Exactly Like You

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(Someone) Exactly Like You is a pop song written by Jimmy McHugh (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics) and released in 1930. The song later became a popular jazz standard .

background

McHugh and Fields wrote Exactly Like You for the Broadway show Lew Leslie 's International Revue , from which the famous McHugh Fields song On the Sunny Side of the Street came. The song was presented by Harry Richman and Gertrude Lawrence .

First recordings and later cover versions

In the United States, Exactly Like You hit the charts three times in 1930, in versions by Ruth Etting (# 11), Harry Richman (# 12) and by Sam Lanin and His Orchestra (with singer Smith Ballew , # 19). 1936 came with Exactly Like You the Benny Goodman Trio (with Lionel Hampton , vocals, # 12) in the charts; In 1937 Don Redman and His Orchestra (# 14) also succeeded.

The other musicians who covered the song from the beginning of 1930 included Bernie Cummins (Victor 22354), Lou Aberlardo (Decca), Roger Wolfe Kahn (Brunswick), Seger Ellis (OKeh), the Casa Loma Orchestra / Smith Ballew (Banner) and Louis Armstrong (Okeh), in Berlin the Karkoff Orchestra (Derby) and the piano duo Wilhelm Grosz & Walter Kaufmann (Ultraphon A-803).

The discographer Tom Lord lists a total of 736 cover versions (as of 2016) in the field of jazz , of which the recordings by Yusef Lateef , Mark Murphy , Dianne Reeves , Louis Armstrong , Count Basie Orchestra , Nat King Cole , Dizzy Gillespie / Stan Getz , Carmen McRae and the Ray Brown Trio are noteworthy. On his album Pre-Bird (1960) Charles Mingus wove the song contrapuntally into his arrangement of the Strayhorn classic Take the "A" Train .

Alec Wilder recognized the song in his book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 , highlighting the song's particular challenges:

“For a pop song it's very slender, an octave and a fifth . This vocal requirement is rarely found, not even in a theater song. " Wilder also points out that there is no moment of breathing before and after the bridge , which requires the performer to make a slight rhythmic adjustment.

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ A b Don Tyler: Hit Songs, 1900-1955: American Popular Music of the Pre-Rock Era . Jefferson, North Carolina & London, McFarland, 2007, p. 174
  2. ↑ a b c Tom Lord: The Jazz Discography (online)
  3. ↑ a b c d Exactly Like You at Jazz Standards