Somebody Loves Me

Written: 1924

Music by:
George Gershwin

Words by:
B. G. Buddy De Sylva and
Ballard MacDonald

Written for:
George White's Scandals
(revue, 1924)

On the Main Stage at Cafe Songbook

Margot Bingham

performing

"Somebody Loves Me"

backed by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks
in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire
(season 4 episode 3).
(2013)

The video (DVD and Blue Ray) available at
Amazon; The CD/(MP3s) at

More Performances of "Somebody Loves Me"
in the Cafe Songbook Record/Video Cabinet
(Video credit)

Cafe Songbook Reading Room

"Somebody Loves Me"

Critics Corner || Lyrics Lounge

"Somebody Loves Me" and the year in which it was written, 1924, together represent a turning point in George Gershwin's career. He, Buddy De Sylva and Ballard MacDonald wrote "Somebody Loves Me" for the 1924 edition of The George White Scandals, a series of revues that began in 1919, and ran through 1936. White intended them to compete with Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies and was successful in doing so for a good portion of the time. From 1920-1924, the scores for The Scandals were written by the young George Gershwin. And in June, 1924, nobody, not even George Gershwin himself, could have been anything but young to have accomplished what he did: He recorded Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman's orchestra on June 10, and evidently within the next couple of weeks or so wrote the entire score for the 1924 Scandals, because it opened at the Apollo Theater on 42n street in New York on June 30; and by July 8, he had sailed for London to begin work on his British musical, Primrose. The scorefor Scandals included the show's best remembered song, "Somebody Loves Me."

For five seasons Gershwin cut his songwriting teeth composing for White's revues, but from this point on he would cease to write songs each of which was designed to be the focal point for an individual sketch, as was required in a revue, and instead write groups of songs all of which were intended to carry forward the story of an entire show. This new format forced George to change his composing modus operandi. For revues he could depend much more heavily on song ideas jotted down and stored away in his ever-present notebooks, but to make an entire score of songs fit a single story line, he had to start each, more or less, from scratch. These shows with a single story from opening to closing curtain were termed bookmusicals, the form that became the future of the American musical theater as well as the future for George Gershwin on Broadway and later in Hollywood.

According to Ruth Leon, one of George's biographers, "Gershwin had felt a revue format like George White's Scandals was the right showcase for his talents," and a song as good and lasting as "Somebody Loves Me" seems to bear that out; nevertheless, the revue form, at the time of that song's composition, was something Gershwin was leaving behind. (And, in truth, only two out of Thirty-four songs from the five scores he wrote for The Scandals are still remembered: "Stairway to Paradise" (1922) and "Somebody Loves me." After the 1924 Scandals, he left the series partly because he had a money dispute with George White but mostly because he had gotten restless writing for the revue format. He was, according to another biographer, Howard Pollack, "outgrowing the genre's limits" (p. 319). Afterwards he wrote solely for book musicals, first on stage and then on the screen -- along with, of course, composing his concert pieces. The first and most significant of these was Rhapsody in Blue, also written during 1924 (before "Somebody Loves Me"). Later in the same year, Gershwin, along with his brother Ira, who about this time became his permanent writing partner, wrote the score for their first significant book musical, Lady Be Good. (It should be noted that George had previously written the score for a lesser known musical with a book, La, La, Lucille in 1919).

Of the two lyricists who worked on "Somebody Loves Me," Gershwin says it was Ballard MacDonald who started the ball rolling on the song by saying, "George, let's write a song that will be simple yet strong enough to catch on and become a hit," which in fact it did, the only song from the show to do so; furthermore, Gershwin claimed MacDonald was mostly responsible for the song's lyric and admired Ballard as a "typical, colorful popular songwriter of the first rank." This was not to denigrate Buddy De Sylva whom he respected, having worked with him on several projects including writing the standard "Do it Again" in 1922.

Winnie Lightner introduced "Somebody Loves Me" in a Scandals sketch, the premise of which is that a young, contemporary woman suffers frustration and confusion because she knows she is loved by someone but doesn't know who. The sketch sets her amongst her heroes all of whom surround her on stage as she sings, and includes figures from various periods as diverse as Mark Antony, Romeo, Harold Lloyd, William S. Hart, and even twenties child star, Jacky Coogan for comic relief. She does not, however, know or discover who is meant for her, and her plight and resulting frustration serve as the source of energy that drives the song. "Somebody Loves Me" was the hit of the show and its performance was no doubt instrumental in launching it on its path toward becoming a standard.

Alec Wilder does not believe "Somebody Loves Me" is a great song but recognizes that jazz musicians have found it one to "have fun with," often choosing to play it because it is "spare"; that is, is a song not cluttered with too many notes. "Somebody Loves Me" also appeals to jazz players because it uses "two measure cadences which give the improviser extra room to move around in." The harmonic changes don't come too quickly providing "room to fool around" within the chords, in other words room for improvising. Certainly Wilder's contention as it relates to "Somebody Loves Me" being a favorite of jazz musicians is born out on this page by the number of them (even exclusive of jazz vocalists) who can be found performing it in the Cafe Songbook Record/Video Cabinet.

Wilder goes on to note that another important reason for the popularity of "Somebody Loves Me" with jazz musicians is the novelty of its out-of-key b-flat whole notes . . . ," In other words its blue notes, the use of which in 1924, were "a departure from conventional songwriting and led early "jazz critics" to call Gershwin songs like "Somebody Loves Me" and "Stairway to Paradise" jazz songs.

Gerald Bordman, without calling "Somebody Loves Me" a jazz song, comments that its jazz elements [such as the blue note] demonstrate, "the grammar" of the [Gershwin Jazz] style (Gerald Bordman, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, New York and London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978/1986, p. 339, hard-bound Ed.).

Of the many explanations of how George Gershwin used blue notes to inflect his compositions with a jazz flavor, the clearest, and probably the best, especially for non-musicians, comes from Gerald Mast. Mast describes Gershwin's "partiality" for blue notes as being characterized by their unexpected arrival at a given point in a song, "rupturing a simple melodic pattern, usually at the very end of a musical phrase." What happens here, according to Mast, is that the phrase is ended or resolved, in a spot where it ordinarily couldn't be, by the use of a blue or flatted note changing the key from major to minor, a change that is often associated with the evocation of sadness. This occurs in the refrainof "Somebody Loves Me" every time the word "who" is used. The flatted third (or blue) note used for each "who" makes the refrain repeatedly "leap out" at the listener (Mast, p. 74).

Somebody loves me,
I wonder who,
I wonder who she can be.

Thomas Hischak in the entry for "Somebody Loves Me" in his Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia despite noting the distinctive use of blue-notes on the word "who" tilts decisively toward the song having a happy outcome:

B.G. De Sylva and Ballard MacDonald wrote the nimble lyric about a true love who has not yet appeared on the scene, but one is confident that such a person exists (p. 331 paper-bound Ed.).

William Hyland takes the opposite tack from Hischak, asserting the result of using the blue note on the word "who," makes "the simple question, 'I wonder who,' take on a different meaning. He suggests that the answer to the question will be "an unhappy one"(Hyland, p. 55). Presumably, Hyland means the answer to the question will become a cause for the singer developing a case of the blues.

This notion may be confirmed by those performances of the song which are taken at a ballad tempo (which Wilder says Gershwin called for) or, on the other hand, undercut by those sung up-tempo, as if the singer knows he or she will be thrilled by whoever turns out to be the 'somebody."

See Performance Notes below.

As to whether "Somebody Loves Me" casts a negative light on the outcome of the singer's predicament of not knowing who loves or doesn't love him or her, Allen Forte claims the musical structure in association with the lyric finally clears up any ambiguities associated with the "plaintive quality of the melody." As a result, he feels certain that the song ends on a "happy, or at least optimistic," note. (For the details of his technical analysis in support of this conclusion, see p. 153).

Click here to read the lyrics for "Somebody Loves Me" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald on various albums.

Philip Furia and Michael Lasser in their 2006 book America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley, makes the case, as do other commentators, that "Somebody Loves Me" comes at a turning point in George Gershwin's songwriting career. For them this is true not only because of the points made above that it was written for Gershwin's last revue; but also because it was "the best and one of the last of Gershwin'sTin Pan AlleySongs." Their argument is based mostly on the lyric. The singer is "befuddled" because although she is confident that somebody loves her, she doesn't know who it could be. She is so worried about who it might be that she "frantically accosts men in the street" to determine which one loves her. Finally, "in a classic Tin Pan Alley 'finish'," she turns to her audience and "coyly" exclaims, "Maybe it's you!"

The persona of the singer as depicted by Furia and Lasser is similar to the the character in the original sketch in George White's Scandals of 1924. Of course, the original rendition of the song included its verse, the purpose of which was to set up the sketch: There "should be a girl for every single man" (Note the double entendre of "single."), because "this has been "Heaven's plan" ever since "the world began." In the singer's case, however, something seems to have gone wrong because "To my regret . . . we've [she and the man destined for her] never met." The singer is quite apprehensive about this development, "clutching at straws, / Just because / I may meet him yet." In other words, as the opening of the refrainstates, "Somebody loves me, / I wonder who / I wonder who he can be."

Like many other singers, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra drop the verse in their renditions of "Somebody Loves Me," thus eliminating the set-up that underpins the opening lines of the refrain: "Somebody loves me / I wonder who. . . ." Therefore, most of us who are familiar with the song through later recordings, unlike the 1924 audience for the Scandals, have never heard the verse (probably don't even know it exists), and so don't quite understand why the singer feels this way. The audience attending the show has had an advantage over us. We who haven't heard the verse are much more dependent on the latter-day singers to convey through tone and phrasing what we are supposed to think about their state of mind. Why exactly is she/he so worried who the prospective lover can be? Why is the singer so worried that he/she needs to shout to every boy/girl who passes by, "Hey! maybe, / you were meant to be my lovin' baby"? The answer was, of course, supplied in the now rarely sung verse: This is the way the world was made, with someone for everyone. So why am I an exception? Probably most modern singers understand that in this case of existential angst, less is more. The singer does not need to tell us how the world was made. We understand how just from being alive; and when we perceive ourselves as odd man/woman out, we worry, often a lot, and speculate: "Somebody loves me, / I wonder who. / Maybe it's you." Singers such as Sinatra and Fitzgerald make their livings filling in the blanks with their deliveries.

There are, however, recorded versions that include the verse. One of the first is by Isabelle Patricola, real life sister of Scandals cast member Tom Patricola (who plays Twenties child movie star Jackie Coogan). Isabelle, who was not herself in the cast, recorded the song in August, 1924, on which she sings the full llyric, including the verse. Howard Pollack notes that her rendition was taken at a slower tempo than Whiteman's, what Pollack calls "a moderate pace," which picked up when her brother Tom entered during the second chorus at "a swinging gait." Play the video below to hear them sing the entire song as it was originally written. Marion Harris' 1924 version also includes the verse.

Isabelle Patricola sings "Somebody Loves Me" (1924)
with her comic actor brother Tom Patricola,
who appeared as child star Jackie Coogan in the original
sketch in George White's Scandals, 1924. (Isabelle was not in the original show. Tom Patricola also sings "Somebody Loves Me" with Joan Leslie in the Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue, 1946)

Recording artists and club performers regularly change lyrics around to customize them for their own particular needs. The most common form of such customization is the changing of gender specific words to suit the needs of the singer. Even though the Ella Fitzgerald lyric for "Somebody Loves Me" given at the "Click here" link indicates that she uses the pronoun "she" and the noun "girl," at those spots where one would expect her (at least at the time Ella recorded the song), to invoke the male gender, she, in fact, uses "he" and "guy" on her recording. Nat King Cole, as one would expect, uses "she" and "girl" on his. Versions of the sheet music often provide both.

 

Read the full lyric for "Somebody Loves Me" in

Reading Lyrics,
Edited and with an Introduction by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball, New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.

Click here to read Cafe Songbook lyrics policy.

Ballard MacDonald

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