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Three Little Words

Written: 1930

Music by: Harry Ruby

Words by: Bert Kalmar

Written for: Check and Double Check
(movie)
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"Three Little Words"

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Cafe Songbook Reading Room

"Three Little Words"

Critics Corner || Lyrics Lounge
About the movie Check and Double Check / Origins of the Song

Other songs used in the movie Check and Double Check currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook:

1. Am I Blue?

 

For a complete listing of songs used in this movie, see IMDB soundtrack.

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Critics Corner
Book cover: Philip Furia, The Poets of Tin Pan Alley"
Philip Furia, The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
 Philip Furia in his look in to the poetics of Tin Pan Alley songwriters notes that Kalmar and Ruby met what might have seemed like an insurmountable problem in writing "Three Little Words." Although Furia says the song typifies the Tin Pan Alley style, Ruby's melody did not provide the cookie cutter three note main phrase that allowed the lyricist to plug in "I love you" in the spot normally reserved for it. Instead Ruby wrote a four note phrase, which was was too long. Kalmar, however, solved the problem by coming up with a four syllable phrase to fit it: "three lit-tle words (Furia, p. 236).
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Lyrics Lounge

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Credits

("Three Little Words" page)

 

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Borrowed material (text): The sources of all quoted and paraphrased text are cited. Such content is used under the rules of fair use to further the educational objectives of CafeSongbook.com. CafeSongbook.com makes no claims to rights of any kind in this content or the sources from which it comes.

 

Borrowed material (images): Images of CD, DVD, book and similar product covers are used courtesy of either Amazon.com or iTunes/LinkShare with which CafeSongbook.com maintains an affiliate status. All such images are linked to the source from which they came (i.e. either iTunes/LinkShare or Amazon.com).

 

Any other images that appear on CafeSongbook.com pages are either in the public domain or appear through the specific permission of their owners. Such permission will be acknowledged in this space on the page where the image is used.

 

For further information on Cafe Songbook policies with regard to the above matters, see our "About Cafe Songbook" page (link at top and bottom of every page).

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The Cafe Songbook
Record/Video Cabinet:
Selected Recordings of

"Three Little Words"


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