MY MELANCHOLY BABY

Created on 24/02/2006
Latest update on 12/10/2022

Artist: Walter Scanlan
Author: George Norton/Ernie Burnett
Label: Edison Amberol
Year: 1915

Alias Walter Van Brunt, Thomas A. Edison's favorite tenor. Introduced by ragtime publisher Theron C. Bennet as Melancholy (lyrics by Maybelle Watson, Ernie Burnett's wife) in his club in Denver, CO (There's sheet music since 1911). Title changed in My Melancholy Baby in 1914. Burnett was seriously wounded in France during WW I and had been reported on the missing list by his own company, when a piano player hired to entertain wounded troops, introduced this song with the sad remark he just was informed the writer died recently at the front. Burnett in the audience miraculously regained his memory, exclaiming: "I wrote that song".

Covers:

1928:

Gene Austin

1928:

Charleston Chasers

1928:

Dorsey Brothers [with Seger Ellis]

1936:

Teddy Wilson [with Ella Fitzgerald as stand-in for Billie Holiday]

1938:

Al Bowlly

1938:

Mildred Bailey

1938:

Coleman Hawkins

1939:

Bing Crosby [and in film Birth Of The Blues]

1939:

Priscilla Lane [in film The Roaring Twenties]

1944:

Cliff Edwards

1945:

Frank Sinatra

1947:

Sam Donahue

1950:

Thelonious Monk [with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie]

1954:

Judy Garland [in film A Star Is Born]

1959:

Tommy Edwards [hit US]

1960:

Ella Fitzgerald

1960:

Barbara Dane

1962:

Marcels

1963:

Barbra Streisand

1964:

Nino Tempo & April Stevens

1966:

Mina

1976:

Leon Redbone

1983:

Chas & Dave

2021:

Eric Johanson

Bob Dylan's To Ramona (see: The Last Letter) is thematically related.

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

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