Why Try to Change Me Now
Why Try to Change Me Now is a pop song written by Cy Coleman and Joseph Allan McCarthy and released in 1952. The song was best known in the first recording by Frank Sinatra .
History of origin
The song in the form of a ballad was specially written for Sinatra. The text describes a farewell to a partner whom the first-person narrator still loves, but who has come too close and wanted to correct his quirks (partially described in the song): "Why are you trying to change me now?" Will Friedwald it is a moving piece of self-analysis.
Sinatra recorded Why Try to Change Me Now on September 17, 1952 at the Columbia Studio on Thirtieth Street in New York City; the arrangement came from Percy Faith , who also directed the studio orchestra. It was the last recording for Columbia Records , with which a nine-year collaboration ended. Cy Coleman noticed that Sinatra changed the melody of the opening interval slightly. Since it sounded as natural as the singer interpreted it, Coleman even changed the melody accordingly.
The recording was released as both a 78 and a single (Columbia 50028) as the B-side of Birth of the Blues . In late March 1959 Sinatra recorded the song a second time (together with Gordon Jenkins in the Hollywood studio ); this version appeared on his Capitol album No One Cares . This shot, which may reflect Sinatra's separation from Ava Gardner , was slower than the original version; every note and every syllable seemed carefully worked out.
Other versions
Why Try to Change Me Now was often covered from 1955, u. a. by Betty St. Claire , Eydie Gormé , Beverly Kenney / Ralph Burns , Little Jimmy Scott , Honi Gordon , Sammy Davis Jr. with the Count Basie Orchestra ( Our Shining Hour , 1964), Nancy Wilson , from the 1970s also by Helen Humes , Susannah McCorkle / Keith Ingham , Jackie Cain / Roy Kral and, in the 2000s, by Fiona Apple . Marlene VerPlanck and Bob Dylan on his Sinatra album Shadows in the Night (2015). Cy Coleman himself recorded his composition in a piano trio with Aaron Bell and Ed Thigpen in 1959. A number of instrumental versions are also available by George Wein , Arnett Cobb , Frank Foster , Norman Simmons , Elvin Jones , Ken Peplowski and Russell Malone . The discographer Tom Lord lists 53 versions of the song.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Will Friedwald Sinatra! The Song is You: A Singer's Art 1995, p. 198
- ↑ Michael Friedland: All The Way: A Biography of Frank Sinatra 1915-1998 . 2015.
- ^ Charles L. Granata: Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording . 2003, p. 76
- ↑ Why Try to Change Me Now Cinch Review
- ↑ Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed August 1, 2017)