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My Funny Valentine

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"My Funny Valentine" is a jazz standard like "Happy Birthday To You" is a birthday standard. The song appears on over 1300 albums performed by over 600 artists. Nearly every jazz musician has performed this song at one time or another. Rather than compiling a list of all the artists that have performed the song, it might be easier to list the ones who have not. The song has been performed by thousands of artists in nearly every genre of music from country, to pop, to techno.

Contents

The Conception

The song first appeared in the 1937 musical theatre production of Babes in Arms, by Rogers and Hart. This original version of the show tells the story of young, poor, apprentice actors and actresses performing in summer stock theatre at the Surf and Sand Playhouse in Cape Cod. Led by the charismatic Valentine White, they write a revue in order to raise money for the theatre's kind co-owner, Bunny, who is forced to work for her business partner, the tyrannical Fleming, because of the money her father owed him. However, the apprentices' revue is threatened when Fleming decides to put on a terrible, inevitably loss making play entitled 'The Deep North'. After stumbling through various romantic relationships, the apprentices unite to sabotage the production of 'The Deep North' and stage a premier of their own review for a top broadway producer, in a barn! Eventually, the plan comes together and 'The Deep North' closes on its opening night, after which the apprentices are able to perform their revue in the playhouse, which turns out to be a great hit and raises the money for Bunny.

Babes in Arms opened at the Shubert Theatre, in New York, on April 14, 1937 and ran for 289 performances (after transferring to the Majestic Theatre on October 25, 1937). "My Funny Valentine" was just one of the well known songs originally written for this show. The jazz standard, "The Lady is a Tramp", also made its debut at this time. "my Funny Valentine was first sung by Mitzi Green in the role of Susie Ward, the talented young sweetheart of Valentine White, who was played by Ray Heatherton. In 1939 a movie of Babes in Arms, starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland was released, however many elements of the plot were rewritten, the characters' names were changed and most of the songs in the original musical were cut. In the movie, Garland's character Patsy sings the song to Rooney's character, Mickey. A later version of the stage show restored many of the cut songs, while the other changes remained.

Funny Again

The song reemerges in the 1950's and is performed by most of the great jazz musicians of the time including: Gerry Mulligan, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, Paul Desmond, Tony Bennett, Ben Webster, Buddy Rich, Anita O'Day, Mel Tormé, among many many others.

The song made it to the top of the charts when the brooding Chet Baker made the song his own in 1953 (released on the album "My Funny Valentine" / Blue Note). His soft, delicate, and serene voice on this song introduced the world to Chet Baker the singer/musician when previously he was only highly respected for his trumpeting skills. His James Dean-type good looks and amazing voice made the bobby sox and penny loafer wearing girls collectively sigh at his sold-out performances when he crooned, "you're my favorite work of art". Unfortunately for Chet, "My Funny Valentine" is almost the only song that people continue to associate with him.

Chet's version of the song leaves out the first stanza, instead beginning with the second stanza that starts with, "My funny Valentine, sweet comic valentine". As a result of this, nearly every version of this song also begins the same way. The most notable exception to this rule are songs recorded from the many performances of the musicals Babes in Arms and Pal Joey. Since the first stanza is clearly a female voice speaking about her dopey man, you won't find too many men singing that stanza (especially not in the fifties!).

The third stanza seems quite odd at first. It begins with a series of accusatory and rude questions that one wouldn't necessarily expect in a romantic tune. However, on second glance, one might guess what Hart was trying to accomplish. His song resonates with all the normal folks - the unsmart, the weak, and those without the figures of gods/goddesses. It quickly apologizes for the odd posers with a couple of negations to settle the nerves and then ends with the romantic sentiments of the last two verses.

Currently a new CD containing the song "My Funny Valentine" is released about every three days, so you'll be sure to hear new interpretations of it for quite a long time into the future.

Covers of note

Since then it has entered the Great American Songbook, and has had many notable performances, including:

Structure

The basic structure of the song is as follows:

This simple and classic structure makes it easy to adapt to other genres, and for jazz musicians to improvise over the established chords.

Lyrics

Behold the way our fine feathered-friend
his virtue doth parade.
Thou knowest not my dim witted friend,
the picture Thou hast made.
Thy vacant brow and Thy tousled hair
conceal Thy good intent.
Thou noble upright, truthful, sincere
And slightly dopey gent- you are.

My funny Valentine,
Sweet comic Valentine.
You make me smile with my heart.

Your looks are laughable,
Unphotographable.
Yet, you're my favorite work of art.

Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak, are you smart?

But, don't change a hair for me.
Not if you care for me.
Stay little Valentine, stay!
Each day is Valentine's Day.

Trivia

Movies featuring My Funny Valentine

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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