Everything happens to me
Everything Happens to Me is a pop song from the Great American Songbook written by Matt Dennis (music) and Tom Adair (lyrics) and published in 1941. First recorded by Tommy Dorsey's orchestra with Frank Sinatra , the ballad has become the jazz standard .
History of origin
In 1941 Tommy Dorsey entrusted Matt Dennis, whom he had met through Jo Stafford in 1940 after a concert at the Hollywood Palladium, and Tom Adair to write some songs. Her “songs like Let's Get Away from It All or Violets for Your Furs were the vocal equivalent of swing instrumental hits like In the Mood or Don't Be that Way . Sinatra was lucky enough to sing in the Dorsey band at the right time and to be entrusted with most of the Dennis / Adair songs by the band leader. "
The song, almost entirely in a major characteristic, is written in the 32-bar song form AABA and has a “breathless melody”. The text deals with a love story that is packed in “modern pictures” with “a lot of urbanity”, whereby the narrating person goes wrong: The rain makes a game of golf impossible, the neighbors complain about the party noise, the train is missed. In the original version recorded in February 1941, an arrangement by Alex Stordahl in medium tempo, there is no trombone solo by the band leader, as is usual with Dorsey, but Sinatra's vocals are at the center. First he sings the four bar verse , then one and a half choruses .
Other versions
Woody Herman recorded an instrumental version of the song as early as 1941 . Bill Harris played the song in 1946; In 1949, Charlie Parker followed on his legendary album With Strings . More recordings by Stan Getz and Art Pepper followed . In 1958 Chet Baker sang the song. Thelonious Monk recorded a masterful instrumental version solo in 1964: “The eighth note strings of the composition are ideally suited to his piano style. Monk breaks up the repetitions of notes into a range of variations that brings the piece's floating between tragedy and lightness to a purely musical point. "
literature
- Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .