Gloomy Sunday: Part One

Rezső Seress mid-1930s with an Italian? score to his song Gloomy Sunday, photograph found on Blikk.hu

May 2018

Ever heard of a song called Gloomy Sunday? Yes? No? Possibly maybe? Well read on and I’ll tell you a little about it. Gloomy Sunday was written in 1933 by a Hungarian singer-songwriter named Rudi Spitzer who later became known as Rezső Seress. His Magyarised name is one of those impossible Hungarian names that has no equivalent in English, the kind of name that the mind balks at reading on a page. It sounds something like Rejeu Sheresh. The “j” is soft, as in Zsa Zsa. The second syllable is looong. Try saying it with a sigh of disgust. Really trips off the tongue, doesn’t it? He was nicknamed Little Seress because when he sat down to play he all but disappeared behind the piano. He never learnt to write music so he composed his songs by whistling and by the tap-tap-tapping of his shoes on the streets of the old ghetto in Pesht where he lived. He could only play piano with one hand, with the other he kept time, he conducted himself. As for singing, his voice was like Tom Waits doing spoken word with strep throat. He never left Budapest, not even when New York and Paris came calling in the ‘30s. The only time he was away from his beloved piano and audience was when the Nazis deported him to forced labour camp for four years. And after the war, when the Communists banned his music. The ban lasted for eight terrible years.

The melody to Gloomy Sunday proved unforgettable. It’s all unapologetic melancholy and weeping high octave keys. His lyrics on the other hand were too bleak even for the famously bleak Hungarians, so at first the song didn’t quite take flight. Nobody wants to hear:

Love has died on earth.

And they also don’t want to hear that:

The world has ended, hope has ended.

Or what about these beauties:

Gaudy fields drenched in blood,

Corpses everywhere litter the streets.

The second set of lyrics for Gloomy Sunday were written by the poet László Jávor in 1935 and because of them the song started to stick. The words were still gloomy, it was still about death and dying, but it was no longer a funeral for humanity and hope, it had been transformed into a love song. A love song at a funeral. Talk about unpromising beginnings! Here are the last three lines:

My eyes will be open, so I can see you once more.

Fear not my eyes, even in death I bless you.

Final Sunday.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QScBR7EA-HA

The most famous early Hungarian recording of Gloomy Sunday/Szomoru Vasarnap, sung by Pal Kalmar, 1935, © Estate of Pal Kalmar

Unsurprisingly Jávor’s lyrics were too much for the Americans. In 1936 Sam M. Lewis re-wrote the words. It was still about desperately sad love, about wanting to escape love’s pain through death, but a third verse was added where the suicidal lover pulls back from the brink at the last minute. It’s a bit like that ending your primary school teacher told you never to use in a story.

Dreaming

I was only dreaming…

Darling I hope that my dream never haunted you…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxMs2Y4jvXk

Billie Holiday singing Gloomy Sunday, from 1941, © Estate of Billie Holiday

Gloomy Sunday went on to become not only Rez’s biggest hit, but the biggest international hit ever to come out of Hungary. Billie Holiday’s cover from 1941 is possibly the most famous, but many others covered it too. Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker, Sarah Vaughn, Ray Charles, to name a few. It was translated into 28 languages. More recently Elvis Costello, Björk and Portishead have covered it. So what is the secret to Gloomy Sunday’s enduring appeal? And why do they call it the “Hungarian Suicide Song”? Stay tuned to Poetic Boost in June to find out…◊