"Ballad of the Sad Young Men" Part 2

Reasons To Be Nervous, Part 2: More Great Interpretations of a Classic Song

May 19, 2025

Part Two: A FEW OTHER REMARKABLE PERFORMANCES OF “SAD YOUNG MEN”

Before we go any further, just to refresh everyone’s memory, here again is the original cast performance, by Tani Seitz (listed as “Toni Seitz” in wiki) on the original cast album for The Nervous Set. A mini-mystery: the wiki entry on this show contradicts itself in that it refers to the show both as a Broadway musical and an Off-Broadway musical. Likewise, the cast album is described on the streaming services (including Apple Music) as “The Original Off Broadway Cast Album.” Granted, as we’ve observed, The Nervous Set would have been better off and had a much longer run Off-Broadway. But facts are facts: the show ran from May 12 to May 30 at Henry Miller’s Theatre, at 124 West 43rd Street, which is currently known as the Stephen Sondheim Theater. Granted, it wasn’t a very long run, but really, you can get more Broadway than that. Anyhow, here’s “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” from the original Broadway cast album:

This is the first in a series of mini-documentaries on YouTube that discuss “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” in relation to the song’s relevance in the worlds of pop music, folk, and soul, and particularly in the context of Roberta Flack’s career.

Here’s a bonus item - June Christy never recorded “Sad Young Men” - oh, what a great job she would have done! - but she did build a whole album around another song from The Nervous Set, “Night People.” (courtesy Rob Isaiah)

Most of us heard the song for the first time thanks to Anita O’Day, who, with the help of the astute arranger Gary McFarland - a sad young man who never had the chance to grow old - built one of her all-time greatest albums around it:

It was inevitable that the legendary Mabel Mercer would take a crack at “Ballad of the Sad Young Men”; this was precisely the kind of deep-narrative story song that she was known for. Her version is on a Decca album titled, simply enough, Mabel Mercer Sings, released in 1964. Ralph Burns served as musical director, but this track features only piano accompaniment behind La Mabel and I’m not sure who is playing. (As far as I can see, this album was never properly reissued on CD, so this track is another LP transfer courtesy of our buddy Rob Isaiah.)

In terms of a straight-ahead old-school pop interpretation, you can’t do better than the great Steve Lawrence. Sidney Leibowitz - not that I ever called him that - was one of the funniest guys I ever had the pleasure to know, but, boy, he could sure turn on the deep emotion whenever he wanted to.

One of the benefits of covering “Sad Young Men” in two installments is that I was able to accept requests from readers and good friends. Our buddy Dave Rosen requested this version by Miriam Makeba, which is the only standard on her great 1966 album All About Miriam. It also was released as a single all over the world as the flip side of “Pata, Pata,” one of Makeba’s signature songs - which must have made it a very lucrative release for Landesman and Wolf. It’s a lovely orchestral version, and makes me wish that the great South African superstar had recorded more American standards and show tunes.

The late Roberta Flack did more than anyone to make Wolf & Landesman’s song a popular standard on her classic debut First Take (1969) - here’s a particularly strong live performance.

Ditto Shirley Bassey - she’s best known for her titanium tonsils and over-the-top pop belting. She just may be the Ethel Merman of her era, but also like the great Merm, she can dial it down and get movingly emotional and interpretative when the occasion demands. (Live on The Shirley Bassey Show, 1976).
Daniel Weinstein: “Wow, Shirley Bassey really put her whole heart and soul into this one. She seems genuinely emotional at the end, eyes welling with tears. Was this the first , and possibly only, time the moon was described as ‘grimy?’ Perfect characterization of the ideal as seen from afar turning out to be far more ordinary and even ugly when viewed up close.”

Another version I grew up with - this is truly sublime and perfect, it’s literally an old-time hipster’s moving and profound but unsentimental ode to the beatnik era of his youth. Here, the great Mark Murphy conflates Landesman and Wolf with the great beat writer - literally the Scott Fitzgerald of his era - Jack Kerouac.

“So in America, when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”

Postscript: Conversely, the most moving performance of “Sad Young Men” I ever heard was by the late Annie Ross. This was very near the end. Like a lot of dear old friends, Freddie Cole, Bucky Pizzarelli, and Lee Konitz, Annie perished in the pandemic, but she had been in decline for some time before then. Ironically, she was suffering from some kind of dementia - which manifested itself in a profound loss of memory - in what turned out to be her her last glory years, roughly 2007 to 2020, when everybody who was anybody made at least one holy pilgrimage to the old Metropolitan Room to hear this ageless lady of song. She was still ravishingly beautiful in her eighties, and still one of the greatest artists I’ve ever heard. Kerouac famously spoke of “the forlorn rags of growing old,” but Annie’s later years were nothing less than glorious.

I should ask Warren (Vache) and Neal (Miner) if they remember this incident the way I do. I arrived at the Met Room, took my seat in the house, and Annie noticed I was there. Her memory was such that, at the time, she seemed to only be able to remember the lyrics to a dozen or so songs, tops, and likewise, on several occasions when I was invited to interview her (including an event I presented at JALC’s Swing University, with Annie and of course Jon Hendricks, on the occasion of Dave Lambert’s centennial) she only seemed to remember a handful of anecdotes and stories which she told over and over.

So, at the Metropolitan Room, Annie saw me in the house, and decided that she wanted to do something special for me - she wanted to show me that the old gal still had it. Of course she did. Unfortunately, she launched into “Sad Young Men” and within about four bars, had completely and totally lost her way. It’s a difficult, sing-song-y song - nearly everybody who sings it relies on a lyric sheet. Yet the way Annie sang it, forgotten lyrics and all, just made it even more poignant. Long before she finished - and she never quite made it to the end - the whole room was awash in tears; one of the greatest of all jazz singers, at the very end of an extraordinary career, was giving us all she had - on a song that was amazingly appropriate for the occasion.

When she finished, there simply wasn’t anything left.

I still remember the first time I ever saw Annie live - at Freddy’s circa 1985 - and now, more than 30 years later, this would be the last. At the end of the show, I hugged her and told her how much she had meant to me. I’m grateful that I got to tell her goodbye, before the gentle light of the misbegotten moon guided her home again.

Annie & Wilsci at JALC Swing U circa 2018 (photo by Jonathan Cohen)

Bonus: here’s a story I wrote about Annie in 2007, not long after she opened at the Metropolitan Room. Click Here. (Now I wish I could find my 1985 review of Annie at Freddy’s from the old Village Voice!)

Coming Next Week: A Special Memorial Tribute to our late friend, the Great Charles Strouse. A few years ago, we gave a party for Charlie with a mini-clip joint screening and an informal recital of a few of his songs - and the central event was the 1970 episode of Playboy After Dark that spotlighted Charlie and his songs. I’ll offer some clips from that next week, and, in the meantime, here’s an episode of Sing! Sing! Sing! from 2023 in which we featured a jazz-and-pop mixtape of Charlie’s songs - and we only got up to Golden Boy!

The Charles Strouse Jazz & Pop Mixtape (RIP 1928-2025)
(SSS #062 2023-09-02)
download: <or> play online:

PS: Highly Recommended: The best-ever Ella Fitzgerald Discography, as compiled by the late Michele Scasso with considerable help and input from the mighty Steve Albin. Accessible here!

Coming soon:

Ella at the Movies

(Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!)

Coming on Wednesday May 21 @ 7:00PM, THE NEW YORK ADVENTURE CLUB presents THE RAT PACK: A LEGENDARY ENSEMBLE (All presentations are available for replay viewing for one week after the live event. For more information & reservations, please click here.)

Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00 PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming) click here.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.

SING! SING! SING!

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download: <or> play online:

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SSS #146 2025-05-03.
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SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a Substack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Beth Naji & Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)

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