“Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” by Ella Fitzgerald

No lyricist has better captured how fickle the purported season of rebirth, flowering trees and, oh yes, love can be, than Fran Landesman in the jazz classic “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.”

Once I was a sentimental thing,
Threw my heart away each spring,
Now a spring romance hasn’t got a chance
Promised my first dance to winter,
All I’ve got to show’s a splinter for my little fling!

“Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” is a buried treasure on Ella’s 1961 quartet -backed jazz set “Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!”

First recorded by Jerri Winters in 1955, the bluesy lament moved on to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan in the ’60s. Betty Carter, Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand are among the many other artists who have kept the tune current through today.

Spring this year has got me feeling like a horse that never left the post,
I lie in my room staring up at the ceiling,
Spring can really hang you up the most!

Fran Landesman,
Lyricist and poet

Far from cliche, the plaint is downright poetic — which will come as no surprise to Landesman aficionados. After the song’s composer, Tommy Wolf, died in the 1970s, Landesman told music critic Mark Steyn, “I write poetry now.” In his 2008 book, “A Song for the Season,” Steyn adds that, without Wolf, Landesman lacked “access to every good lyric’s first requirement: a good tune.” Born in New York, Landesman died in 2011. She eventually became better known for her poetry than her songs.

A tradition of spring-bashing poetry actually inspired Landesman’s title. While living in St. Louis, where her husband Jay owned a well- known jazz club, she wondered about the opening line to T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” “April is the cruellest month.” How could it be made to sound more hep for her beat generation? Thus, she came up with the title, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.”

 As it was, T.S. Eliot had already reworked the start of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales — “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote” — for his seminal work of modernist poetry. Six hundred years of anti-April verse preceded Landesman’s take on the season!

Love seemed sure around the new year,
Now it’s April, love is just a ghost,
Spring arrived on time, only what became of you, dear?
Spring can really hang you up the most!

The Spring Blues?

Just recently, scientists have come up with a clinical reason why the season of spring in itself can trigger the blues instead of sunny dispositions. Basically it’s a reverse seasonal affective disorder (SAD). According to Psychology Today, 10 percent of those who suffer from SAD do so due to a greater exposure to daylight (as opposed to less exposure in winter). The brightness can increase depression and even thoughts of suicide, according to a 2016 op-ed in The Washington Post citing a study published in JAMA Psychiatry.

All alone, the party’s over,
Old man winter was a gracious host,
But when you keep praying for snow to hide the clover
Spring can really hang you up the most! 

Every day “stuff” can turn a spring day sour too: pollen allergies, a college rejection, the anniversary date of a loss and, like the narrator in the Landesman lyric, unrequited love during the season of love.

For myself, the song rings especially true this year, because of the way Mother Nature is stringing me and my New England neighbors along. It snowed in Connecticut on the first day of spring. Despite hearing robin chirps and a full chorus of peeper frogs Easter weekend, Accuweather predicts snow will stretch well into April. I’ve added “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” to my playlist so I can be reminded — as I’m shoveling — how beautiful the blues can be.

To hear Ella Fitzgerald perform “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,”