"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

Cafe Songbook Reading Room

"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most"

About the Origins of the Song

Tommy Wolf: Wolf was a pianist, composer, arranger, and musical director who met Fran Landesman while she was sitting in the bar of the Crystal Palace, a night club in St. Louis, while he was on the bandstand playing. This experience inspired her to begin writing song lyrics and in 1952, Wolf began setting her lyrics to music. More Landesman–Wolf collaborations followed including the melodies for "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" and the score for the Broadway musical The Nervous Set.

Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf 1950s
Fran Landesman and
Tommy Wolf c. 1952
(courtesy of StlMag.com)

Storyville Presents
Jackie and Roy
(CD and vinyl)

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Bob Dorough
Small Day Tomorrow
Fran Landesman Revisited

Amazon

Bob Dorough co-wrote many songs with Fran Landesman and "the results were a finely tuned balance of her acidic, edgy wit" and their ability to fashion hip lyrics. His uniquely eccentric vocal style fit them to a "T."
" They were part of a perhaps less celebrated but no less respected group of songwriters who kept producing new works for jazz and cabaret singers after Berlin, Arlen, Kern, Gershwin, Porter and Rodgers stopped writing music. The American Songbook kept growing, as Dorough, David Frishberg, Alec Wilder, Fran Landesman, and others continued to write memorable songs." (adapted quotation from NPR.org)

Given that lyricists of The Great American Songbook are often inclined to include irony in their work, it is not surprising that spring as used in their songs is often linked to pain rather than to the sweetness, joy and light more commonly associated with that season. Richard Rodger's two most celebrated lyricists both employ an irony related to spring. In his lyric for "Spring Is Here," Lorenz Hart gets rattled because even though spring has arrived his heart is not dancing and the breeze does not delight him. In the song's verse he writes, "Now April, May and June / Are sadly out of tune." And Oscar Hammerstein in his lyric for "It Might as Well Be Spring" also finds himself discombobulated by having feelings he has always associated with spring when "it isn't even spring." Fran Landesman's attention was piqued by an irony of spring in T. S. Eliot's prototypical modernist poem "The Wasteland" of 1921, which was virtually required reading for all liberal arts students of the mid twentieth century. Eliot's poem begins with the painfully ironic statement, "April is the cruellest month"; and Landesman having grown up in the shadow of that poem, and her life as a poet and lyricist having begun during the Beat period of the 1950's found herself challenged by a desire to express Eliot's irony in the "hip" language of her own era -- and came up with "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most."

In the early 1950s Fran had moved with her husband Adam Landesman from New York to St. Louis where their lives became immersed in Adam's newly founded club The Crystal Palace, a very hip spot in Gaslight Square. As the story goes, Fran, while sitting at the club's bar listening to jazz pianist Tommy Wolf play,* decided to show him her new poem. Wolf, undoubtedly recognizing how "hip" the poem was, set it to music. Not long afterwards, among the many famous and very "hip" people who visited the club was jazz pianist George Shearing who heard Wolf and Landesman perform the song and liked it so much that he taped it and brought it back to New York. There he showed it to the very "hip" young performers Jackie and Roy (Jackie Cain and Roy Kral) who in 1955 recorded it and put it on their very first album, Storyville Presents Jackie and Roy (See a and listen at right.). The rest, as they say, is history: "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" became a first class jazz standard recorded by all those "hip" singers and musicians listed in the right column on this page as well as many more. One of them, Irene Kral, younger sister of Roy Kral (of Jackie and Roy) recorded it in 1974 -- a peerless version of great beauty featured on the Cafe Songbook Main Stage above.
(*Another version of the story has Fran giving her new poem to Tommy Wolfe while he was playing at the Jefferson Hotel in St. Louis in 1951, which would have predated the opening of the Crystal Palace.)

Poet and lyricist Fran Landesman traces her history back to Saint Louis in the 1950s when she and her husband Adam Landesman moved to the city's West End and there founded the Crystal Palace nightclub in Gaslight Square. The legendary club welcomed the hippest young acts of the era, mostly before they became well known to the rest of the world. Among its performers were Lenny Bruce, The Smothers Brothers, Del Close (later of Second City fame), a very young Woody Allen and an even younger Barbra Streisand.

Bob Dorough (vocal and piano)
"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most"
from his album Right on My Way Home (1997).

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Critics Corner

book cover: "The Jazz Standards" by Ted Gioia

Ted Gioia
The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire
New York:
Oxford University Press, 2012.

Ted Gioia considers Tommy Wolfe to be"an exceptional songwriter. . . . one of the most talented of his generation." Gioia continues, "Wolf benefited enormously from the contributions of lyricist Fran Landesman who wrote the words for his best songs. ' For "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," Wolf responded to Landesman's words by creating "a poignant melody that gave emotional depth to Landesman's arch lyrics." Gioia continues, "There is much to admire here, with both the main theme and the bridge sustaining the poignancy of the piece; but I especially like Wolf's clever alteration of the final restatement of the A theme, which briefly hints at a modulation down a fifth before retuning to the tonic key."

Gioia also comments:

At one point, the lyrics make playful reference to "Spring is Here" [by Rodgers and Hart], but in its serpentine motion this piece reminds me of still another cherished "spring" standard by Richard Rodgers [with lyric by Oscar Hammerstein]: "It Might As Well Be Spring." I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Wolf used the earlier song as a role model. In any event, Wolf and Landesman created something here that rises above their ambitions for a hipster's ode to spring. It works a a dramatic monologue turned ballad that can serve as the emotional centerpiece of a public performance or can work just as well as a melancholy reverie that the pianist at the bar plays to an empty room before calling it quits for the night. (Gioia, The Jazz Standards, p. 393 hardcover Ed.)

James Gavin, Intimate Nights The Golden Age of New York Cabaret, Limelight Editions, 1992
(A significantly revised version of this book was published by Backstage Books in 2006 that does not include the material referenced here.)

Jackie and Roy, who, in 1955 were the first to record "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,"after they received the song from songwriters Wolf and Landesman via George Shearing, would have been likely to have performed it first in New York at the Blue Angel cabaret where they made their New York City debut in 1954. James Gavin writes of them that along with performing show tunes which were then the staple of their repertoire, "they took pride in introducing songs by such young writers as Tommy Wolf and Lyricist Fran Landesman, premiering that duo's 'Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,' the hippest torch song of the day." (Gavin, p. 152, Intimate Nights, Limelight paperback Ed.)

David Jenness and Don Velsey
Classic American Popular Song: The Second Half-Century, 1950-2000
New York: Routledge, 2006

David Jenness and Don Velsey in their book Classic American Popular Songs state directly that they "spend time on this well known song because it is so beautifully made. . . . as fresh today as in the troubled 1950s." They assert that "Spring songs fall into two categories, the light-hearted, often silly ones and those speaking of the bittersweet disappointment of lost love." "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" is for them unequivocally "of the latter genre." They point out various musical factors such as underlying chords that are often dark, the use of discord, "descending chains of thirds," and "a bridge that reinforces the downward feeling" all of which underpins the song's sadness. Still, they point out that the entire song is not without its lighter portions:

The pattern is that each long phrase of the chorus begins with rising notes expressing the more conventional or hopeful words about spring; then ruefulness comes in, with notes around the lower key-tone, and finally there is a decline into a dark mood. It's easy enough to write a lyric in an entirely bittersweet register, but a mixture like this takes a lot of control, so that the humor doesn't become jokey, or yearning become bathos. ( See Jenness and Velsey, pp. 224-229, hardcover Ed.)

Lyrics Lounge

Like the Bob Dorough album (above in this column), all lyrics are by
Fran Landesman

A Ghost in Every Bar
(The Lyrics of Fran Landesman)
Ian Shaw

Amazon

from a review of Ian Shaw album A Ghost in Every Bar by Amazon Reviewer dnd:
"On this recording, he [Ian Shaw] is partnered with the refined and austere pianist, Simon Wallace. Wallace also collaborated with Ms. Landesman on 12 of the 15 songs presented. Having the composer at the piano is an auspicious treat, indeed! Wallace's economy of style is reflected in Shaw's relatively straight-forward and unadorned interpretive approach. A simplicity certainly appropriate to Landesman's ultimately erudite text (and to address a previous reviewer's complaint regarding Shaw's "non-US accent" - it is completely and utterly a non-issue). But make no mistake - there is much emotion here. Shaw plumbs the depths of Landesman's lyrics with bare restraint in songs such as "Scars", "Killing Time" and the signature "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most", while joyfully swinging through "Feet Do Your Stuff" and "In A New York Minute". The program closes with the poignant and quietly revolutionary "Ballad Of The Sad Young Men", featuring the mournful, plaintive trumpet of Sue Richardson, and sung by Shaw with such heart-breaking dignity. This project is quite the meeting of minds and talent, and a true artistic achievement. One of my desert-island discs, to be sure!!"

See the "Comments" section just below for a version of the full lyric of "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most."

The verse characterizes the singer as formerly "a sentimental thing," but Spring has converted her into a realist. In the past, she got seduced each Spring, "threw away her heart" every time that ever so romantic season arrived. But after many disappointments has forsaken unrealistic Spring for the harsh honesty of Winter: "Now a Spring romance / Hasn't got a chance, / Promised my first dance to Winter."

The first refrain opens with a simile that reveals the speaker as paralyzed from her past experience with Spring so that just when she ought to be full of energy and ready to get into the race, she is "feeling like a horse that has never left the post." Spring has hung her up. Of all the sights and sounds of spring that ought to be motivating her, she says, in one of the songs poignant triads, "Head it before / And I know the score, /And I've decided that Spring is a bore!"

The second refrain informs us through a bit of striking hyperbole that the effects of the season are universal: "Robins [are] building nests from coast to coast." So she tries to be robin-like herself, but it's a painful sham: "My heart tries to sing / So they won't hear it breaking. / Spring can really hang you up the most." As in the first refrain, she again reveals her paralysis, but now she never even gets to the starting line. By changing the venue for her metaphor from one in which she ventures out to the expansive racetrack that at least holds out a chance for victory, now all she can manage is a retreats to her claustrophobic closet: "But I'm on the shelf / With last year's Easter bonnets, / Spring can really Hang you up the most." Finally she tries the doctor for a cure. His phony prescription is a none too tasty tonic ("Sulphur and Molasses was the dose.") but it "didn't help a bit" because she realizes her condition is "chronic" and, of course, "Spring can really Hang you up the most."

Ian Shaw "Spring Can Really Hang You Up
the Most" (from the 2012 album A Ghost in Every Bar, The Lyrics of Fran Landesman)

Ian Shaw "Ballad of the Sad Young Men" (lyrics by Fran Landesman, music by Tommy Wolf, featuring Sue Richards on trumpet, from the 2012 album A Ghost in Every Bar, The Lyrics of Fran Landesman)

Welcome to

Cafe Songbook

Internet Home of the
Songs, Songwriters and Performers of
The Great American Songbook

Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most

Written: 1955

Music by: Tommy Wolf

Words by: Fran Landesman

Written for: Independent Publication
(not for a Broadway show, revue, movie, etc.)

On the Main Stage at Cafe Songbook

Irene Kral

"Spring Can Really
Hang You Up the Most"

Stan Getz (tenor sax)
Albert Dailey (piano)

"Spring Can Really
Hang You Up the Most"

recorded Irvington, New York
January 12, 1983 for the album Poetry

Cafe Songbook Reading Room

"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most"

Visitor Comments

Credits

The Cafe Songbook
Record/Video Cabinet:
Selected Recordings of

"Spring Can Really
Hang You Up the Most"

Welcome to

Cafe Songbook

Internet Home of the Songs, Songwriters and Performers of The Great American Songbook

Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most

Written: 1955

Music by: Tommy Wolf

Words by: Fran Landesman

Written for: Independent Publication (not for a Broadway show, revue, movie, etc.)

On the Main Stage at Cafe Songbook

Irene Kral

"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most"

Stan Getz (tenor sax) Albert Dailey (piano)

"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" recorded Irvington, New York January 12, 1983 for the album Poetry

Cafe Songbook Reading Room

"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most"

Visitor Comments

Credits

The Cafe Songbook Record/Video Cabinet: Selected Recordings of

"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most"

Internet Home of the
Songs, Songwriters and Performers of
The Great American Songbook

Written for: Independent Publication
(not for a Broadway show, revue, movie, etc.)

"Spring Can Really
Hang You Up the Most"

Stan Getz (tenor sax)
Albert Dailey (piano)

"Spring Can Really
Hang You Up the Most"

recorded Irvington, New York
January 12, 1983 for the album Poetry

The Cafe Songbook
Record/Video Cabinet:
Selected Recordings of

"Spring Can Really
Hang You Up the Most"