Cy's Lyrics And Lost Music
Cy's musical compositions were often the subject of collaboration with talented lyricists, including Herman Ackman, Edmund Anderson, Jimmy Dobson, Richard Kollmar, Alice Michel, Maurice Rose, Andrew Rosenthal, Chilton Ryan, and Alec Wilder. In certain cases, however, Cy wrote both the music and lyrics to his songs ‑‑ and happily, several were published and/or preserved in copyright filings with the Library of Congress (e.g., "Each Time I See You"; "I'm In Love With Everything (Cause You're In Love With Me"); "Nocturne"; and "This Is Love").
Perhaps the most famous of the songs in this latter category is "Some Fine Day", which Cy recorded with Mabel Mercer on an LP issued by Atlantic. Cy first wrote and published this song as "One Fine Day" in 1939; and then revised it to "Some Fine Day" in 1953. As Cam Walter recalls, the title change was made necessary by the existence of another then‑popular song entitled "One Fine Day". Bill Engvick, who collaborated as the lyricist on many fine songs with Alec Wilder, related to Mark Walter how Cy happily accepted a change Bill suggested to one lyric of Cy's original "One Fine Day".
The original composition contained the lyric, "I'm gonna say and do some things that ought to make you see how we're wasting time instead of tasting the sublimity that's waiting". In "Some Fine Day", this lyric became, "I'm planning to say and do some things that ought to make you see how we're wasting time instead of tasting the sublime that's waiting". Bill Engvick, in a remarkable display of memory given that, at age ninety, he was recalling an event that had transpired an half‑century earlier, related how Cy thought Bill's suggested change of "sublimity" to "sublime" a terrific substitution. (While the noun "sublimity" is perhaps the more correct grammatical usage for this sentence than the verbal or adjectival "sublime", the latter probably struck Cy as more familiar and as better for the lyric's flow. "Sublime", of course, also rhymes with the word "time" in the preceding clause.)
The song lyrics presented below were found together in a packet; they were typewritten on Cy's typewriter, almost certainly by him, and contain handwritten notations by Cy. Sadly, though some reference the accompanying music as written by Cy (i.e., "I Feel Fine"), to the Walter family's knowledge, no copies of the relevant sheet music exist. We can only speculate that the music was lost by Cy before his passing, a possibility that seems the more likely explanation given a news article found in his memorabilia. The article chronicled the sad event of Cy's accepting a late‑night offer of a lift on his way home from an NYC Sanitation truck driver. Cy accepted, but, to his dismay, realized when he got home that he had left behind in the truck a folio containing his only copies of many of his original compositions. The lyrics here may well be the remainder of what was then lost.
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