New York

If the title of this blog was Disco Across the States, New York would be ready with their official state song I Love New York; but, sadly, the state of New York has no official waltz.

There are quite a few waltzes celebrating New York City - from the familiar Sidewalks of New York to the obscure New York Produce Exchange Waltz - but very few celebrating the state of New York.

The best known waltz celebrating the state of New York is the Upstate New York Waltz written in 2009 by Si Kahn and Tom Chapin. The song provides a tour through twenty towns in upstate New York with plenty of smiles on the way.  The towns go by pretty fast but you can slow them down by reading the lyrics here. Chapin recorded it on his album Let the Bad Times Roll which you can hear on YouTube but Chapin's live performance below brings a little more personality to the song.

Those of a certain age remember the Weavers.  Echos of that great group still exist in the harmonies and instrumentation of the group known as Hudson Valley Sally. On their very first album, creatively titled Hudson Valley Sally, the group offered their cover version of the Kahn/Chapin Upstate New York Waltz.  You can their album version on YouTube but it is more fun watching a subset of the original five person group do it live:

Renaud Lhoest (violin and piano) joins a trio of musicians -Benoît Casen(guitar and banjo), Benjamin Gillis(violin) and Boris Iori(guitar and harmonica) to form the Belgian group, Big Sun. On their album, Big Sun, they have included a gentle waltz titled New York Waltz presumably composed by Lhoest. Surely this waltz refers to the natural beauty of the state, not to the excitement of New York City.  

Jazz pianist Soo Cho has included her composition, New York Waltz, on the CD Little Prince which you can hear on YouTube but the live performance posted below brings a little more life to the tune. It is a little difficult to hear a waltz in all those notes but Ms. Cho has been kind enough to post a score for the work and with that score in hand, you will find the trumpet and piano playing the waltz starting 3'23" into the video.  There are hints of the waltz earlier but it is deconstructed almost to the point of invisibility. See if you can hear the waltz in the video below.

Other waltzes celebrating New York for which video is not available:

Lars-Luis Linek, a German composer and blues musician who favors the harmonica, recorded New York Waltz (probably composed by Linek) on a 1996 CD titled Harmonica Trio on the EMI/selected sound label.

In the soundtrack of the movie Reds there is a waltz composed by Dave Grusin titled The New York Waltz. The piece is only slightly over a minute long and you can hear much of it here.

There is a 19th century song titled The Empire State Waltz by Otto Spahr.  It appears in advertisements for piano music of the period but a score has not yet been found.

Not included here:

A standard search on Google will suggest that the CD, America Again, by pianist Lara Downes contains New York Waltz I, II and III.  There are indeed three waltzes by New York composers on the album but none are titled New York Waltz. The CD is, nevertheless, highly recommended.

In 1978, Willie Guy Rainey was seventy-seven years old when he made made his first record, titled eponymously, Willie Guy Rainey, on the Southland label (SLP-7).  That record contains a song titled New York Waltz.  You can hear it here.  With a title like that, it should belong in this blog; but, unfortunately, it is not a waltz - it is a fine piece of stride piano in solid 4/4 time.

An Internet Archive search of copyright records found a few more:

That New York Waltz, 1922, words and music to Clinton A. Kemp
Souvenir of New York: waltz, 1938, music to Joseph Julian Michalski
The New York Waltz, 1947, words and music to Hana Senger
New York Waltz, 1955, words and music to Berthold Mayer
New York Waltz, 1958, music to Joseph Liebling
The New York Waltz, 1969, words and music to Clayton H. Warner

And finally, there is a reference to a New York Waltz by Musard in an 1868 Catalogue of the Universal Circulating Music Library, published in London.

For those who make their own music, here is a simplified score for the Upstate New York Waltz:

You can find the lyrics here.

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