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You are here: Experts > Music/Performing Arts > Music by Decade > Oldies > Help ID a song
Oldies - Help ID a song
Expert: Lou Simon - 11/5/2009
Question
Hi Lou,
I am hoping you might be able to research a song by just a snippet of lyrics. I believe it was performed by a male vocal group before 1951, with a version (maybe the original?)decades earlier. The lyrics I remember are "Smile for me, my Dianne".
Thanks for any information you might be able to share about either the lyrics or the sheet music.
Answer
Hi Dianne,
The song, simply entitled "Diane", goes like this:
I'm in heaven when I see you smile;
Smile for me, my Diane.
And though ev'rything's dark all the while
I can see you, Diane.
You have lighted the road leading home;
Pray for me when you can.
But no matter wherever I roam,
Smile for me, my Diane.
That's pretty much it.
It was written in 1927 for a movie called "Seventh Heaven" starring Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor, two very popular silent film stars. The movie was a big success....one of the last big silents. The song was distributed as sheet music with the film for the local theater pianists to play at the opening and closing of the presentation.
At the very end of that year, Victor Records issued a 78 RPM 10" single of the song by Nat Shilkret, a former clarinetist with the New York Philharmonic who was now an executive at Victor as well as one of its artists. Nat was joined by a group of studio musicians and a trio of vocalists: Franklyn Baur, Lewis James and Elliott Shaw. That record became a huge hit in the winter of 1928, putting "Diane" on the pop charts and making the sheet music a top seller.
It has been recorded as a standard throughout the decades with the most popular rendition done by the Irish trio called The Bachelors in early 1964. That more recent version became a top 10 hit in America and went all the way to #1 in the UK.
Thanks for asking,
Lou
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