December’s Dardanella is something of a curiosity — Judy Garland sings, apparently for a live broadcast. I don’t know anything of the backstory that would account for this recording — it is simply yet another of those YouTube non sequiturs that are the objects of my endless fascination. The present video is a simple static shot of Judy; the recording is scratchy and quite low-fi. Nevertheless, for Dardanella fans (and maybe I’m the only one), it is an interesting document. Dig this, Chester:
Groovy, yes? And quite singular, in that Judy actually sings this Dardanella. Yes, friends, the song actually has lyrics. “Dardanella” is a song which is almost always, even in its earliest recordings, played as an instrumental, but in this version, Judy sings the actual lyric, or some of it, anyway. She skips the verse in favor of the chorus, to wit:
Oh sweet Dardanella, I love your harem eyes
I’m a lucky fella to capture such a prize
Oh Allah knows my love for you, and he tells you to be true
Dardanella, Oh hear my sigh, my Oriental
Oh sweet Dardanella, prepare the wedding wine
There’ll be one girl in my harem when you’re mine
We’ll build a tent, Just like the children of the Orient
Oh sweet Dardanella, my star of love divine
And with this, a bit of the Dardanella mystery unravels. “Dardanella,” you discover, is a girl’s name, and you learn that that girl is beautiful, and “Oriental,” and the song contains references to Allah, and harems, and the romance of places a long ways off from here. Go back to the popular music of the early part of the 20th century, and you’ll find it rife with exotic maidens of various types — hula girls, Indian princesses, sleepy-eyed ladies in opium dens, and so on. “Dardanella” is a song of a type. But that chorus is the only glimpse we get of it, for now.
In this video, the song is essentially rewritten from this point Judy finishes that chorus. This new version then becomes an occasion for playing an old popular song in the newly popular manner, and by that, we mean Swing, baby! This Dardanella is not as an ode to an alluring princess, but an object of nostalgia recast for a new era. If Judy had two turntables and a microphone, she’d be sampling the original shellac 78s. By the time we return to the chorus, the lyrics are jazzed up, and the song is shifted to an uptempo swing rhythm. In the second chorus, we love Dardanella, not for her “harem eyes,” but for the way she “jives.” Whatever that means. And by that, I mean, like, far out, man.
Over the passage of years — and Judy’s version here is far closer in time to the original recordings than we are to Judy’s — this effort to “modernize” a song held as quaint and nostalgic has itself become such.
Nothing we can do about that. Time does its evil work, and we are all doomed to the same fate. Yes, in spite of all our striving to be hep, we will all, eventually, seem sweet and old-fashioned one day. And maybe the more so because of our striving.
