I first heard this Saul Chaplin/Sammy Cahn song about 70 years after it was first recorded. Where had I been all these years?
The Damascus moment came via Roly Veitch at the Side Café - remember those wonderful Monday evening sessions?
Since then, apart from Billie's (and Roly's) versions I've heard it by Louis, Daryl Sherman, Rebecca Kilgore, Artie Shaw and Dave Frishberg as well as instrumental versions by Ruby Braff and Clifford Brown.
I suspect there maybe be something in the lyric that I'm missing - not sure - but it is a great song that seems to have bypassed a lot of the current crop of both singers and instrumentalists. Still, thanks to Roly, I feel I'm the lucky guy - Lance
PS: Olive Rudd could do a job on it - are you listening Olive?
3 comments :
Such a great song, this one! Billie, with Buck Clayton, Lester Young, etc. - maybe Teddy or Joe Sullivan on piano. Fabulous. I'd love to hear Roly singing it sometime too!
Alan Rudd tells me that Olive has been singing "You're a Lucky Guy" for quite a few years going back to the Burton House where Ronnie Pipe wrote an arrangement for her.
Lance I'm totally intrigued by the lyrics of this song and like you I'm not sure if I'm missing something. Is the singer singing about herself and the lucky guy, or the guy and another woman? Billie doesn't sing it in an ironic way. it's quite different when sung by a man (I listened to Dave Frishberg) unless of course the two men are in a gay relationship.
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