Artist: Carroll Gibbons & The Playmates
Author: Johnny Green
Label: HMV
Year: 1929
Leader of the Savoy Hotel Orphans (who ended up in Hollywood). Instrumental piano version. English composition, even while composer Johnny Green and the first performers were Americans.
Covers:
Jack Hylton [vocal version (also for HMV) with Edward Heyman/Robert Sour lyrics; vocal: Pat O'Malley]
Ambrose [vocal: Sam Browne]
Leo Reisman [in Broadway show Broadway Follies; vocal: Frank Luther]
Louis Armstrong [& his Sebastian New Cotton Club Orchestra]
Paul Whiteman [n°1 US; vocal: Jack Fulton]
Libby Holman [in Broadway revue Three's A Crowd; recording for Brunswick; banned on radio, still n°3 US; when Libby finally introduced this Tin Pan Alley standard on Broadway (October '30), the song had been recorded 22 times; Gertrude Lawrence had it on her setlist by then but never recorded it]
Henry 'Red' Allen [influential jazz version for Vocalion]
Chu Berry [with groundbreaking trumpet solo by Roy Eldridge, highly influential on Dizzy Gillespie]
Coleman Hawkins [on Bluebird, best-known early version, reissued on soundtrack The Color Purple in '86]
Duke Ellington [with Jimmy Blanton]
James Moody [for Prestige on the same day as his Moody's Mood For Love]
Eddie Jefferson [vocalese version of James Moody's interpretation]
Sonny Rollins [solo]
Manhattan Transfer [inspired by Eddie Jefferson's version with new lyrics but crediting the original lyricists]
Dexter Gordon [in film Round Midnight]
Tony Bennett [and in 2011 in duet with Amy Winehouse, her very last performance recorded]
Johnny Green and Edward Heyman also cowrote Easy Come Easy Go and I Cover The Waterfront.
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)