[Publib] Definitive Lyrics Sought

[Backwage at aol.com]

All righty now.  Here's a question for the group:
 
I have a friend who desires to know where he can find song lyrics,  both 
online and in book format.  By this I mean (take a breath) all of  them.  From 
lieder to punk and everything in between.  His problem(s)  are these:
 
1.  That the book sources are thin, largely unavailable and divided  into 
innumerable particles according to whether the writer was Bruce Springsteen  
(easy to find that book) or some one-hit wonder of the Tin Pan Alley era.  
 
2.  The online sources are not unreliable; they are nonreliable.   You can 
easily find a half dozen different lyrics for any sought song, and  
discovering the actual writer of a song which has been recorded by many people  is 
another adventure.  
 
Here's a typical situation.  If you want to know the words to a  particular 
Gershwin song, you can look it up online.  Seeking "Love Walked  In," we 
discover countless sources.  This short song appeared first in the  film 
Goldwyn Follies of 1938.  The lyrics you find online are  almost always the ones 
sung by later singers.  This is important.  The  online compilers of song 
lyrics usually copy what they hear in the more  popular recorded version of a 
song.  In the case of our little Gershwin  tune, they give you this:
 
    Love walked right in, and drove the shadows  away
Love walked right in, and brought my sunniest  day
One magic moment, and my heart seemed to know -  that love said hello
Though not a word was  spoken
One look, and I'd forgot the gloom of the  past
One look, and I had found my future at  last
One look, and I had found a world completely  new
When love walked in with you
 
This is correct as far as it goes, but the true lyrics and the first  
version, sung in the film, included these lines before those above:
 
    Nothing seemed to matter any  more,
Didn't care what I was headed  for.
Time was standing  still,
No one counted  till
There came a knocking at the door.
 
This is quite common in show tunes, where a few lines of sung verse leads  
into the body of the tune.  You don't see these often unless you find the  
sheet music.  
 
I wonder if anybody out there has put together a system for dealing with  
this problem?  Let's say a patron comes in and asks you, "What constitutes  a 
definitive version of a song, and where can I get it right now?"
 
M. McGrorty



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