Love and Marriage

The older I get the more (old) songs invade my head at night and will not leave. And it drives me batty, throughout the night, that I can’t remember all the lyrics—nor who sang it.

This one, “Love and Marriage,” I was sure was by Dean Martin—or Perry Como.

Nope.

When I got around to checking Google this afternoon, I saw, to my surprise, it had been Frank Sinatra—and more than once.

The first time was for a 1955 TV production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town; the second, a release of a 45 rpm single in 1956. And the latter became a huge hit (Dinah Shore had good luck with it, too). Nelson Riddle arranged the Sinatra versions.

Here are the lyrics—and here is a link to Sinatra singing it.

“Love And Marriage"

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage.
This I tell ya, brother, you can't have one without the other.

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
It's an institute you can't disparage.
Ask the local gentry and they will say it's elementary.

Try, try, try to separate them, it's an illusion.
Try, try, try and you only come to this conclusion:

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage.
Dad was told by mother you can't have one
You can't have none.
You can't have one without the other.

[Musical interlude]

Try, try, try to separate them, it's an illusion.
Try, try, try and you only come to this conclusion:

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage.
Dad was told by mother you can't have one
(You can't have none.)
You can't have one without the other.

 

1956. That was the year I finished sixth grade (in Oklahoma) and began 7th (Hiram, Ohio). I attended my first school dances in seventh grade (though I’d taken a dancing class—at Mom’s insistence—back in the Sooner State).

Although I’d liked a number of girls back in sixth grade (and earlier), the feeling was usually not reciprocal, and it wasn’t until Hiram that I broke some hearts, had my own broken (deservedly so, I must confess).

And I remember this song at our school dances, remember dancing on the gym floor, remember thinking that love and marriage were a lifetime away.

Turned out to be not that long: late 1969.

By then popular music had changed drastically, and in the sixties Sinatra’s song sounded like something from an entire other era.

And it was.