Paul McCartney goes the showtunes/standard route: Here’s our theater-oriented overview

Paul McCartney, who’s been impersonated in a host of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, from Beatlemania and Rain to Liverpool Fantasy, is releasing a “Songbook”-style album on February 7, covering early 20^th century pop standards.

It’s not a huge stretch for McCartney, who crooned Meredith Willson’s “Till There Was You” from The Music Man on the Meet The Beatles album and dabbled in big-band arrangements for his film Give My Regards to Broad Street (which has an old-school showtune reference right in its title).

The new album is called Kisses on the Bottom, after a double entendre found in the lyrics of the opening track, “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.”

The full track listing has just been released, and while there are few bonafide showtunes, there are several numbers which rub close to Broadway.

The album’s songs, in order:

1. I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter

2. Home (When Shadows Fall

3.  It’s Only A Paper Moon

4. More I Cannot Wish You

5. The Glory Of Love

6. We Three (My Echo, My Shadow And Me)

7. Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive

8. My Valentine

9.Always

10. My Very Good Friend The Milkman

11. Bye Bye Blackbird

12. Get Yourself Another Fool

13. The Inch Worm

14. Only Our Hearts

“I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” and “My Very Good Friend The Milkman” are both associated with Fats Waller, though Waller didn’t write either. “…Letter” appears in the Waller musical Ain’t Misbehavin’. The George Melly music-hall novelty tune “Milkman” was once covered by Eric Clapton, The Beatles’ guest soloist on “My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Clapton plays on two songs on the Kisses on the Bottom album (“Only Our Hearts” and “Get Yourself Another Fool”), but strangely not this one.

McCartney previously covered Home (When Shadows Fall) as a member of The Beatles. The band had the Harry Clarkson/Jeff Clarkson/Peter Van Steeden song in their repertoire from 1957-1960. Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole had recorded it by then, and Sam Cooke was to cover it in 1964.

“(It’s Only a) Paper Moon” was written by Harold Arlen & Yip Harburg (of Finian’s Rainbow and Wizard of Oz fame) with Billy Rose (lyricist, Broadway producer, Fanny Brice’s third husband) for the 1932 Ben Hecht/Gene Fowler melodrama The Great Magoo.

“More I Cannot Wish You” is the Guys & Dolls ballad. Given the circumstances of his break-ups with The Beatles and with his second wife, I guess it’s too much to ask for McCartney to cover “So Sue Me.

“The Glory of Love” acts like a rousing third-act show tune, yet wasn’t part of any show and had as great a success in the blues and R&B genres as it did with swing bands. Dennis Potter used it in his bittersweet nostalgia trip Pennies from Heaven.

“We Three” by Dick Robertson, Sammy Mysels and Nelson Cogane was a #1 hit for the Ink Spots in 1940.

The big-band staple “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” by Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen was used ironically in Dennis Potter’s negative-accentuated series The Singing Detective.

“Always” was famously written for the Marx Brothers’ first Broadway show The Cocoanuts, but nixed by the show’s co-author George S. Kaufman. It became one of Irving Berlin’s biggest hits. Groucho Marx mentions that, and sings a brief parody of “Always,” in his Carnegie Hall concert album. The Beatles’ friend Harry Nilsson covered “Always” on his groundbreaking songbook album A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night.

Ray Henderson & Mort Dixon’s “Bye Bye Blackbird” was a hit for Gene Austin in 1926. Bob Fosse used the Liza Minnelli TV special he directed, Liza with a Z, which led to the use of the number in the posthumous Broadway tribute show Fosse. (On a local note, Yale’s Whiffenpoofs a capella ensemble sings “Bye Bye Blackbird” in an episode of The West Wing).

“Get Yourself Another Fool” is a Charles Brown R&B hit from 1949, covered in the ‘60s by Arthur Conley and Sam Cooke and in the ‘80s by McCartney sometime songwriting collaborator Elvis Costello. (Costello’s version, originally released as a B-side in 1986, appears on the Out of Our Idiot and Singles Volume 3 compilations, as well as on the Rykodisc reissues of Goodbye Cruel World.)

“Inch Worm” is from the Danny Kaye film Hans Christian Andersen, a project overwhelmed with Broadway talent. The screenplay was by Moss Hart, punched up by Ben Hecht. The score was by Frank Loesser (Guys & Dolls). There’s an extraordinary version of this song by the TV comedian Ernie Kovacs, sung straightforwardly in a classroom setting. It was broadcast on The Comedy Channel in the early ‘90s but is not part of the new Kovacs box set released by Shout! Factory.

Two songs, “My Valentine” and “Only Our Hearts,” are McCartney originals. Stevie Wonder (whose love for pre-WW2 pop was demonstrated on his hit Duke Ellington shout-out “Sir Duke”) guests on “My Valentine.”

There are also a couple of bonus tracks on the “Deluxe CD” variation of Kisses on the Bottom:

• The Guy Wood/Robert Mellin composition “My One and Only Love,” popularized in 1953 by Frank Sinatra, in 1962 by Doris Day, in 1963 by John Coltrane, in 1991 by Rickie Lee Jones, in 1995 by Sting and in 2005 bny Chris Botti & Paula Cole.

• “Baby’s Request,” a cover of McCartney’s own song from Wings’ Back to the Egg album. The video for the Wings version has a WW2 atmosphere, and the song lends itself to elaborate harmony vocals.

The main backing band on the album is the same band which tours and records with Diana Krall (who, as it happens, is married to the aforementioned Elvis Costello). Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be any duplication whatsoever between Krall’s own standards-heavy catalogue (which comprise over a hundred cover tunes spread over a dozen albums since the mid-‘90s) and McCartney’s selections here.

To sum up: Two of these selections are by Frank Loesser, two are by Harold Arlen, two were popularized by Fats Waller, and two were featured in Dennis Potter TV series. Several are songs not written for Broadway shows but which ended up in Broadway shows anyway. Some are from movies involving major Broadway talents. At least three (“Accentuate,” “Home” and “Another Fool”) were previously covered by Sam Cooke. Fully half of the 16 songs (everything except “Home,” “Glory of Love,” “Milkman,” “Another Fool,” “Inchworm” and the three McCartney originals) were previously covered by Frank Sinatra.