The 1945 movie State Fair was the only original film score written by composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Their other films were adapted from stage plays. “It Might As Well Be Spring,” sung in the film by Dick Haymes and dubbed for Jeanne Crain by Louann Hogan, won the Best Song Oscar that year. Other memorable songs in the movie include “That’s for Me” and “It’s a Grand Night for Singing.” The 1945 movie was a remake of a 1933 non-musical film starring Will Rogers and Janet Gaynor. In 1962, two years after Hammerstein’s death, the film was remade with Pat Boone, Bobby Darin, Pamela Tiffin, and Ann-Margaret with additional songs and lyrics by Rodgers.
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The song was featured on the radio show Your Hit Parade 14 times, three times in first place, and it charted three times:
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In his autobiography Musical Stages, Richard Rodgers says that he wrote the number at a bright tempo, but the film’s musical director wanted it performed as a slow ballad. The studio promised to reshoot the scene if the ballad tempo didn’t work. It did, and the songwriters were overruled.
Unlike Lorenz Hart, who wrote lyrics to fits Rodgers’ music, Hammerstein wrote the lyrics first and Rodgers set them to music. Rodgers explains how he composed music to amplify the meaning of the words. “The first lines are: ‘I’m as restless as a willow in a wind storm,/I’m as jumpy as a puppet on a string.’ Taking its cue directly from these words, the music itself is appropriately restless and jumpy. Moreover, since the song is sung by a young girl who can’t quite understand why she feels the way she does, I deliberately ended the phrase on the uncertain sound of the F natural (on the word ‘string’) rather than on the more positive F sharp.”
William Zinsser, in Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs, says “Hammerstein’s lilting lyric for ‘It Might as Well Be Spring’...led Rodgers by the hand to one of his most delicate melodies.” In his book Can’t Help Singin’ Gerald Mast sums up the perfect blend of words and music in the song, referring to the songwriters’ teamwork as “musical-verbal onomatopoeia.” “The meanings and sounds of Hammerstein’s words are inseparable from the sounds and feelings of Rodgers’ music.”
In Reading Lyrics, editors Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball say of the lyricist, “Hammerstein’s simple and sincere lyrics, carefully wrought, if at times edging toward corniness, reflected the late-war and post-war mood of America and have kept their power over us....”
The verse sets the restless mood of the song: “The things I used to like I don’t like anymore” and “I sit around and mope.’” Brother and sister, played by Haymes and Crain, are preparing to attend the annual fair with the family. Neither is looking forward to the trip and both are wishing for more excitement in their lives. They equate the mood to spring fever: “I’d say that I had Spring fever, But I know it isn’t Spring.” Happily both of them fall in love at the fair.
In her book Hollywood Sings!: An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Academy Award-Nominated Songs, Susan Sackett relates a story about the song’s title. “Hammerstein thought that the heroine...should be in a spring-feverish mood, but state fairs are held in summer or fall, not spring. After mulling it over, he asked Rodgers’ opinion, complaining to his partner, ‘It might as well be spring,’ since that’s how she was feeling. ‘That’s it!’ shouted the composer.”
Not only has the song been sung by such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Mel Torme, it has captured the interest of young vocalists Stacey Kent and Karrin Allyson, who lends it an unusual samba beat on her CD I Didn’t Know About You. The song is also popular with instrumentalists such as guitarist Mark Elf and guitarist/vocalist John Pizzarelli; pianists Brad Mehldau and Jacky Terrasson; organist Richard “Groove” Holmes; trumpeter Donald Byrd; and bassist Jay Leonhart. Saxophonists Frank Morgan and Ike Quebec titled albums after the song.
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