Happy Valentine’s Day!
By Mike Stevenson | WRIU
With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, I thought I’d get the jump on the holiday and upload jazz legend Chet Baker singing “My Funny Valentine.”
“My Funny Valentine” was written in 1937 by the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz “Larry” Hart. In the nine decades since its debut, the song has been recorded by over 600 artists. Sinatra, Ella, and Miles each had classic recordings of it, and in more recent years, both Elvis Costello and Rickie Lee Jones did sweet covers. Still, no one could argue that jazz trumpeter/singer Chet Baker’s 1954 version is the masterpiece.
Lyricist Larry Hart was the songwriting partner of Richard Rodgers before Rogers teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein. Hart wrote the lyrics to “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”, “The Lady Is a Tramp”, “Blue Moon”, “Manhattan”, “Where Or When” and many more standards.
By 1943, Hart was suffering from acute alcoholism brought on by years of depression. He was gay at a time when “coming out” was unacceptable. By all accounts, he was a desperately lonely person, which makes his melancholic lyrics even more poignant.
Here’s a verse from Hart’s beautiful “He Was Too Good To Me”:
“He was too good to me
How can I get along now?
So close he stood to me
Everything seems all wrong now …
It’s only natural
that I’m blue
He was too good to be true”
Hart stood not quite 5 feet tall. One biographer noted “his lyrics were less about being short than about what it’s like to feel small—to be dismissed, excluded, denied admission …”
“He was too good to me”
Hart died in 1943 at age 48. The cause of death was listed as pneumonia, but the truth was he died from too many nights of booze-soaked depression. His lyrics conveyed a profound sadness that reflected his belief that he was unworthy of love. “He was the saddest man I ever knew,” said jazz singer Mabel Mercer.
On the other hand, pretty-boy trumpeter Chet Baker was always certain that he was both a musical genius and God’s gift to women. Funny how these things work, isn’t it?
“The laugh’s on me,” Hart wrote in a line from “Bewitched.”
Thank you, Larry Hart, for “My Funny Valentine” and all your beautiful lyrics. Rest in Peace, and with the knowledge that you were always deserving of love. Everyone is.