I'm Just Wild About Harry

"I'm Just Wild About Harry" (1921) is a song written by Eubie Blake (music) and Noble Sissle (lyrics) for the Broadway production of "Shuffle Along", written by Blake, Sissle, F. E. Miller, and Aubrey Lyles. The song was the most popular number in the first successful Broadway theater production to have an all African-American cast. The show and in particular the song broke what had been a taboo against musical and theatrical depictions of romantic love between African-Americans.

Harry S. Truman selected "I'm Just Wild About Harry" as his campaign song for the United States presidential election of 1948. [Southern, Eileen. "The Music of Black Americans". W. W. Norton & Company (1997). Pg 436. ISBN 9780393038439.] Its success in politics led to a popular revival. [Wintz, Cary D. & Finkelman, Paul. "Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance". Taylor & Francis (2004). Pg 153. ISBN 9781579584573.]

Background

Both "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and the show "Shuffle Along" broke racial taboos.cite book |accessdate=2008-09-27|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=-ENtazHbVc4C&pg=PA29&dq=I%27m+Just+Wild+About+Harry+Philip+Furia&ei=DGjfSMv0DZKQzQS99NHCCA&sig=ACfU3U3zuoxu-idZ96EtjUkaDeR7KI9X_A|author=Philip Furia, Michael Lasser|title=America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley|publisher=CRC Press|date=2006| pages=29-31] During the early twentieth century African-Americans were excluded from most mainstream theater in the United States: white Vaudeville refused to book more than one African-American act on a bill and for over a decade no Broadway show used African-American performers at all. Blake and Sissle met Miller and Aubrey for the first time at an NAACP benefit in 1920. The two leading African-American acts in Vaudeville had known each other by reputation only because of Vaudeville's exclusionary practices. Miller proposed they collaborate on an all-black musical comedy because he saw that as the only way to overcome pervasive discrimination.

The title and chorus of the musical's most famous number challenge that taboo: "I'm just wild about Harry and he's just wild about me" is a clear statement of mutual romantic interest. Sissle and Blake risked the public's rejection by shedding most of the racial stereotypes that had been the norm for theatrical performances.cite book |accessdate=2008-09-28|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=rqi3d1925IcC&pg=PA497&dq=I%27m+Just+Wild+About+Harry&lr=&ei=SPveSOCsBpy8jgGKhrznDg&sig=ACfU3U0ldzylYRx9cicA0IkqGH2eNTgiRg#PPA496,M1|author=Ken Bloom|title=Broadway: Its History, People, and Places : An Encyclopedia|publisher=Taylor & Francis|date=2004| pages=496–498]

Creation

"I'm Just Wild About Harry" underwent a complete rewrite during rehearsals and was nearly cut from the show. Blake's original version of the song was a Viennese waltz, but according to the authors of "America's Songs", performer Lottie Gee encouraged rewriting the number as "an up-tempo one-step". Blake disliked the suggestion and feared it would ruin his waltz, but Blake capitulated after Sissle agreed with Gee.

Audiences did not respond well to the revised version during early performances. Blake was on the verge of dropping the number from the show when a dancer took ill and had to be replaced. The understudy was a singer who did not know the steps, so when he was unable to follow the routine he ignored it and improvised. "America's Songs" quotes Sissle's recollection of how the performance saved the song: "He dropped out of line and with a jive smile and a high-stepping routine of his own, he stopped the show cold."

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Listen
filename = Eubie Blake - Just Wild about Harry.ogg
title = "I'm Just Wild About Harry"
description = Instrumental version of "I'm Just Wild About Harry" recorded 17 May 1922. Duration 3:54.
format = OggAlec Wilder and James T. Maher call "I'm Just Wild About Harry" a "strong, direct, simple song, the principal device of which is a strong fourth beat tied to the down beat".cite book |accessdate=2008-09-27|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=bt-YD80ZZbIC&pg=PA454&dq=I%27m+Just+Wild+About+Harry&ei=4ajeSImWN4mUzAT774yrBg&sig=ACfU3U0DltrYIbMh2trpdwS0UKyjfw3MFQ#PPA455,M1|author=Alec Wilder, James T. Maher|title=American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950|publisher=Oxford University Press US|date=1972| pages=454–455] The song moves in short melodic bursts characteristic of the era: lighthearted but rhythmic.

The tightly rhymed lyrics border on comic exaggeration.

:"The heavenly blisses":"Of his kisses":"Fill me with ecstasy.":"He's sweet just like chocolate candy":"And just like honey from the bee."cite web|url=http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/sheetmusic/devincent.do?c=01&p=4&id=LL-SDV-179023&s=full|title=I'm Just Wild About Harry (sheet music p.4)|publisher=M. Witmark & Sons|accessdate=2008-09-28] cite web|url=http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/sheetmusic/devincent.do;jsessionid=BA1D0E65FF22EA99FCD18BD832176C75?c=01&p=5&id=LL-SDV-179023&s=full|title=I'm Just Wild About Harry (sheet music p.5)|publisher=M. Witmark & Sons|accessdate=2008-09-28]

Yet Furia and Lasser describe the song's overall impact as "an infectious delight."

Reception

"Shuffle Along" was an significant theatrical success that "ended more than a decade of systematic exclusion of blacks from the Broadway stage". The show opened in New York City at Daly's Sixty-third Street Music Hall on May 23, 1921 and ran 504 performances.cite book |accessdate=2008-09-28|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=n3IRgH2wLcwC&pg=PA55&dq=I%27m+Just+Wild+About+Harry&lr=&ei=_wHfSL7cCYXCywS_4pXPDA&sig=ACfU3U3AL6m-k3A3c4KFsjQyHXZUriJYSg|author=Bill Egan|title=Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen|publisher=Scarecrow Press|date=2004| pages=55–56] The venue was actually a converted lecture hall that lacked a proper stage or orchestra pit. The show overcame financial straits and a poor location to become "the first all-black musical to enjoy a long run and be treated as more than an oddity."

quote|On the New York opening night, the audience loved the show. Infuential critics like Alan Dale, George Jean Nathan, and Heywood Broun were highly enthusiastic. Gradually "Shuffle Along" built up a cult status. So big were the crowds that the police had trouble controlling the traffic. Eventually they had to make Sixty-third a one-way street. A black show was back on Broadway, even if Sixty-third Street, a long way uptown, was barely Broadway! In Eubie Blake's words, "It wasn't Broadway but we made it Broadway."
Bill Egan|"Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen"

"I'm Just Wild About Harry" was the most popular number of the show. Blake conducted the show's orchestra and recorded the song for the Victor label.cite book |accessdate=2008-09-28|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=6szF5VprkHAC&pg=PA98&dq=I%27m+Just+Wild+About+Harry&lr=&ei=SPveSOCsBpy8jgGKhrznDg&sig=ACfU3U09m76AIKVi_WWKKkTSGMEuuWGE1w#PPA99,M1|author=David A. Jasen|title=A Century of American Popular Music: 2000 Best-loved and Remembered Songs (1899–1999)|publisher=Taylor & Francis|date=2002| pages=98–99] Noble Sissle's 1937 recording for the Victory label altered the original tone considerably in order to showcase the talents of clarinettist Sidney Bechet.cite book |accessdate=2008-09-28|url= http://books.google.com/books?id=CGthyvkfmlcC&pg=PA389&dq=I%27m+Just+Wild+About+Harry&ei=8fjeSM7jFomUzAT774yrBg&sig=ACfU3U3-foO_14yVS86wf0iU08DVGn-qIw |author= Tim Brooks, Richard Keith Spottswood |title= Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919|publisher= University of Illinois Press |date=2004| pages=389] Other early recordings include Bennie Krueger and Paul Whiteman.cite book |accessdate=2008-09-28|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=6szF5VprkHAC&pg=PA98&dq=I%27m+Just+Wild+About+Harry&lr=&ei=SPveSOCsBpy8jgGKhrznDg&sig=ACfU3U09m76AIKVi_WWKKkTSGMEuuWGE1w#PPA99,M1|author=David A. Jasen|title=A Century of American Popular Music: 2000 Best-loved and Remembered Songs (1899–1999)|publisher=Taylor & Francis|date=2002| pages=98–99] Alice Facy sang the piece with Louis Prima's band in the 1939 film "Rose of Washington Square".

In 1948 "I'm Just Wild About Harry" underwent a revival when Harry S. Truman selected it as his campaign song for the presidency of the United States. The next year Al Jolson performed it in the film "Jolson Sings Again" and the song became a jazz standard. This return to popularity briefly reunited Blake and Sissle for the first time since 1933. Writing about American popular songs in 1972, Wilder and Maher call "I'm Just Wild About Harry" the only enduringly popular song from "Shuffle Along".

References

External links

* [http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=9073 "Shuffle Along" (1921) at Internet Broadway Database]
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048449 "One Froggy Evening" at IMDB]
* [http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8735/8735.excerpt.php 'I'm Just Wild About Eubie — Memories of Eubie Blake' by Floyd Levin, The University of California Press]