THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS PRESENT: THE SUNNY SIDE OF MY STREET with THE "MIGHTY MEZ" - SONGS TO MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD - EPISODE #37: TIT-WILLOW (From THE MIKADO), sung by Martyn Green, (1936)

“On a tree by a river a little Tom Tit, sang willow, tit willow, tit willow…” This how Ko-Ko’s plaintive lament of unrequited love begins. When I was eleven, playing the challenging role of Ko Ko, The Lord High Executioner, in the Lake Massapaug Middle School production of The Mikado, I laboriously committed those delicious lyrics to memory, along some other tasty tongue twisters, - syllable, by succulent syllable, and I loved every minute of it. It started a life-long obsession with -, and performing -, the wicked word-play of WS Gilbert - (played crustily in the film Topsy Turvey by the singular Jim Broadbent). This recording, from the 1936 D’Oyly Carte production, is sensitively rendered by Martyn Green, who tempers its obvious irony with some gravitas, playing quite differently from the more expected, crudely mugged style. Great verbal acrobats like Shakespeare, WS Gilbert, Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, and Tom Lehrer - can spin words like atomic particles, releasing a spray of electrons within our brain cells, sparking joy. What a rush!