My college teacher Jeffrey Hart once dismissed the prong of the feminist movement that sought to erase the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly in the name of equality and freedom. He thought it absurd. He held beauty to be a categorical reality. I recall him commenting (approximately): “Beauty has its claims.”
His comment came to mind when I listened to John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molasky play Carol Sloane’s version of “You Must Believe In Spring” on their Radio Deluxe show this past weekend celebrating the arrival of the season (posted here). Written by Jacques Demy (Jacques did it!) and Michel Legrand for The Young Girls of Rochefort, it’s not a song out of the American songbook, but Alan and Marilyn Bergman lassoed it in their lyrics for an English version.
I only know the song courtesy of the classic version by Tony Bennett and Bill Evans (also via Radio Deluxe). You can hear its influence in the Sloane recording. A fitting counterpart to “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” the song lives. As Professor Hart held, beauty has its claims.
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