Mel Tormé's Jazz and Velvet Disc 3 - Blue Moon

About three weeks ago, I listened to a four-CD set of Mel Tormé titled Jazz and Velvet.  There were a couple things I'd previously noticed about a couple songs on disc three (subtitled Blue Moon), and I thought I'd write about them this week.

"Pythagoras, How You Stagger Us"

The first two lines of this song are "Friends, Romans, and fellow students / Gather 'round and little to [a] little math,"  I might not have the end of that second line right, but in any case, it's a reference to the first line of Mark Antony's speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" (III.ii.73).

If I understand the liner notes correctly, this was a song from Tormé's radio show, which had a collegiate setting (an-other song on the disc is "Dear Old Fairmont"), so along with the mathematics that are integral to the song, literature and history are also touched on via that allusion.

"The French Lesson"

This is probably pretty obvious, but there are some quotations of "La Marseillaise" here.  There are a few instrumental quotations throughout, and at the end, Yvonne sings the first line: "Allons enfants de la Patrie."  Since the song is about learning French and "La Marseillaise" is the French national anthem, it makes a lot of sense.