My dad used to sing this song to me and my siblings at bedtime.
It’s another one co-written by Dorothy Fields with composer Jimmy McHugh.
This song recently entered the public domain, which means that we — Molly Ruggles, Carole Bundy and I — can now release our own version of this beloved standard.
Molly is a pianist, singer, songwriter and arranger who worked at Harvard and MIT for many years.
She kept her love for music alive during that period of her life by writing songs (including a complete musical) and working as the music director at a UU church.
During the past few years, I have discovered that Molly has a fascinating musical gift.
She likes to write entirely new sections for pre-existing songs!
Some people write new lyrics for songs, and she has been known to do that as well.
But I have never met anyone who can write an entirely new section which matches the musical style (melody, chords AND lyrics) of the original song in such a seamless way.
If you listen to our recording (in the player above and or via a music streaming service), the entirely new part written by Molly begins “I gotta tell you, I wish that I had a big bank account” and ends with “and I have one simple goal — giving my love to you!”
It is brilliantly done.
She also wrote a new section for Cole Porter’s song “Let’s Do It” (which recently entered the public domain) and for a few others which are not yet in the public domain.
We perform those songs live but cannot release a recording of them (which would include Molly’s new section) without getting permission from the people who wrote them and/or their descendants and/or the music publishing companies which own them.
Going forward, I am hoping that Molly focuses her creativity on songs which are already in the public domain — of which there are MANY from the early years of what is now called “the Great American Songbook.”
For example, a bunch of Irving Berlin’s earliest hits are now in the public domain including “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”
And one of my favorite songs of all time, “Makin’ Whoopee“ is also in the public domain, I think.
Thank you to Molly for creating this great arrangement of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby” as well as playing piano and singing on it.
Thank you to Carole for singing on it.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for engineering our recording session and then mixing our version with me via Zoom.
Thank you to the generous and talented photographers at Pixabay — who let me use their beautiful photos in my blog posts.
And thank YOU for reading and listening to yet another blog post.
Deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
ps: If you are inspired to stream our version of this song, you can click here for links to various companies including Pandora, Apple Music and Spotify.
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