If you are happy (when my mouth kisses you)

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Whether you're happy (when my mouth kisses you) is the German refrain to the American foxtrot hit Sweet Sue, Just You , which the composer Victor Young published in 1928 for the music publisher of Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. in New York. Will J. Harris wrote the English text. The German text, in which a relationship is questioned with self-tormenting doubt, was written by the hit poet Fritz Rotter . The song was published in 1929 by Edition CMRoehr in Berlin.

Performers

In Berlin, the tenor Leo Monosson sang the German text, accompanied by Paul Godwin and his Jazz Symphoniker, for the gramophone ; the recording with Godwin was also purely instrumental. At Kristall, the actor Oskar Karlweis sang the refrain to accompany the Bernard Etté orchestra .

The singer of the recordings with the Karkoff orchestra on the blue Derby label, with the Vocalion band under the direction of Theo Mackeben on Orchestrola and with the orchestra of Dajos Béla at Odeon remained unnamed . Crooner Austin Egen sang the song at Electrola with Arthur Young at the piano . The vocal quartet Die Abels also performed it with piano accompaniment. Weintraub's Syncopators also recorded the title for Electrola with Egen as the chorus singer .

A late recording of the title, which has long since become a jazz standard , was made by the accordionist Kubi Kretschma , the pianist Bert Waldemar and the guitarist Hans Belle in the swing style “Bar Trio” for the “Grammophon” in the late 1930s .

Sheet music editions

  • Sweet Sue - Just You. Song with ukulele arrangement . Words by Will J. Harris, Music by Victor Young. Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Music Publishers, New York. [1928]
  • Whether you're happy until (when my mouth kisses you) / Sweet Sue - Just You. Slow Fox . English text: Will J. Harris, music by Victor Young. German text by Fritz Rotter. Music publisher Roehr AG, Berlin 1929

literature

  • Horst H. Lange : The German '78 discography of hot dance and jazz music 1903-1958 . Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1966
  • Denise Lowe: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930 . Routledge Publishing, 2014. ISBN 978-1317718963
  • Karin Ploog: run as the notes learned ... . Part 2: History and stories of popular music up to 1945: composers - librettists - lyricists . Verlag BoD - Books on Demand, 2016. ISBN 978-3734747182 , p. 19
  • Carl Friedrich Whistling, Adolf Moritz Hofmeister (ed.): Hofmeister's handbook of music literature . Volume 18, Part 1, 1934, page 752