Schmilsson

You must remember this.

I want to talk about Harry Nilsson’s album A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night.

Nilsson was, of course, one of the great singer-songwriters of the early 70s, as well as one of the few to achieve fame and fortune without performing publicly much. He was a studio guy, fascinated by the possibilities of technology like overdubbing and mash-ups. (He also composed the music for Robert Altman’s Popeye, starring Robin Williams.)

Given his forward-looking attitude toward music, it must have been a bit of a surprise when, in 1973, he released an album of songs from the Great American Songbook, called A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night.

That title deserves explanation: His most successful album up to then was Nilsson Schmilsson. He followed that one with Son of Schmilsson, and to keep the theme going he called his collection of standards A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night. Good enough.

The album features a bunch of classic songs in Nilsson’s beautiful, clear voice, with impossibly lush arrangements by Frank Sinatra’s go-to arranger, Gordon Jenkins. Strangely though, the songs are presented as one continuous piece, a mishmash of bits of this and that.

The opening track, “Lazy Moon,” begins with a few lines from “As Time Goes By,” then segues into the song we’re expecting. At the end of “It Had to Be You,” the oboe(?) leads us into Irving Berlin’s “Always” by playing the bridge-melody from “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The album plays like a pleasant reverie, never sticking with one thing for long before flitting to something else, always lovely, always moving on. Finally, after throwing in snatches of “As Time Goes By” throughout the album, Nilsson closes with that song, in its glorious entirety.

Nilsson also adds some lyrics of his own, because why not. “It Had to Be You” contains my favorite addition:

Some others I've seen
It had to be me
I'm five foot ten, a man among men
And you're seven-two

But with all your faults, it's you I adore
When you stand up, your hands touch the floor
It had to be me
Unlucky me
It had to be me

Again, this was released in 1973. That’s five years before Willie Nelson released his marvelous Stardust, generally credited with kicking off the standards-revival that continues today. (I think we can all sleep a little easier knowing what it sounds like when Rod Stewart sings “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.”)

Here’s the full album:

If this floats your boat as it does mine, you may also enjoy the video of the recording sessions.