The song of the day for Wednesday, December 31, 2014 is “The Party’s Over.”
About This Song
With music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, “The Party’s Over” is one of the hit songs from the 1956 musical Bells Are Ringing. The song was introduced by Judy Holliday, who won the Tony award for her performance.
About This Version
Tony Bennett recorded “The Party’s Over” for his 1959 album Hometown, My Town. It was arranged and conducted by Ralph Burns. Hometown, My Town tells the story of a young man starting out in Manhattan, falling in love and losing that love in the end, with this song as the final song on the album.
About Today
The composer of “The Party’s Over,” Jule Styne, was born December 31, 1905 in London, UK. The son of immigrants from The Ukraine, his family moved to Chicago when Jule was eight years old. He started piano lessons and proved to be a prodigy, appearing with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old. While in his teens, Mike Todd (who later became a producer in Hollywood), commissioned Styne to write a song for an act he putting on and Styne found his career as a songwriter. He went to Hollywood and wrote for films Three Coins in a Fountain and My Sister Eileen. In 1947, he began work on a series of highly successful musical comedies produced in New York: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Bells Are Ringing, Gypsy, Do Re Mi and Funny Girl, among others. Gypsy is widely considered to be one of the greatest musicals ever written. Styne died in 1994 at the age of 88.
“The Party’s Over,” as well as Hometown, My Town, is available from iTunes.
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