Music: Tin Pan Laureate

For those who wonder what Russians sing besides the Volga Boatman and Ochi Chernyia, Vasili Pavlovich Solovyev-Sedoi, Russia’s top Tin Pan Alley man, has the answer. Sedoi’s simple, easy-to-hum melodies flow constantly out of Russian radios. In restaurants and cabarets, couples sway nightly to such Sedoi hits as Nightingale, It’s Long Since We’ve Been Home. More important yet, Songwriter Sedoi manages to please Russia’s culture cops, who regard dzhaz as “vulgar musical stew.” This year, Sedoi won his second Stalin prize.

The Seeing Eye. Sedoi scores his biggest hits with nicely blended combinations of patriotism, sentiment, wartime allusions and love. Like most U.S. tunesmiths, he writes only the music, leaves the lyrics to more lyrical minds. Sample:

It’s time to be going,

It’s a long, long way we have to go;

And up above your dear threshold

I’ll salute you with a flip of the silver wing.

Fate may toss us far away; Let it be so.

But don’t take anyone into your heart.

I’ll be watching carefully, And

I’ll see everything from above: Remember that.

Goo & Starch. Sedoi’s sentimental ballads and starchy marching songs first began to catch on ten years ago. His big break was Nightingale, which won him his first Stalin prize (1944). Now he rates special fees, living and working quarters.

Recently, the Evening Moscow found space to give its favorite tunesmith a somewhat ominous pat on the back. Under a sketch of Sedoi at the piano a verse said: “After songs should come operas. But though he hasn’t created any Traviatas, let’s sing, friends, and Sedoi, the young laureate, will join us.”