A stellar performance

A Vintage Year; Mel Torme, vocals; George Shearing, piano

I’ve never seen the midnight sun. I think my sister K. did when she worked in Alaska. As I recall, she and some friends played volleyball until two o’clock in the morning during the summer solstice because they could.

In South Dakota, we celebrated D.’s birthday on the summer solstice. Late in the evening on June 21, I used to enjoy walking out north of the trees on the farm, to see the rosy glow in the northwest. How I wish that I would have done that crazy thing: stay up until two o’clock in the morning to see the rosy glow reappear in the northeast. And then witness that unhurried, protracted – maybe even a little poky – breath-taking transfiguration from the genesis of pre-dawn to the volley of sunbursts as they utterly fracture any residue of darkness.

Leave it to Johnny Mercer to bring romance to a celestial event. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you write a lyric:

Your lips were like a red and ruby chalice, warmer than the summer night.

The clouds were like an alabaster palace rising to a snowy height.

Each star its own aurora borealis, suddenly you held me tight

I could see the Midnight Sun.

______

I can’t explain the silver rain that found me – or was that a moonlit veil?

The music of the universe around me, or was that a nightingale?

And then your arms miraculously found me, suddenly the sky turned pale,

I could see the Midnight Sun.

_______

Was there really such a night, it’s a thrill I still don’t quite believe,

But after you were gone, there was still some stardust on my sleeve.

________

The flame of it may dwindle to an ember, and the stars forget to shine,

And we may see the meadow in December, icy white and crystalline,

But, oh, my darling, always I’ll remember when you lips were close to mine,

And we saw the Midnight Sun.

Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke composed the music to "Midnight Sun" in 1947. Mr. Mercer heard the tune seven years later on the radio while driving along the California coast one night. He called up the radio station to ask the name of the song, who wrote it and “if you could play it one more time, please?” He had the words in his head before he pulled up to his house.

On one warm summer evening in 1987 at the Paul Masson Winery, high in the hills overlooking Silicon Valley, Mel Torme and George Shearing matched the melody and words of this masterpiece to the easy rocking of a gentle bossa. The melding of the minds of these two old pros, on this one track, casts a light of effortlessness that practically eclipses the subject of the song.

In late July last summer, while heading north on Interstate 29, about twenty miles north of Sioux Falls, at about half past ten in the evening, six weeks after the summer solstice, I saw the faintest hint of a rosy glow in the northwest, disclosing the lurking point of the sun below the horizon. People detain me frequently, when they hear about my South Dakotiness, to ask why anyone would want to remain in such a desolate location. This does it for me.

Credits: To Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke, for lifetimes committed to musical excellence.