#peter matz

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Mama's Family Season 1 Opening and Closing Credits and Theme Song

TV Show Song of the day: Bless My Happy Home by Peter Matz (1983) #blessmyhappyhome #vickilawrence #petermatz #mamasfamily #80s

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Nöel Coward NÖEL COWARD IN NEW YORK

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Joel Grey - In My Life (Columbia)

wrt. Lennon & McCartney.

See The Beatles Funk Orchestra

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Peter Matz - It’s Too Late (Columbia)

wrt. Carole King, Flutes, 1972. - - - - - - - - - - - - > see Versions page.

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Song: 20th Century Blues

Artist: Noël Coward with Peter Matz and his Orchestra

Album: Noel Coward in New York

Record Label: Columbia Records ML 5163

Recorded: November 1956

Released: 1959

Location: Worley Winery

You'll here this song emanating from the phonograph at the front desk of Worley Winery. The tasting room has clearly seen better days. Mr. Worley has resorted to installing several turrets and security cameras to watch over patrons and his safe. Atlas will comment on how splicers wear masks to hide their shame.

This song is the third to last (ante-penultimate) on the second side of the album Noel Coward in New York.

The complete track list is as follows:

Side 1:

I Like America

Louisa

Half-Caste Woman

I Went to a Marvelous Party

Time and Again

Why Must the Show Go On

Side 2:

New York Medley:

Let's Say Goodbye

Teach Me to Dance Like Grandma

We Were Dancing

Sigh No More

Zigeuner

You Were There

Nevermore

I'll See You Again

What’s Going to Happen to the Tots

Sail Away

Wait a Bit, Joe

20th Century Blues

I Wonder What Happened to Him

The Party’s Over Now

This album was in the same tradition of Noel Coward at Las Vegas, released in 1955 (indeed, the same figure of Coward is used on both covers). Whereas the first was a live album, the second is a slightly less noisy studio album. It features again, a compilation of Coward's songs from his hit musicals of the 30s, but recorded with more contemporary arrangements.

In addition it includes songs from his more recent ventures, such as "What's Going to Happen to the Tots" with new lyrics which premiered on his 1955 television special with Mary Martin and selections from his 1960 musical Ace of Clubs.

"20th Century Blues" is from his 1931 play Cavalcade, which premiered in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in Covent Garden, London. The play was a lavish production centering on the lives of the Marryotts and their servants. The story covered the span of three decades from 1900 to New Year's Eve 1929 and interwove the events of the Relief of Mafeking, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic, and World War I.

As the album describes the song, it "rues the whole bloody hundred years."

Popular songs from each era were also used to great effect, including: Soldiers of the Queen", "Goodbye, Dolly Gray", "If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)", "Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty", and "Keep the Home Fires Burning".

The play was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1933. It became the source of inspiration for Upstairs, Downstairs which in turn inspired Downton Abbey.

Coincidentally, Noël Coward recorded a split record in 1931 on His Master's Voice (HMV) 4001. Both songs were written for Cavalcade: one side was Coward singing "Lover of my Dreams" (The Mirabelle Waltz), however the other was the Ray Noble Orchestra with Al Bowlly singing "20th Century Blues".

Noël Coward personified the epitome of English charm, wit, and style. His many plays and musicals took the theater crowd by storm while he was mentioned in "The Lady is a Tramp" as a symbol of class and sophistication.

Rising from humble beginnings, Coward took great pride in cultivating his image almost to a point of parody; his perennial silk dressing gown, elegant cigarette holder, and curiously clipped staccato diction developed from childhood to eradicate a slight lisp and to aid the failing hearing of his deaf mother.

Coward was born in Middlesex, a suburb of London, to Arthur Sabin Coward, a piano salesman, and Violet Agnes Veitch. His father lacked ambition, leaving the family in poor finances.

At the age of seven, he began performing in amateur concerts and attended the Chapel Royal Choir School. His ambitious mother sent him to a London dance academy and received his first professional engagement in January 1911 as Prince Mussel in the children's fairy play The Goldfish. At the age of 14 in 1912, he was cast as the Lost Boy Slightly in Peter Pan and became the protégé of painter Philip Streatfield. It was likely that Coward was his lover until his death from tuberculous in 1915. Throughout he life, Coward never wanted to publicly address his sexuality, keeping in with the conservative nature of his time and perhaps preferring the image of the congenital bachelor. Through Streatfield, Coward was introduced to Mrs. Ashley Cooper and high society.

During WWI, he was conscripted, but discharged from active service on health grounds. By 1920 at the age of 20, Coward starred in his own comedic play I'll Leave it to You. It was fairly well-received and ran for a month.

This marked the beginning of a long run of successful plays and television and acting career which are too numerous to mention here. Coward wrote more than three hundred songs, all typically intricate and witty. If he performed, no unnecessary word was spoken, no syllable was out of place.

Peter Matz with The Portraits in 1968, second from the left

Peter Matz was born in Pittsburgh and pursued a chemical engineering degree from UCLA. In college, he supported himself by playing woodwinds with area danced bands. After graduation, he decided to continue working in music and polished his piano skills in Parisian nightclubs and bars, including the famed Folies Bergère music hall, for two years.

In 1954, he moved to New York to study music theory and worked as a rehearsal pianist for Harold Arlen's House of Flowers. He was suitably impressed to arrange for Arlen's next musical Jamiaca. Arlen introduced Matz to singer and actress Marlene Dietrich. Again Dietrich was impressed enough to recommend Matz to Coward when his usual accompanist refused to work in Las Vegas where he was making his first appearance.

Matz recalled the audition as a harrowing experience, having never heard any of Coward's songs. He endured Coward's forceful work ethic and tricky transcribing of "The Trolley Song" to B major. He was accepted, but had to grow use to the new style of English music hall comedy, including not playing when Coward was telling a joke.

He successful transcribed Coward's songs from his hit musicals of the 20s and 30s for more contemporary jazz arrangements which can be heard on the 1955 Las Vegas album. He reprised his role for the New York album as well to great acclaim. In 1961, he arranged for Coward's Broadway show, Sail Away and continued to branch out into television as music director for The Jimmy Dean Show and the The Carol Burnett Show. He is possible most well known for his work arranging for Barbara Streisand on her 1963 record debut The Barbra Streisand Album, following up with the Grammy-award winning album People, the television special and album My Name is Barbra, and the film Funny Lady.

Listen to the "The Party's Over Now" here.

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"You're Gonna Hear From Me"

Most singers take this at a ballad tempo, but I far prefer this rendition by Shirley Bassey (with charts by Peter Matz).

It is the cornerstone of a playlist on my iPod called "Defiantly Happy."

(The music is by Andre Previn, with lyrics by Dory Previn. If you're not familiar with Dory's later work as a singer-songwriter, drop whatever you're doing and go seek out one of her albums. They will change your life. More on that at a later date.)