Today’s song I sing for you is my version of ‘Cheek to Cheek.’ The song was written by Irvin Berlin in 1935 for the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie, ‘Top Hat’. In the film, Fred Astaire sings the song to Ginger Rogers as they dance. The song was nominated for the ‘Best Song Academy Award’ for 1936, which it lost to ‘Lullaby of Broadway’. The song later went on to become a great hit and was named ‘The Best Song of 1935’. It was inducted into the ‘Grammy Hall of Fame’ in 2000. In 2004, Astaire’s version of the song finished at number 15 in the ‘Top 100 Songs of Top Tunes in American Cinema’.
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were two of the best dancers that ever graced a cinema screen. In their time together, the couple made a total of ten films between 1933 to 1939. In many ways, I would consider them to have been the forerunners of ‘Come Dancing’ that the British watch on their television screens each Saturday evening.
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While I used to do Old Time dancing as a 10-11-year old, before I was able to progress into Modern Ballroom dancing, a serious traffic accident that left me unable to walk for three years. Numerous operations on my badly injured legs left me with one leg three inches shorter than the other. This crippled condition effectively ensured that the only way I’d become a future ballroom dancer was ‘in my dreams’.
I never did make the grade of ballroom dancer after I got the movement in my legs back at the age of 15 years, but I did spend many years mastering the art of discovering other ways of sweeping the girls off their feet on the dance floor; especially after the new sound and moves of Rock and Roll and its freestyle dancing hit the nation in the 50s and knocked it for a six. This was a time when it didn’t matter if one got a step out of line on the dance floor. Neither did it depend upon having two legs of identical length to be on an equal footing. All that mattered was one was able to swing one’s hips and move one’s entire body in synchronisation to the rock and roll beat of the drums and the rhythm of a teenage heart out on the pull.
This is a most appropriate ‘Song for today’ for me to choose, especially as I go into hospital for an operation this morning to examine my bottom while I am under a full anaesthetic (itself dangerous for me) and to take samples for a full biopsy to see if the warts are cancerous. If the biopsy proves to be cancerous, I shall require a big operation at Leeds Hospital at a future date, providing they offer me one. Hence, today in the operating theatre, I will be ‘dancing cheek to cheek’.
Love and peace Bill xxx
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were two of the best dancers that ever graced a cinema screen. In their time together, the couple made a total of ten films between 1933 to 1939. In many ways, I would consider them to have been the forerunners of ‘Come Dancing’ that the British watch on their television screens each Saturday evening.
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While I used to do Old Time dancing as a 10-11-year old, before I was able to progress into Modern Ballroom dancing, a serious traffic accident that left me unable to walk for three years. Numerous operations on my badly injured legs left me with one leg three inches shorter than the other. This crippled condition effectively ensured that the only way I’d become a future ballroom dancer was ‘in my dreams’.
I never did make the grade of ballroom dancer after I got the movement in my legs back at the age of 15 years, but I did spend many years mastering the art of discovering other ways of sweeping the girls off their feet on the dance floor; especially after the new sound and moves of Rock and Roll and its freestyle dancing hit the nation in the 50s and knocked it for a six. This was a time when it didn’t matter if one got a step out of line on the dance floor. Neither did it depend upon having two legs of identical length to be on an equal footing. All that mattered was one was able to swing one’s hips and move one’s entire body in synchronisation to the rock and roll beat of the drums and the rhythm of a teenage heart out on the pull.
This is a most appropriate ‘Song for today’ for me to choose, especially as I go into hospital for an operation this morning to examine my bottom while I am under a full anaesthetic (itself dangerous for me) and to take samples for a full biopsy to see if the warts are cancerous. If the biopsy proves to be cancerous, I shall require a big operation at Leeds Hospital at a future date, providing they offer me one. Hence, today in the operating theatre, I will be ‘dancing cheek to cheek’.
Love and peace Bill xxx
