.' And then my mum became terribly ill. And so I couldn't follow up on these amazing opportunities because my mum was very poorly and I had to stay and look after her. And then it was the pandemic. So I missed my chance, but I didn't miss my chance that night. I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood. It was about my dad when I first started singing it. I wasn't my dad, to always be the man in my life and look after me. But now it's even more maybe poignant or profound with me, I don't know. But as I was researching a little bit about the Gershwin's two brothers, I gave birth to two brothers. Sadly we lost one of them. And now when I sing it, I wonder to myself, 'Is Ross watching over us? Is he a player? Is he watching over his brother Scott? Is he watching over me?' I hope so. I'd love to think that. I don't know. Of course nobody knows for sure. But when I'm singing it now, my mind goes to a different place again now. And the song now hasn't even deeper meaning to me. That's one of the strengths of music. You can hear a song when you're happy and then hear the same song when you're sad. And that song will mean something completely different to you. And it will touch you in a way it didn't touch you before.