Composed by Vernon Duke , with lyrics by Ira Gershwin
It tells you something about the melting pot of Tin Pan Alley to consider that this immensely popular standard was composed by Vladimir Dukelsky, a native of Belarus who had studied at the Kiev Conservatory, and Israel Gershovitz, whose parents had fi rst dated in St. Petersburg. We know them better as Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin, and if you are looking for nostalgia for the Old Country in their songs, you will fi nd none of it in this quintessentially up-to-date song about modern American life.
Well, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that, back in the Great Depression , this song was up-to-date, with its refer- ences to the stock market crash of 1929 and military con- fl icts in Spain. The clever premise here is for the singer to enumerate many grand accomplishments—circumnavigat- ing the globe or breaking par on the golf course—in each eight-bar A theme, before concluding “but I can’t get started with you.” The song ranks among the most popular “list songs” of the fi rst half of the twentieth century. (Curiously enough, another “list song” with similar chord changes, “These Foolish Things,” was also a big hit around this same time.)
But this song’s personality has changed with the passing decades, and the words that were so timely in the 1930s now come across as quaintly passé. The lyrics work well enough in performance even today, although with a much diff erent ambiance than they once possessed. The words also are susceptible to updating, as many singers have done over the years. I haven’t heard anyone yet mention Twitter or their iPhone in modernized lyrics to “I Can’t Get Started,” but I don’t see why they shouldn’t. The music, for its part, opens with a chord progression that would later become a
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hackneyed staple of R&B and early rock, but it no doubt sounded much fresher in the years before World War II. The B theme is the real gem, with its constant return to the same note (a concert A) with shifting harmonies changing its fl avor with each repetition.
The song had been introduced on Broadway by Bob Hope—and he later credited it with giving him the boost he needed to get a movie contract—but its fame owes more to trumpeter Bunny Berigan, whose 1937 recording of “I Can’t Get Started” was a surprise hit. Perhaps if he had lived longer—his health shat- tered by chronic alcoholism, Berigan died at age 33—this stellar trumpeter might be better known today. Certainly he ranks among the fi nest soloists of his generation, and he shows off his brash, confi dent attack on “I Can’t Get Started.” Yet Berigan’s singing, less impressive, may have contributed even more to the sales of this recording, with its conversational delivery so well suited to the lyrics. His recording of “I Can’t Get Started” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975 and has been featured in several fi lms, including China- town and Save the Tiger .
Billie Holiday’s recording the following year is no doubt better known among today’s crop of jazz fans, and is noteworthy both for capturing Lady Day in an unusually playful mood—even back then, she was tinkering with Ira Ger- shwin’s lyrics—and for the tenor sax contribution by Lester Young. Young only gets a brief intro and a 16-bar solo on this track, but I can’t think of another jazz improviser who was more skilled at capitalizing on such short interludes than Young at this stage of his career.
The song has enjoyed a rather adventurous post-chart afterlife—much more so than one might expect given its birth as a novelty number for a comedian. Dizzy Gillespie found it suitably boppish to feature it at his fi rst session as a leader back in early 1945, and that recording employs a number of modernistic fl ourishes, including a passage that would later be incorporated into the stan- dard arrangement of “’Round Midnight.” The following year Lennie Tristano, also making his fi rst commercial recordings, off ered a stunning interpretation that Gunther Schuller has compared to Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” and Duke Ellington’s “Cotton Tail”—grand claims, to be sure, but this certainly ranks among the most progressive piano performances of the era. A few years later Paul Bley tackled this same standard, also on his debut leader date.
Charles Mingus, who was a sideman at the Bley session, left behind more than a half-dozen recordings of this composition—and if you think of this artist only as a bassist, bandleader, and composer, see what Mingus could do as a solo pianist on his 1963 keyboard performance of “I Can’t Get Started” for the Impulse label. But even better is his combo rendition with John Handy from 1959, where you will fi nd the bassist relying on some four-chords-to-a-bar sub- stitute changes—a progression implied by Dizzy Gillespie’s melodic lines back in 1945 and made even more explicit in the trumpeter’s big band performances
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of “I Can’t Get Started” from 1948—that are still popular today with many jazz musicians who tackle this song.
recommended versions
Bunny Berigan, New York, August 7, 1937
Billie Holiday (with Lester Young), New York, September 15, 1938
Lester Young (with Nat King Cole and Red Callender), Los Angeles, July 15, 1942 Dizzy Gillespie, New York, January 9, 1945
Lennie Tristano, New York, October 8, 1946
Paul Bley (with Charles Mingus and Art Blakey), from Introducing Paul Bley , November 30, 1953
Sonny Rollins, from A Night at the Village Vanguard , live at the Village Vanguard, New York, November 3, 1957
Charles Mingus (with John Handy), from Jazz Portraits: Mingus in Wonderland , live at the Nonagon Art Gallery, New York, January 16, 1959
Stan Getz (with Kenny Barron), from Anniversary , live at Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen, 1987
Hamiet Bluiett (with Ted Dunbar), from Ballads and Blues , live at the Village Vanguard, New York, February 20, 1994
Joe Lovano (with Tom Harrell), from Live at the Village Vanguard , live at the Village Vanguard, New York, March 12, 1994