Someone To Watch Over Me: A Song History

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"Someone to Watch Over Me" has music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and was written for the musical comedy Oh, Kay!, which opened at New York's Imperial Theatre on November 8, 1926.[1] The show, with a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, gave Gertrude Lawrence her first role in a book musical and ran for 256 performances.[1] Harms of New York published the song that year as piano-vocal sheet music.[2]

Lithograph of a young woman and a man in a bowler hat sitting close together on a subway car, holding hands.

George Bellows, In the Subway, lithograph, 1921. A New York couple on the subway in 1921, shown for the song's city and era; the lithograph has no connection to the song.

The number was first placed in an opening scene on a Southampton beach; when that scene was cut during the Philadelphia tryout, it moved to the second act, where Kay sings it with the stage to herself.[3] On a Philadelphia walk George Gershwin bought a doll from a toy-shop window for Lawrence to hold during the song, and the doll remained in the show through the Broadway run.[3] Howard Dietz, who supplied lyrics for the show while Ira Gershwin was in hospital, later said he had proposed the title.[3] Lawrence recorded the song for Victor in Camden, New Jersey, on October 29, 1926, a little over a week before the Broadway opening, with Tom Waring at the piano; the take was issued on Victor 20331.[4] She repeated the role in London the next season and recorded the song there in October 1927 with the His Majesty's Theatre Orchestra.[1][5]

Conceived as an up-tempo rhythm song, it found its lasting identity as a slow ballad, and jazz players from Lee Wiley, who recorded it in 1939 with Fats Waller on organ, to Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, Erroll Garner and Ella Fitzgerald took it up.[6] Dana Gruber arranges it as a chromatic dulcimer solo in Speakeasy And Tin Pan Alley Tunes For Chromatic Dulcimer, a Fingers Of Steel collection of songs from the ragtime and jazz era, all set in DAD tuning.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Someone To Watch Over Me"

Sources

  1. George and Ira Gershwin: "Oh, Kay!".
  2. York University Libraries, YorkSpace: "Someone to Watch Over Me".
  3. Masterworks Broadway: "Oh, Kay! is More than Okay".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-36654. Someone to watch over me / Gertrude Lawrence".
  5. CastAlbums.org: "Someone to Watch Over Me / Maybe (1927 Original London Cast)".
  6. JazzStandards.com: "Someone to Watch Over Me".
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, Speakeasy And Tin Pan Alley Tunes For Chromatic Dulcimer".
  8. Image: George Bellows, In the Subway, lithograph, 1921. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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