| "I Can't Get Started" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| Published | 1936 byChappell & Co. |
| Composer(s) | Vernon Duke |
| Lyricist(s) | Ira Gershwin |
"I Can't Get Started", also known as "I Can't Get Started with You" or "I Can't Get Started (With You)", is apopular song. It was written in 1936 byVernon Duke (music) andIra Gershwin (lyrics) and introduced that year in the revueZiegfeld Follies of 1936, where it was performed byBob Hope andEve Arden.[1]
Hal Kemp and his Orchestra recorded it and it had a bit of popularity, rising briefly to 14th place on the recording charts.[2]Bunny Berigan's 1937 version was inducted into theGrammy Hall of Fame.
Ira Gershwin noted in 1959 that "The sheet-music sale of the song never amounted to much... but an early recording by Bunny Berigan—considered by jazz devotees a sort of classic in its field—may have been a challenge (or incentive) for the great number of recordings that have followed. Not a year has gone by, in the past fifteen or so, that up to a dozen or more new recordings haven't been issued."[1]
Bunny Berigan, a trumpeter withBenny Goodman andTommy Dorsey, started a band in 1937 and chose "I Can't Get Started" as his theme song.[3] He had been performing the song during the previous year at a club in New York City.[4] He made a recording forVocalion on April 13, 1936,[5] but gradually he made subtle changes in the arrangement. After forming his band, he recorded "I Can't Get Started" again, this time forVictor.[6]
Jazz trumpeterDick Sudhalter noted the changes that had been made since the Vocalion recording. "An introduction—an extended cadenza over four different sustained chords in the key of C—had been added by this time, but otherwise Berigan's routine had not changed since the Vocalion recording. But whereas the Vocalion comes across as a virtuoso performance of a great song, the Victor version presents itself as a kind of concerto, a tour de force for a trumpeter of imagination and daring to have an impeccable command of his instrument."[7]
The Berigan band's recordings of "I Can't Get Started" and "The Prisoner's Song" were issued together on the twelve-inch Victor record 36208, and were a part of an album of four such records entitledA Symposium of Swing.[8] An edited version was created by Victor on December 4, 1937, and issued as 25728A.[9]
The recording was a hit and reached number 10 on the chart.[10] In 1975, Berigan's 1937 recording of "I Can't Get Started" was inducted into theGrammy Hall of Fame.[11]
Billie Holiday recorded it on September 15, 1938.[12]
