My Ship

Composer Kurt Weill

"My Ship" is a popular song written for the 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin.

The music is marked "Andante espressivo"; Gershwin describes it as "orchestrated by Kurt to sound sweet and simple at times, mysterious and menacing at other".^[1]

It was premiered by Gertrude Lawrence in the role of Liza Elliott, the editor of a fashion magazine. In the context of the show, the song comes in a sequence in which Elliott, in psychoanalysis, recalls a turn-of-the-century song she knew in her childhood.

The song was not included in the 1944 Hollywood film Lady in the Dark, a fact which Ira Gershwin found inexplicable:

"Later, when Lady in the Dark was filmed, the script necessarily had many references to the song. But for some unfathomable reason the song itself—as essential to this musical drama as a stolen necklace or a missing will to a melodrama—was omitted. Although the film was successful financially, audiences evidently were puzzled or felt thwarted or something, because items began to appear in movie-news columns mentioning that the song frequently referred to in Lady in the Dark was 'My Ship'. I hold a brief for Hollywood, having been more or less a movie-goer since I was nine; but there are times..."^[2]

Cover versions

Artists who have recorded the song include:

• Ron Carter^[3] (the latter on his 1978-album Peg Leg).
• June Christy - Ballads For Night People (1959)
• Jacqui Dankworth - As the Sun Shines Down on Me (2002)
• Miles Davis on his 1957 album Miles Ahead. This version was also included on the 2005 compilation Late Night Tales: The Flaming Lips.
• Steve Davis - "Eloquence" (2010)
• Johnny Hartman - The Voice That Is! (1964)
• Ute Lemper
• Helen Schneider
• Doretta Morrow
• George Shearing on his piano solo album My Ship (recorded June 25, 1974), MPS Records, 1975.
• Jeri Southern - When Your Heart's On Fire (1957)
• Dawn Upshaw^[4]

References

1. ^ Gershwin, Ira (1959). Lyrics on Several Occasions (First ed.). New York: Knopf. OCLC 538209. 
2. ^ Gershwin, Ira (1959). Lyrics on Several Occasions (First ed.). New York: Knopf. OCLC 538209. 
3. ^ Peg Leg. Milestone 1978
4. ^ I Wish It So. Nonesuch, 1994.

Further reading

• Furia, Philip (1996). Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist (First ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195082990. 
• McClung, Bruce (2007). Lady in the Dark, Biography of a Musical. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195120124

External links

• Lyrics at LyricWiki

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