There's a Somebody I'm Longing to See

Greatest Songs of the 20th Century:
"Someone to Watch Over Me"
(George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, 1926)

It never fails to amaze me how young so many songwriters are when they create the works that have endured throughout the decades. George Gershwin composed and first performed “Rhapsody in Blue” when he was all of 25. After that landmark, George began teaming up with his older brother, lyricist Ira, to write Broadway shows, starting with Lady, Be Good, which was an instant hit in 1924, starring as it did Fred and Adele Astaire.

In 1926, the Gershwin brothers wrote Oh, Kay!, with its rapturous centerpiece, “Someone to Watch Over Me.” The song was originally written as an uptempo rhythm number, until George played it at a slower pace, and the brothers immediately knew that’s how it was meant to be. It was sung onstage by Gertrude Lawrence as she held a Raggedy Ann doll, a gift from the composer.

What’s most striking about “Someone to Watch Over Me” is the gorgeous melody of its choruses, the gently falling phrases that fairly swoon as the tune proceeds. If I knew anything about music, I would explain this to you, but I have found an essay by a musicologist named Allen Forte that describes “the pentatonic scale that ascends from E flat1 to E flat2 to arrive on apex pitch F2 ([on the word] “longing”) and the slow, sequential descent, each bar of which presents a descending third.” It sounds simple the way Forte describes it, but if it were that simple, someone else would have done it, and only George Gershwin actually did it.

But Ira’s lyrics almost match his brother’s melody with their beauty. “Won’t you tell him please to put on some speed” is a lovely, unexpected turn. (When I first heard this song, I assumed that's the way people spoke in 1926, but they didn't.) “He may not be the man some/Girls think of as handsome” is even more spectacular, illustrating the old notion that men fall in love with women they find attractive, while women find attractive the men that they fall in love with. It's also a sly, somewhat self-deprecating commentary a la “My Funny Valentine,” plus a rhyme scheme worthy of Neil Diamond.

“Someone to Watch Over Me” was considered the standout song from Oh, Kay! right from the beginning. One source I’ve found says that Gertrude Lawrence’s original recording peaked at Number Two on the charts in early 1926, although it’s not clear to me which charts this refers to. George Gershwin’s own version made the same charts that year as well, as did an upbeat rendition by George Olsen and His Orchestra.

It became a jazz standard, being recorded by both Coleman Hawkins and Artie Shaw in 1945. In the 1950s the song was done by the real heavyweights of the American songbook, including Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra, as well as Blossom Dearie in what has become the consensus best version of the song, which also gives me the opportunity to remind you once again that Blossom Dearie was indeed her real name. In more recent times, "Someone to Watch Over Me" has been covered by Willie Nelson, Amy Winehouse and Sting. Wait, Sting?

It's a good thing George Gershwin did all that composing at such a young age, because at the age of 38, he began suffering blinding headaches and hallucinations. He went to the hospital, which sent him home with a diagnosis of "likely hysteria." Three weeks later, he was dead from a brain tumor. Ira temporarily retired from lyric-writing for three years, before re-emerging to work with the likes of Jerome Kern and Harold Arlen. Ira died in 1986, 28 days before Amy Winehouse was born.