Artist: Ethel Merman
Author: George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin
Year: 1930
Introduced it in Broadway musical Girl Crazy along with Ginger Rogers and the Red Nichols Dance Band featuring Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey and Gene Krupa. Ethel's recording came out in '47 (Decca). Other famous songs introduced in Girl Crazy: But Not For Me and Embraceable You (see there).
Covers:
Fred Rich Orch. [vocal by Paul Small; oldest recording (Columbia)]
Red Nichols & His Five Pennies [on Brunswick; vocal: Dick Robertson; top 5 US]
Louis Armstrong [for Okeh]
Adelaide Hall [first British recording]
Kitty Kelly [in first film version]
George Gershwin [at the piano]
Don Redman [first instrumental jazz version]
Sidney Bechet [foundation for Shag]
Fletcher Henderson [foundation for Yeah Man]
Chick Webb [foundation for Don't Be That Way]
Jimmie Lunceford [foundation for Stamp It Off]
Larry Adler [with Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grapelli]
Duke Ellington [foundation for Cotton Tail]
Count Basie [foundation for Blow Top]
Charlie Parker [returned again and again to the structure of Gershwin's tune]
Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney [in film Girl Crazy]
Woody Herman [foundation for Apple Honey]
Gene Kelly [in film An American In Paris]
Miles Davis [as The Theme]
Ornette Coleman [as Chippie]
Happenings [rock version; top 3 US]
Lorna Luft [Judy Garland's daughter, Liza Minnelli's half-sister, in the footsteps of her mother in a reconstructed Girl Crazy modelled on resurfaced original script; financed by Ira Gershwin's widow and released on her Roxbury label]
Greetje Kauffeld & Robert Long [as Lekker Tempo]
Herbie Hancock [like Duke Ellington as Cotton Tail]
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)