ON THIS DATE In 1929, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians played Auld Lang Syne as a New Years Eve song for the very first time. Amazingly, though, despite the tune being the one the Lombardo band became most famous for, they never scored a hit with it! (They did, though, rack up some 218 others between 1927 and 1954.) In fact the only artists to ever score hits with Auld Lang Syne were the most popular bass vocalist of his time, Frank Stanley, in 1907 and The Peerless Quartet (which featured Stanley as their lead singer) in 1921: Guy Lombardo & his Orchestra didnt get around to recording Auld Lang Syne until 1939, when it appeared as the flip side of one of the bands lowest-selling hit singles: St. Louis Blues (Decca 2478). After that they recorded it several times more (for Capitol, etc.) and of course played it live (usually on radio and/or TV) every New Years Eve through 1976. The band played it without Guy for the first time in 1977 as he had died that November 5. Guy once joked that when I go, Im takin New Years Eve with me. He didnt do that, of course, but the song, with words set to a traditional melody by Robert Burns in 1788, lives on -- still striking the same emotional chord in all of us 226 years later. https://youtube/watch?v=FZYvFjM1ytQ
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 15:56:22 +0000
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