Don't be that way
Don't Be That Way is a jazz composition by Benny Goodman and Edgar Sampson from 1938. It became a classic of the swing era , primarily through the legendary concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938 . It was also one of the most successful tracks in the Benny Goodman Orchestra's repertoire and became a widely played jazz standard .
Musical form
The 32-bar melody of the song is written in the song form AABA; the song is interpreted in a moderate tempo.
History of origin
When Benny Goodman formed his big band in 1934 , he brought on a number of talented arrangers, first Dean Kinkade and Lyle "Spud" Murphy ; from 1935 he used the arrangements of the brothers Fletcher and Horace Henderson and Edgar Sampson , who worked for the band leader Chick Webb . In 1936 this Benny Goodman sold two original compositions, Stompin 'at the Savoy and If Dreams Come True . Goodman's version of Stompin ' hit the charts, as did Chick Webb's. Edgar Sampson had arranged his composition Don't Be That Way in 1934, which Webb's orchestra recorded in 1934. On January 16, 1938, the Goodman Orchestra performed its legendary concert in New York's Carnegie Hall; Goodman opened the evening - in admiration for Chick Webb and Edgar Sampson - with Don't Be That Way . A month later, he played the title for RCA Victor , which became a number 1 hit in the United States later that year.
A few years later, Sampson was asked which of the two versions of Don't Be That Way he preferred; he replied, “Musically, I prefer Chick's version. Financially, I prefer Benny's! "
More shots
Vocalist Mildred Bailey soon recorded a vocal version of the number that Mitchell Parish wrote a text for. The song begins with the exclamation:
- Don't Cry, oh honey please don't be that way,
and then describes the "tears that are like a rainy day," but hopefully things will turn for the better because:
- tomorrow is another day.
The title soon became a popular jazz standard; In 1944 Roy Eldridge took him on together with Goodman and Harry James ( Little Jazz Giant ). This was followed by recordings by Lionel Hampton (1938), when Edgar Sampson played the baritone saxophone ; other contributors were Johnny Hodges and Cootie Williams , also by Teddy Wilson (1944) with Emmett Berry and Edmond Hall , in the 1950s by Oscar Peterson , Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald ( Ella & Louis Again ) and Anita O'Day with Larry Bunker .
More recent recordings have been made by Gene Harris , John Pizzarelli , Silvia Droste , Peter Herbolzheimer , Toots Thielemans and the Terry Gibbs Dream Band.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Don't Be That Way at Jazzstandards.com
- ^ Cf. Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler, Christian Pfarr: Reclams Jazzführer . 4th, revised and supplemented edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-15-010355-X , p. 447.
- ^ Bielefeld catalog jazz 1988 and 2001.