Little Girl Blue

Who's celebrating its 77th birthday today? Why the song Little Girl Blue is. People may be most familiar with this song as recorded by Janis Joplin in 1969 and this post will take a look at the song up to that point. Her recording was inspired by Nina Simone's 1958 recording as she often introduced the song during performances as being a "Nina Simone song". Janis altered the lyrics a bit and did a very soulful rendering and since then singers either do a "Janis" version or the original. Nina Simone's (1958), Anita O'Day's (1960) and Janis's (1969) recordings are probably the most interesting as the others pretty much did it straight. The song became a jazz standard in the 1950's, but I'm not even going there. I've never heard any recordings that took the song to new places. It just has a nice melody that musicians enjoy playing.

On November 16, 1935 the musical Jumbo opened in New York City at the huge Hippodrome Theatre.

 With songs by the famous Broadway team of Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart, the musical was about a financially troubled circus and featured circus acts and animals during the performance - including elephants, but with the name Jumbo you probably figured that out. Starring Jimmy Durante, Donald Noviss and Gloria Grafton, who in the role of Mickey Considine sang the song Little Girl Blue at the end of Act 1. About the first half of the song is an instrumental run through of the melody and her vocal portion of the song lasts just over a minute.

 

I'm not sure if anything happened with the song over the next ten years. If it was recorded, I'm not aware of it. In 1945 or 1946, Lena Horne recorded it, slowing down the tempo and turning it into the torch song that became its standard form until Anita O'Day's recording in 1960.

 

In 1947, Margaret Whiting recorded it for Capitol. Margaret was one of the early singers signed by Capitol Records when songwriter/singer Johnny Mercer and his two partners started it in 1942. (I believe the first two were Martha Tilton and 17-year-old Ella Mae Morse and I can't believe I haven't managed to get any Ella Mae onto this blog yet.) Martha's father, Richard Whiting, was a composer that wrote songs such as Hooray For Hollywood, Ain't We Got Fun?, On The Good Ship Lollipop.

 

On November 6, 1953, the song was recorded by Frank Sinatra. During the 50's and 60's several singers recorded LP's of nothing but Rodgers & Hart songs, their overall success contributing to the continuing popularity of Little Girl Blue. Even in the 70's both Tony Bennett and Diana Ross did R&H LP's. Anyway, what makes Frank's recording interesting is for the first time we hear the opening verse (When I was very young.......) left off the earlier recordings. It was also used by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Judy Garland. Anita O'Day, Joni James and Yvonne De Carlo all included it on their recordings, but placed it near the end of the song.

 

In August 1956 Ella Fitzgerald did her version.

 

Sarah Vaughan recorded it 29 October 1956

 

Joni James also did it in 1956.

 

Recorded by Judy Garland 6 May 1957

 

Also recording it in 1957 was Yvonne De Carlo. Yvonne was a successful film star in the late 40's and 50's but most likely is best remembered for being Lily Munster in the 60's TV comedy The Munsters.

 

Nina Simone made her first recordings in 1958 and included in that first session was her interesting take on Little Girl Blue. Not only do her vocals offer something a little new and different, her dramatic piano playing starts off with a portmanteau of the Christmas carol Good King Wenceslas. It sounds like Lena Horne's 1945-ish recording was the main influence for Nina's recording.

 

Anita O'Day, with the Billy May Orchestra, gave the song an entirely new spin in 1960.

 

Sam Cooke did it in 1961.

 

 

In 1962, 27 years after the musical played in NYC, Jumbo was made into a film starring Doris Day, Martha Raye, Stephen Boyd and - just as in the 1935 musical - Jimmy Durante. It was the last film musical for Doris and the film reportedly lost $4,000,000.

 

 Keely Smith recorded it in 1963.

 

Janis recorded her Little Girl Blue on 25 June, 1969.

 

Since 1969 the song has remained popular being recorded by both singers and jazz musicians. Linda Ronstadt did it on a very successful CD in 1986 (or LP or cassette...1986 was the last year the industry did anything serious with vinyl.) It seems the song gets recorded about a half-dozen times a decade and one of the more recent popular versions was about 6 years ago done by Diana Krall. Happy 77th birthday Little Girl Blue.