My Heart Stood Still

Written: 1927

Music by: Richard Rodgers

Words by: Lorenz Hart

Written for: One Dam Thing after Another (London revue)

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"My Heart Stood Still"

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"My Heart Stood Still" was written for the Charles Cochran revue One Dam Thing after Another which opened in London at the London Pavilion on May 19, 1927. The show starred Jessie Matthews, Douglas Byng, Lance Lister, Richard Dolman and ran for 237 performances.

In November of that same year, the song was used in the Rodgers and Hart show A Connecticut Yankee on Broadway where it was introduced by William Gaxton, Constance Carpenter and ensemble, performed only in the prologue (See below for more details).

In March of 1927, Rogers and Hart had traveled to Paris from London to meet the with the arranger Robert Russell Bennett, also an American, to try to persuade him to orchestrate the songs for their upcoming London revue, One Dam' Thing After Another. On their way back to Paris from a sightseeing expedition to Versailles, a truck came within a hair of demolishing the cab the two song writers, along with their two female companions, were riding in. As the truck rattled by, one of the young women cried out in apparent fright, “Oh! My heart stood still!” Without losing a beat, Hart, apparently unaffected by what must have been a nerve jangling moment, instantly urged the unfailingly conscientious Rodgers to make a note of her exclamation as a potential song title. Hart's partner faithfully jotted it down in his address book and upon coming across the note, only after they had returned to London, proceeded to construct a melody. When Rodgers played it for Hart, the lyricist loved the tune but claimed no recollection of the precipitating incident. Still, within no time at all, he produced the lyric for the now classic song. (One version or another of this famous anecdote is recounted in many sources: Denison, pp. 69-70; Furia and Lasser, p. 62; Nolan, pp. 99 ff; Secrest, p. 103; and in Rodgers' autobiography, pp. 101 ff.). Later in his life story Rodgers wants to make it clear that it wasn't a near accident that inspired him to write the "My Heart Stood Still" or anything else. For Rodgers, artistic inspiration is "the excitement of the event combined with the excitement of having a job to do combined with one's background combined with one's talent that results in the song, painting or novel" (Rodgers, Musical Stages, pp. 122-23).

One Dam' Thing after Another opened at the London Pavilion on May 19, 1927, with My Heart Stood Still in the score. During a rehearsal Charles Cochran, the British producer, heard the song for the first time, and though he liked it thought it should have a verse. Jessie Matthews, who along with Richard Dolman were to introduce the song in the show, characterizes Hart's brassy but endearing manner in her account of the lyricist's response to the producer's suggestion: Hart "was sitting there with his hat on the back of his head and the inevitable cigar sticking out of his mouth, [and he] rushed over, and said, ‘Verse, verse, you wanna verse?’ He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and scribbled on it. ‘How's this?’ he said, putting it into my hands. ‘How d'ya like this, babe? Think you can read my writing?’ We never altered one word of it.” In fact, Hart’s biographer Frederick Nolan notes that "With minor emendations, the verse Larry wrote that day became verse two in the published version” (Nolan, p. 99—hard bound Ed.).Editor's note: It's also the verse Matthews opens with in her subsequent recording of "My Heart Stood Still." (Listen.)

What Rodgers and Hart finally did write wound up having great appeal for none other than the Prince of Wales, who saw One Dam Thing After Another on opening night. The Prince (who would become Edward VIII and then abdicate in order to marry the divorced American, Wallis Simpson) was so taken by My Heart Stood Still that a few nights later while attending a party asked the band leader to play it. Upon being told the ensemble didn't know the song, the Prince proceeded to hum it to the band until they learned it. The next day the story made the London papers giving My Heart Stood Still the royal seal of approval and causing ticket sales for One Dam Thing after Another to soar (Nolan, p. 100—hard bound Ed.)

The song didn't debut on Broadway until November, 3, 1927, in an altogether different Rodgers and Hart show, A Connecticut Yankee, but it got there via a circuitous route. Beatrice Lillie, the prominent British comedienne who was fond of the song, was pushing to introduce it on Broadway in yet another Rodgers and Hart show in which she was to play the lead, but which had not yet even been scored. Afraid that Lillie’s voice was not big enough for "My Heart Stood Still," the songwriters avoided a potentially embarrassing situation by telling Lillie a little white lie: that the song was already included in another soon-to-open show of theirs. And in order to cover themselves, into A Connecticut Yankee it went. As it turned out the Lillie show never opened anyway, and My Heart Stood Still, because of its placement in the prologue of Connecticut Yankee, was nowhere the hit in New York it had been in London and wound up playing second fiddle to Yankee's’s show stopper -- Thou Swell (Nolan, pp.107-08). Very ironically, in order to accomplish the switch, Rodgers and Hart were forced into buying the rights to their own song from Cochran so it could be sung in New York earlier than originally planned-- and without Bea Lillie singing it. (Marx and Clayton, pp. 117-118.) Paul Whiteman and his concert orchestra and chorus made a recording contemporaneous with the 1928 Broadway introduction of "My Heart Stood Still."

"My Heart Stood Still" has, of course, emerged from the shadows of the prologue of A Connecticut Yankee into the limelight of its status as an American standard song favored by the greatest pop singers and jazz performers of the 20th century ranging from early period renditions by Jessie Matthews and Whiteman to pop and jazz versions by Artie Shaw, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra (who, according to Jonathan Schwartz, first sang the song in 1943 when he heard about Hart's death), Tony Bennett, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Erroll Garner, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, and Stacey Kent among others. Even folk-rock and R & B groups such as The Mamas and the Papas and The Supremes have recorded it.

Musically, "My Heart Stood Still" has been described as "an utterly simple ballad" (Furia and Lasser, p. 62). Geoffrey Block, however, notes, "Not only does 'My Heart Stood Still" demonstrate both direct and disguised scales and some melodic and harmonic surprises, the music also serves the text and the dramatic situation of a young couple recalling their overpowering feelings off love at first sight (Block, pp. 36-37); and for Alec Wilder, it is an example of Rodgers' ability to create just the right relationship between melody and harmony -- no simple matter. Rodgers, Wilder says, "is capable of highly sophisticated harmony," but never "so concerned with it as to cause it to distort the melodic flow," a quality that is part and parcel of his "phenomenally high level of writing," which in the case of "My Heart Stood Still" was more than a little responsible for the creation of a "splendid" song (Wilder, pp. 164, 174-5).

And as for the simplicity-complexity debate, Hart was sometimes accused of being unnecessarily complex in his rhyming. Arthur Schwartz recounts that his long-time lyricist partner Howard Dietz accused Hart of over rhyming saying, "Larry Hart can rhyme anything—and does." Schwartz didn't agree and in defense of Hart recalls something Hart said to him while the two were walking down Broadway:

They said all I could do was triple rhyme. Now just take a look at this lyric. "I took one look at you, that's all I meant to do, and then my heart stood still." I could have said, "I took one look at you, I threw a book at you,' but I didn't.

Schwartz concludes, "That was his [Larry's] way of saying that he did not need to triple-rhyme—to overrhyme. He was right with that melody, not to do that because he had a choice of accents. The melody was undoubtedly written before the words. The title was written first." Schwartz was exactly right. (Dorothy Hart, Thou Swell, p. 36)

Allen Forte concludes his detailed musical analysis of "My Heart Stood Still" thusly:

With its elegant deployment of special notes in the melody and its trenchant harmonies ["My Heart Stood Still"] is one of the classic ballads in the popular idiom and one that occupies an interesting chronological position in the decades with which this book is concerned, for it occurs at what might be regarded as the crux—the year 1927, in which the full efflorescence of the American popular ballad began in earnest (Forte, pp. 187-188).

In Words and Music, a 1946 movie very loosely based on the lives and collaboration of Rodgers and Hart, an orchestral version of "My Heart Stood Still" is heard over the scene depicting Hart's death.

Ed.'s note: Composer Arthur Schwartz first met Lorenz (Larry) Hart in 1917, when Hart was working at a summer camp in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. There, they wrote a camp song together, the melody for which later, with new lyrics by Howard Dietz, became the standard "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan."

Click here to read a version of the complete lyrics for "My Heart Stood Still," including the verse, as sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

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In an article Richard Rodgers wrote for the Dramatists Guild Quarterly on the subject of his collaboration with Lorenz Hart he emphasizes how

[Larry] was fascinated by the various techniques of rhyming, such as polysyllabic rhyme, interior rhymes, masculine and feminine rhymes, and the trick of rhyming one word with only part of another. . . . Yet Larry could also write simply and poetically. "My Heart Stood Still," for example, expressed so movingly the power of "that unfelt clasp of hand," and did it in a refrainconsisting almost entirely of monosyllables. (quoted in Max Wilk, They're Playing Our Song: Conversations with America's Classic Songwriters, New York and Stratford, CT: Easton Studio Press, 2008, p. 51.)

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The complete, authoritative lyrics for "My Heart Stood Still" can be found in:

The Complete Lyrics Of Lorenz Hart. Dorothy Hart and Robert Kimball (Eds.), New York: Knoph, 1986 (Da Capo Press expanded, paper bound edition 1995 shown).

The Complete Lyrics reveals that the original lyric is structured as a duet in four parts: 1) a verse to be sung by the male member of a duet; 2) a refrain also sung by the man; 3) a verse to be sung by the woman; 4) a repeat of the refrain to be sung by the woman. In live performances and recordings over many years subsequent to the show, the opening verse starting with "I laughed at Sweethearts / I met at schools" is commonly sung as the opening portion of the song--by those performers of either sex who choose to include a verse at all. Lee Wiley is a good example of a singer who does it this way.

The final, seldom heard verse ends with the quatrain,

I read my Plato,
Love I thought a sin,
But since your kiss
I'm reading missus Glynn."*

[where "kiss" rhymes, in typical Hart fashion, internally with a single syllable, "miss," of the longer word, "missus."

Jessie Matthews who introduced the song in the show in London, in Her later recorded version, opens with verse 2 and then sings the refrain twice, never singing the opening verse. Ella Fitzgerald on her 1956 Rodgers and Hart Songbook album actually sings both verses in the places Hart put them, which is quite unusual. Frank Sinatra, on the Cafe Songbook Main Stage (above) begins with verse 1, proceeds to the refrain with which he concludes, omitting Verse 2, which of course makes sense because it was written for a woman to sing.

*According to Wikipedia, "'Missus Glynn' is Elinor Glyn (October 17, 1864 - September 23, 1943), born Elinor Sutherland, was a British novelist and scriptwriter who pioneered mass-market women's erotic fiction."

Click here to read Cafe Songbook lyrics policy.

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The Cafe Songbook
Record/Video Cabinet:
Selected Recordings of

"My Heart Stood Still"

1930
Jessie Matthews
Album: Jessie Matthews
The Very Best of

Amazon

iTunes

Notes: Jessie Matthews premiered "My Heart Stood Still" in its very first performance in the Rodgers and Hart Revue, One Dam Thing After Another, on the London stage in 1927. Leslie Hutchinson, her accompanist on this recording, was one of the most prominent British cabaret performers of the early twentieth century. In this recording Jessie opens with verse 2.
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1938-39
Artie Shaw
and His Orchestra
Album: Artie Shaw, King Of The Clarinet

same track as on album referenced above

Notes: The recording above, on both album and music-video, is from an original radio transcription of 1939. For more albums including a Shaw track of "My Heart Stood Still," click here.
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1949
Art Tatum
Album: The Complete Capitol Recordings

Album notes: Tatum's Capitol recordings are predominantly solo works performed in 1949 plus a few trio numbers from 1952. "The tunes . . . were mostly ballads, which he redefined through his innovative harmonic sensibilities and his assured-but-fluid rhythms." When playing with the trio, he is accompanied by Everett Barksdale (guitar) and Slam Stewart (bass) (from CD Universe product description). Click below for more Tatum tracks of "My Heart Stood Still."
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Amazon

iTunes

Notes: Bud Powell, piano; Charles Mingus, bass; Max Roach, drums (recorded live at Massey Hall, Toronto). Various other Bud Powell Trio tracks of "My Heart Stood Still" can be found at Amazon.
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1954
Lee Wiley
album: Duologue

Notes: "This CD reissue features her [Lee Wiley's] haunting voice showcased on eight numbers with a quartet that includes trumpeter Ruby Braff, pianist Jimmy Jones, bassist Bill Pemberton and drummer Jo Jones; the best are "My Heart Stood Still," "My Funny Valentine" and especially memorable versions of "It Never Entered My Mind" and "Glad to Be Unhappy." Although pianist Ellis Larkins, who is heard on four unrelated unaccompanied solos, gets co-billing on the CD, he and Wiley never actually meet" (from the iTunes Review). Amazon customer reviews--definitely helpful.

1956
Ella Fitzgerald
Album: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook
(arranged and conducted by
Buddy Bregman)

same track as on album referenced above

Notes: The album referenced above is the Rodgers and Hart portion of the seminal set of Ella Fitzgerald Songbook albums, produced by Norman Granz from the mid-fifies through the early sixties. The recordings were made at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles, California from August 27-31, 1956. Personnel includes Ella Fitzgerald (vocals); Paul Smith (piano); Barney Kessel (guitar); Joe Mondragon (bass); Alvin Stoller (drums). Buddy Bregman (conductor and arranger). The full set of Ella's Songbook albums is also available from Verve.

Amazon

iTunes

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1963-1988
Nelson Riddle and
"My Heart Stood Still"--a brief, partial history
(featuring Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and Nat King Cole)

Sinatra came to "My Heart Stood Still" as early as 1943-44 when he sang it on the radio. According to Jonathan Schwartz, he first sang the Rodgers and Hart song as a tribute to Larry Hart when he heard that "the poet of Broadway" had died--on Nov. 22, 1943. But it wasn't until the Fifties on T.V. that Sinatra sang a Riddle arrangement. (In any event none of these radio and T.V. performances was put on a record. Sinatra didn't sing and record "My Heart Stood Still" until the The Concert Sinatra in 1963, an album devoted to Sinatra vocals backed by a Riddle conducted symphony style orchestra.

Sinatra did record "My Heart Stood Still" earlier and with a Riddle arrangement. but not as a singer. Rather, he conducted an orchestra that was backing Peggy Lee. In fact they did an entire album together in 1957 with Sinatra as conductor, Lee as singer and Riddle as arranger--entitled The Man I Love.

Sinatra and Lee working on
album The Man I Love, 1957
(Our thanks to PeggyLee.com for
the photo)

same track as on albums linked above and below

Amazon

Notes:When Lee went on tour to promote the album, she sang "My Heart Stood Still" on The Nat King Cole Show with Riddle and his orchestra (1957). -- The Video contains the Peggy Lee rendition followed by Cole plugging a new recording of his own, "With You on My Mind."

Peggy Lee on The Nat King Cole Show

This wasn't Cole's first connection with the"My Heart Stood Still" or with Riddle, who had been Cole's musical director for most of the decade of the fifties; and, in 1955, the two of them made an album, The Piano Style of Nat King Cole, consisting mostly of instrumentals featuring Nat on piano with a number of high profile jazz sidemen and a large orchestra. When Cole plays "My Heart Stood Still," according to the liner notes by Will Friedwald and Dick Katz, he takes it "medium fast . . . using repeated notes in patterns that suggest Erroll Garner."

Nat King Cole on piano

Sinatra's live performances of "My Heart Stood Still" that can be found on albums include a United Nations Gala in September, 1963, in New York where the piano player he addresses before he sings was Skitch Hernderson.

At the U.N. September 13, 1963

The recording can be found on the Sinatra collection of live performances in New York City, titled New York.

Amazon

iTunes

Some late performances during the 1980s all featured arrangements by Nelson Riddle and were performed after the arranger's death in 1985. The most well known of these were Live at the Meadowlands (recorded March, 1986 and issued 2009.

Live at the Meadowlands, 1986

Amazon

iTunes

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1963
Bill Evans
Album: Time Remembered

same track as on album referenced above

Notes: "Pianist Bill Evans' final project for the Riverside label resulted in eight songs released as Bill Evans Trio at Shelly's Manne-Hole. This set doubles the program by adding eight previously unreleased selections. Evans, who is in fine form playing in a trio with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Larry Bunker, often sounded more relaxed in concert than in studios and he stretches himself on the material (mostly standards), making one wonder why all of the music was not originally released. This is one of the finest recordings by this particular trio. Worth searching for" (from iTunes review).

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1963-64
album: Stan Getz and Bill Evans

one of two tracks of "My Heart Stood Still" on the above referenced album

Notes: "The only studio meeting between Stan Getz and Bill Evans took place over two days in 1964 [?], with the aggressive drummer Elvin Jones and either Richard Davis or Ron Carter on bass. It is peculiar that Verve shelved the results for over a decade before issuing any of the music, though it may have been felt that Getz and Evans hadn't had enough time to achieve the desired chemistry, though there are memorable moments. The punchy take of "My Heart Stood Still," the elegant interpretation of "Grandfather's Waltz," and the lush setting of the show tune "Melinda" all came from the first day's session, with Davis on bass (from iTunes review).

"The session reminds me a bit of the Coltrane-Ellington recording, an iconic meeting on which Duke, for reasons known only to himself, barely offers a chord or two during Elvin Jones' playing. As a pianist, I can testify to the mutual unease and 'feeling out' that accompanies the beginning of every job with a strange, new drummer. Bill seems to know that with Elvin on hand, this is not to be a 'business-as-usual' Bill Evans' session, and to his credit he locates his place within the rhythmic universe of Elvin. (Another factor is Richard Davis, a gifted player but less secure and reassuring as a 'walker' than Ron Carter, with whom he shares duties.)" (from Amazon customer reviewer Samuel Chell.)
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1966
The Mamas and the Papas
album: All the Leaves Are Brown The Golden Era Collection

same track as on album referenced above

Notes: "This is where fans of the group can sort of stop and settle down at last. MCA Records had previously let the Mamas & the Papas' music out on CD in a trickle; the debut LP was upgraded and a compilation of remastered hits showed later in the decade, but the rest was left to languish. This two-CD set makes up for that neglect, assembling all four of the quartet's '60s albums on two CDs and augmenting them with the mono single versions of 'I Saw Her Again,' 'Words of Love,' and "Creeque Alley," plus the non-LP single 'Glad to Be Unhappy.' One just wants to luxuriate in the sound of this reissue and its little details, like the rhythm guitar on 'Do You Want to Dance' that cuts right through the air, the string basses on 'Go Where You Want to Go' that sound like they're just across the room, and the rest of the first album."
For some real nostalgia, watch a live performance at YouTube.
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1971
George Shearing and Joe Williams
album: The Heart and Soul of
Joe Williams and George Shearing

Notes: "The voice sounded like that of Joe Williams in his youth. But the sound quality gave me the impression the tracks were laid down in just in the past few years. But sure enough, after browsing through the notes, I came across a recording date of March 1 & 2, 1971. Somebody did a great job of restoration" (from Amazon customer review by Hoc Stercus).
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1973
Tony Bennett
Album: Tony Bennett Sings
the Rodgers and Hart Songbook

Notes: " In sessions recorded in September 1973, Tony Bennett cut a series of songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, backed by the Ruby Braff - George Barnes Quartet. Originally, they resulted in two albums on Bennett's Improv Records, each containing ten selections. The material has been collected several times, including on the 1990 DRG collection The Rodgers and Hart Songbook, the 1999 Rhino disc Sings Rodgers & Hart Songs, and the 2005 Concord compilation Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook. Bennett is a sterling interpreter, and the backup is sympathetic" (from iTunes review).
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1998
Tierney Sutton
Album: Introducing Tierney Sutton

Notes: "Tierney Sutton has the kind of voice that you can take for granted. After just a couple of tunes, you know you can relax — she's not going to flub a note, she's not going to screech trying to reach beyond her range, she's not going to show off. That frees you up to sit back, close your eyes, and alternate between wonder at her pure technique and rapt enjoyment of her artistry. Sutton's debut album is a program of standards (not to say potboilers): "The Song Is You," "My Heart Stood Still," "It Never Entered My Mind," like that. But even if you've heard all these songs a hundred times before, you'll still love this album. Not because she brings anything particularly surprising or revelatory to this repertoire, but because she sheds such a warm, sweet light on the songs that it's a pleasure to hear them again. Sometimes she surprises, as on the voice/bass duet arrangements of "In Love in Vain" and "My Heart Stood Still," which are two of this album's many highlights, or with startling scat excursions where you don't necessarily expect them. Other times she evokes Ella Fitzgerald at her peak, as on her rendition of "Caravan." But she never disappoints" (iTunes review).

2002
Stacey Kent
Album: In Love Again

For music video, see Cafe Songbook
Main Stage, this page

Notes: Although this is a Richard Rodgers tribute album with songs (including "My Heart Stood Still') by his first lyricist partner, Lorenz Hart, as well as others by his next, Oscar Hammerstein II, the lyricists are certainly not given short shrift. As Kazuo Ishiguro puts it in the liner notes, Stacey Kent "conveys as well as any singer I've heard a person talking to herself; the faltering hesitancies, the exuberant rushes of inner thought. There is invariably a lover being addressed, but in Stacey's readings that lover is never in the room. The lyric is what the singer wishes to say, or wishes she had said. We're witnessing a private moment." (Jim Tomlinson, tenor sax and flute, Colin Oxley, guitar; Simon Thorpe, Bass; David Newton, piano; Jasper Kviberg, drums)
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2004
Brian Lynch and Bill Charlap
Album: Brian Lynch meets
Bill Charlap

Notes: The title "Brian Lynch Meets Bill Charlap" suggests that this is their first musical meeting, but in fact the trumpeter [Lynch] and pianist [Charlap] have been long-time members of the Phil Woods Quintet, and their musical chemistry is apparent throughout the CD. . . . The style of the music strongly reflects Charlap's influence. It is quietly intense, never knocking you out with overt technical fireworks (though both Lynch and Charlap are masters of their instruments), but touching your heart and mind with lyrical, well-shaped solos. Six of the CD's nine selections are standards, while three are Lynch originals which fit right in with overall feeling of the date" (from Amazon customer reviewer, John Tapscott.
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