Nice Work If You Can Get It
Nice Work If You Can Get It is a movie song with a composition by George Gershwin and the text by Ira Gershwin from 1937.
The song
Nice Work If You Can Get It is one of nine songs the Gershwin brothers wrote for the movie A Damsel in Distress , where it was sung by Fred Astaire . The first verse of the song says that the only work that is fun is made for the husband and wife. The song is structured in the A'A'BA "-form , whereby the A-parts are all held in a major tonality, the B-part, however, in a minor . With the A-parts," a swarming, floating first Half and a boyish-rhythmic second half. ”In the first part, the romance is painted, the second part comments like an experienced jobseeker:“ Nice job, if you can get it. ”
According to Hans-Jürgen Schaal , the song is "one of the best Gershwin songs ever", in which numerous details were admired: The swinging opening verse with a triplet in the fourth measure , the extension of the last A section (to ten measures) or the B-part, at the end of which the Gershwins quote the phrase "Who could ask for anything more?" From their I Got Rhythm text and music.
Impact history
The song was recorded by Tommy Dorsey (with singer Edythe Wright ) and then by Teddy Wilson (with Billie Holiday ) before the film premiered . It made the American hit parade several times; the version by Astaire, which reached number one, was particularly successful. The versions in the charts shortly after the creation were:
- Shep Fields and His Rippling Rhythm (1937, # 8)
- Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra (1937, with singer Billie Holiday, # 20)
- Fred Astaire (1938, with Ray Noble's orchestra , # 1)
- Maxine Sullivan (1938, vocal, # 10)
- The Andrews Sisters (1939, vocal, # 12)
The piece was later used in the Broadway musical Crazy for You . Cybill Shepherd chose it as the theme song for their sitcom Cybill and also interpreted it.
The road to jazz standard began with interpretation by Billie Holiday and Wilson's orchestra, which included Buck Clayton , Lester Young , Walter Page and Cozy Cole . Holiday recorded the song seven times. After the song was used in the film An American in Paris (1951), numerous jazz singers interpreted it, from Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald to Mel Tormé and Frank Sinatra (1956 with Nelson Riddle , again in 1962 with Count Basie arranged by Neal Hefti ) to to Karin Krog and Karen Young . The instrumentalists discovered him earlier; In 1941 the song was played by Thelonious Monk in Minton's Playhouse . Monk recorded the song several times (1947, 1964, 1971). Other important early instrumental versions were made by Dizzy Gillespie (1950), Woody Herman (1950), Benny Goodman (around 1955), Lennie Niehaus (with Jimmy Giuffre , 1955), Miles Davis (1955), Bob Brookmeyer and Stan Getz (1961), followed by Holger Mantey (1991) or Ran Blake (1992).
literature
- Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .
Web links
- "Nice Work If You Can Get It" (1937) at WICN.org ( Memento from June 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- Musical analysis (jazzstandards.com)