Something to Remember You By

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(Oh, Give Me) Something to Remember You By is a pop song written by Arthur Schwartz (music) and Howard Dietz (text) and released in 1930.

background

While preparing for a new revue, Howard Dietz persuaded his colleague Schwartz to rewrite the upbeat melody of an older song called I Have No Words into a melancholy torch song . This is how the ballad Something to Remember You By came about for their third revue, Three's a Crowd , which premiered on October 15, 1930 at New York's Selwyn Theater, starring Fred Allen , Clifton Webb and Libby Holman . The song was presented by Libby Holman. While reformulating the lyrics, Dietz began with the melodramatic lines:

Let me but have atoken
thru which your love is spoken.

First recordings and later cover versions

The song was written in 1930 by Libby Holman (Brunswick 4910), Leo Reisman (with Frank Luther, vocals; Victor 22537), Tommy Christian ( Harmony 1248, with Jack Arthur, vocals), Sam Lanin and Helen Morgan (with the Leonard Joy Orchestra , Victor 27683) and covered in the following years by Dinah Shore , Vera Lynn (1941) and Dick Haymes & Helen Forrest (Decca 1946). Jimmie Noone , Cab Calloway and Ziggy Elman were among the musicians who also recorded Something to Remember You By in the 1930s .

The discographer Tom Lord lists a total of 70 (as of 2015) cover versions in the field of jazz , including a. by Claude Thornhill , Glenn Miller , George Barnes , Lester Young ( Aladdin 1946), Benny Carter , Buddy Weed , Tommy Dorsey , Ruth Price , Peggy Lee , Charlie Parker ( One Night in Washington , 1953), Yank Lawson , Ahmad Jamal , Max Bennett , Morgana King . Thad Jones , Irene Kral / Herb Pomeroy , Bud Freeman , Maxine Sullivan , Etta Jones , Johnny Hodges , Teddy Wilson , Miriam Klein , Digby Fairweather / Stan Barker and Keith Jarrett ( The Melody at Night, with You , 1998).

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b c Michael Lasser: America's Songs II: Songs from the 1890s to the Post-War Years . 2014, p. 113
  2. ↑ David Ewen: American Songwriters: An HW Wilson Biographical Dictionary . 1987
  3. ↑ Gerald Martin Bordman, Richard Norton: American Musical Theater: A Chronicle . 2010, p. 519.
  4. ↑ The old lyrics to I Have No Words came from the English songwriter Desmond Carter.
  5. ^ Philip Furia: The Poets of Tin Pan Alley : A History of Americas Great Lyricists . 1992.
  6. ↑ a b Tom Lord: Jazz discography (online)