Oscar-Nominated Songs: A Kiss to Build a Dream On

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One thing that this month-long look at songs nominated for a “Best Original Song” Oscar has done for me: it made me realize how many old movie songs I know that I didn’t know I knew. Today’s song is one of those. You may not know it, but you’ll hopefully enjoy it A Kiss to Build a Dream On - Louis Armstrong I had a couple of Louis Armstrong to choose from. This one easily won out. Such a great song! Except…I had no idea it was from a movie! Oh, yes, it was. The movie in question is The Strip. This was a crime drama with a musical setting. In true realism, in 1951, the house band was Earl “Fatha” Hines, Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, and Mickey Rooney’s character on drums. (Integrated bands were rare then because of segregation. Rooney and Teagarden were white, and Armstrong and Hines were black.) NOT a “musical,” because in a musical the bad guy breaks out into a number while he’s killing someone. Now, here’s something interesting about the song itself. It was originally written as a song called “Moonlight on the Meadow” for the Marx Brothers movie A Night At the Opera. (No, that’s not the A Night At the Opera that gave us “Bohemian Rhapsody.” ) It was never used in the film, so Oscar Hammerstein reworked it into this song. It lost the award to “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” but is enduring because of Satchmo. A Kiss to Build a Dream On Written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Oscar Hammerstein II Recorded by Louis Armstrong From The Strip, 1951 Leave me one thing before we part: