Wish You Were Here

Yesterday I was at my daughter Dino's house with JB, all 11 active months of him, and suddenly a song I hadn't heard or sung in years -- decades? -- welled up from nowhere and I started singing it, kind of belting it out actually:

Certain individuals

Are walking on a rosy cloud

And certain individuals

Are talking to themselves out loud. . .

I couldn't remember all the words but I made it to the end humming the parts I had forgotten. I furrowed my brow -- where is that song from? I kept coming back to a Broadway oldie, Wish You Were Here. My dad completely raised us on Broadway shows, and I could picture the album cover, which like all Broadway albums in our house, was played frequently. 

Our album must have been a 60s reissue; here is the real original with its truly 50s vibe:

When I got home I commenced a trusty Google search and yes indeed, the song is from Wish You Were Here, which ran for about 600 performances in 1952-53. The setting for the play is a two-week summer camp for adults in the Catskills, most memorably with a real swimming pool built into the stage! I imagine my father going to see the show in his second or third year of med school, before he met my mother.

Now for the lyrics. The title song lyrics were easy to find (in fact, Wish you Were Here was a hit for Eddie Fisher), at least once I narrowed my search to eliminate the Pink Floyd song of the same name, but Certain Individuals? Not so much. But thank you Jaime Weinman for blogging about this very song back in 2005: "My favorite song in the show is a throwaway, 'Certain Individuals,' sung by the second female lead and a chorus of women, teasing the heroine for being so obviously in love." And yes, thank you again, Jaime, for including the lyrics! Last but not least, I was able to track down the song as sung in the original cast recording on You Tube. Those deep memory furrows being what they are, I remembered every inflection and expression. And the lyrics? (courtesy of composer Harold Rome, who also wrote the score to Fanny - we had that album too). Here they are:

Certain individuals
Are walking on a rosy cloud,
And certain individuals
Are talking to themselves out loud.
Grinning like a birthday kid
With a brand-new toy,
Looking like Columbus did
When he said "Land ahoy!
(America!)"
Oh, oh, what we know
That we're not telling of,
About certain individuals
Fresh in -- pardon the expression -- love.

Certain individuals
Are feeling like a highness royal,
And certain individuals
Are reeling like they just struck oil.
Shining like a diamond pin
On a diamond chain,
Bubbling like the bubbles in
A glass of two cents plain.
(Or raspberry.)
Oh, oh, what we know
That we're not telling of,
About certain individuals
Fresh in -- pardon the expression -- love.

Jaime Weinman again:

"That's good lyric writing: simple yet cleverly rhymed, suggestive of everyday speech without being a carbon copy of it, full of specific images and fresh takes on familiar expressions."

A fun diversion at a time when fun diversions are sorely needed. And now to teach it to my grandsons. . . .