Hi everybody; thank you so much for tuning in!

For those watching for the

first time, welcome! My name is Dan Pardo, and this is Episode 9 of Pardo's
Turn, my weekly Wednesday web series where I do a some song analysis
from a music director's point of view, and perhaps shed a little light on what
makes the gems of our musical theater canon so great.

Today, you are in for a treat. Danny Gardner, New York's leading song and
dance man and all-around good guy is on to perform and discuss the iconic
title song from what I consider to be the greatest movie musical of all time:
Singin' in the Rain. Danny starred in Dames at Sea on Broadway, and in
Lady, Be Good! at Encores! City Center. He also played George M. Cohan
alongside the Rockettes in the New York Spectacular at Radio City, and has
been seen on regional stages all over the country, including in several
productions of Singin' in the Rain. Moreover, Danny and I are old friends,
having grown up together doing theater in Reading, PA.

In a rain storm, you feel just a few drops at first, then a few more, and a few
more, until a light drizzle escalates into a full-on, torrential downpour before
the clouds disperse, and the storm dissipates just as unassumingly as it began.
The form of Singin' in the Rain follows that trajectory perfectly: At the start,
it introduces a simple chord progression that functions like a holding pattern,
repeating until the wordless vocal begins. “Doo doo doo doo.” He sings the
verse, begins a second, and then literally dances up a storm until it peters out.

The songwriters, Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, give us nearly all the
information we need from the song in its first five seconds. Every note of the
melody is contained within the parameters of one octave, prescribed by the
first two sung pitches of the song proper: “I'm sing—” And the rest of the
notes are attended to in short order, first dancing down the pentatonic scale,
and then back up. For those keeping score, Pardo's Turn has analyzed a song
with a pentatonic melody once before: our inaugural episode! Ol' Man River
with Chuck Cooper. And once again, the five-note scale is being used to
musicalize water! Only now, we've moved on from rivers to raindrops.
And then we dance. The arrangement is joyful and straightforward, starting
off with a modulation down a step, oddly enough, and then following the
general form of the song, with soft-shoe rhythms that are magnified and
heightened by Gene Kelly's celebrated choreography. From the lamppost
tableau to the umbrella work, to dancing on the curb, to splashing in the
puddles, it's a perfect marriage of music and movement, captured on film,
and just as captivating 66 years later.