He was born in New York City (but grew up in New Haven, Connecticut) and began learning the saxophone when he was 15 and by age 16, had begun to tour with a band. He reached Hollywood the first time, as a sideman with Irving Aaronson's band in 1931, performing at the famous Orange Blossom Room (site of the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929). Returning to New York City in1932, he became a highly in-demand session musician, working for example as one of just a handful of accompanists to Bing Crosby's first signature radio show for William S. Paley's already powerful and influential CBS radio network. Ultimately, Artie (who was known strictly as "Art" Shaw until his fortuitous Summer, 1938 contract with RCA Victor records' Bluebird label commenced) organized and led five, full-time touring orchestras that were all extremely popular -save the last, from 1949, with its be-bop oriented book. Ironically, that final Shaw-led big band (populated with players like Al Cohn), is considered by most jazz critics to have been Artie's best. With time out to lead a Navy service band (in the Pacific combat theater) during WWII, Shaw's actual big band- leading career lasted less than a decade overall -yet, it was a remarkably productive one, populated with some fourteen "Gold" records. These included such mega-hits as "Begin the Beguine", "Stardust", "Frenesi", "Moonglow", "Temptation", "Dancing In The Dark" and "Summit Ridge Drive" -the latter by his famous quintet billed as the Gramercy 5.
Shaw was known for being an innovator in the big band idiom, pioneering strings with jazz and using unusual instrumentations. His Summer, 1935 piece "Interlude in B-flat" was one of the earliest examples of what would be later dubbed "third stream". In 1938 he convinced Billie Holiday to be his band's vocalist, becoming the first white bandleader to hire a full-time black female singer. This 1938-1939 orchestra became phenomenonally successful and appeared in the movie "Dancing Co-ed" which also featured one of his future wives, Lana Turner, in the cast. Artie's clarinet playing, had by now reached a level that was arguably the greatest in jazz, easily rivaling that of Benny Goodman. Longtime Duke Ellington clarinetist Barney Bigard, himself a highly talented musician -cited Shaw (in 1940) as his "favorite" clarinet player. Literally abandoning his famous 1938-1939 band at the absolute peak of its' fame and earning power (Artie, just himself alone pulling down more than $10K per week) in late November, 1939, Shaw "abdicated" to Acapulco, Mexico. Returning to the U.S. he organized an entirely new orchestra, with full string section in the Summer of 1940. A truly stellar aggregation, it lasted until mid-1941, featuring stars Billy Butterfield, Johnny Guarneiri, Nick Fatool and Ray Conniff as principal arranger. This outfit can be prominently seen in the RKO film "Second Chorus" starring Fred Astaire and Paulette Goddard. The final pre-war Shaw band, started in late, 1941, had Davey Tough and Hot Lips Page and big hits on St. James Infirmary Blues and Blues In The NIght. Artie broke this outstanding unit up shortly after Pearl Harbor so he could "enlist" in the Navy -refusing an offered commission. Back from the Navy, Shaw put together a new band that featured Roy Eldridge and an ambitious library stocked with arrangements by Eddie Sauter, Buster Harding, Ray Conniff and others. Hit records for this band included "Little Jazz" and "S'Wonderful" and by now Artie was married to Ava Gardner. His final public performances (as a clarinetist) took place in 1954, including with a sublime quartet in an extended Las Vegas booking. Apparently, he last picked up and played his fabled clarinet in about 1960 at his beach house in Spain (as recounted in final wife actress Evelyn Keyes' autobiography) and resisted all lucrative offers to return to the stage until finally fielding a "ghost" band under the highly capable aegis of outstanding clarinetist Dick Johnson in 1985. For about the first year, Artie often appeared on stage with this very fine orchestra at certain, prestigious bookings, but soon tired of the "grind" -and not to Dick Johnson's dismay. This now true "ghost" band is still appearing during Summer seasons (with much of the original Shaw "books"), principally in the New England area (Johnson lives in Boston) and is well worth seeing. Although he had more wives (8) than bands, Artie fell one wife short of Charlie Barnet's record (for a famous bandleadrer) of nine.
It Had to Be You
Artie Shaw Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I wandered around and finally found the somebody who
Could make me be true, could make me feel blue,
And even be glad just to be sad thinkin' of you.
Some others I've seen might never be mean
Might never be cross or try to be boss,
But they wouldn't do.
With all your faults, I love you still,
It had to be you, wonderful you,
It had to be you.
It had to be you, it had to be you.
I wandered around and finally found somebody who
Could make me be true, could make me be blue,
And even be glad just to be sad thinkin' of you.
Some others I've seen might never be mean
Might never be cross or try to be boss,
But they wouldn't do.
For nobody else gave me a thrill.
With all your faults, I love you still.
It had to be you, wonderful you
It had to be you.
The lyrics of Artie Shaw and His Orchestra's song "It Had to Be You" express deep and heartfelt emotions of someone who has finally found the person they were meant to be with. The song describes a journey of wandering around until he found the right person, who has the ability to make him be true and feel blue. The song suggests that even being sad just thinking about that person makes him happy. He compares this person to others he has met who might never be mean, cross or bossy, but they wouldn't do. He fell in love with this person despite their faults, and it had to be them.
The lyrics of the song "It Had to Be You" are a testament to the belief that true love is worth waiting for and that it has its ways of bringing two people together. The song is an ode to the feeling of being whole-heartedly in love with someone and cherishing their faults along with their virtues. The lyrics suggest that sometimes a person may cross paths with others who come close to being "the one," but ultimately, there's just one person who will give them the thrill and make them feel complete.
Line by Line Meaning
It had to be you, it had to be you.
Out of all the people in the world, it had to be you whom I fell in love with.
I wandered around and finally found the somebody who
Could make me be true, could make me feel blue,
And even be glad just to be sad thinkin' of you.
After searching for a long time, I found someone who could humble me and make me feel vulnerable, but even in those moments, I'm glad because I'm thinking of you.
Some others I've seen might never be mean
Might never be cross or try to be boss,
But they wouldn't do.
I've seen other people who can be kind or assertive, but they just don't compare to you.
For nobody else gave me a thrill.
With all your faults, I love you still,
Nobody else can excite me like you do, even with your imperfections, I still love you.
It had to be you, wonderful you,
You're the one who makes my heart skip a beat, and I wouldn't want it any other way.
It had to be you.
There's simply nobody else for me but you.
Lyrics © Kanjian Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: Isham Jones, Gus Kahn
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
callmeBe
An incredibly well rehearsed group, performing a typical arrangement of the time. Levinsky does a superb Shaw. He has Shaw's tamber, attacks, decays, shadows, just down perfectly. This is especially noteworthy because Levinsky plays a somewhat different style.
Easy Aspi
This IS the very best version of this tune! It's in the arrangement.
Lycia Maria
Eu amo Artie Shaw e sua orquestra ele nasceu quando? Ainda vive nesse mundo???
Kevin R
The singular importance of Shaw in being arguably the first to attempt DEFINING what songs belong in what we now call the the "Great American Songbook" could very well possibly be his greatest achievement. Shaw was the bridge between what we think of as the great Broadway standards and Jazz as it was evolving and their coming together as art above and beyond what was popular musical comedy theater and popular entertainment / dance music in the 1930s. If it is even possible, forget the clarinet playing, forget the arrangement, even forget the band and just think for a second that here was a man of considerable depth and intellect who as a musician sifted through the hundreds of standard 32 bar tunes from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway that were constantly coming out every week or perhaps had been around for 15-20 years already and sought out and found what HE ALONE thought was the best of what was there, while everyone else was just spinning their wheels grabbing whatever the newest schlock was being generated from the song mills in their quest for a quick hit record or novelty item to amuse audiences with. Many of Glenn Miller's and Tommy Dorsey's and even Goodman's records bear this out, not to mention second-tier bands like Jimmy Dorsey, early Woody Herman and especially those bands even less remembered today such as Kay Kyser's and Sammy Kaye's; MOST of whose records of standard pop songs that they played have been entirely forgotten about now 70-80 years later and been relegated to the trash heap of pop music that still continues getting bigger and bigger with every passing year with no end in sight. It's no secret that Shaw disliked the pressure of the band business; dancers in ballrooms expected vanilla "dance music", with its share of tangos, rhumbas, waltzes, etc., radio studio and theatre date audiences full of teenagers wanted the hard swinging things full of solos and drums and if you played those hard swinging things the same way in a swank hotel restaurant / ballroom you'd get run out by the management because their well-heeled patrons trying to eat dinner and converse would complain the music was too loud. So it not only could be, but was downright difficult for any bandleader to succeed across the board. Enter Shaw, who had no interest in being a Benny Goodman clone playing innumerable hot choruses nor had any appetite to appease dancers by playing short-life pop tunes any more than he was compelled to, much less have anything to do with the nonsense of rhumbas and waltzes for that matter. But it was his "formula" that virtually everyone else ignored that was so simple. Swinging "band originals" gave each band its identity and he knew this as well as anyone but it was his decision to deliberately seek out what his own "good taste" told him was the BEST material he could find with the best potential, that had inert musical "substance", let ITS own character dictate how IT felt like IT should be played and then ...just do it. So pragmatically simple, it is far more difficult to actually achieve simplicity than to add to something to "make it better", or "make it more complex" or just let one's ego go nuts to "do it MY way"... and in the process destroy the simple direct communication of the raw material that by itself might be so seemingly transparent and logical on its own it allows for total freedom by soloists too. Shaw gambled on that raw transparency and THAT is how Shaw made many standards SO "his own" putting their most basic premise on full display front and center and using that as a springboard for his improvisations. The results obviously worked and so well to the extent that few other serious musicians went anywhere near many of those tunes in a serious way until years later, when the world of soloing and ability caught up with the sophistication of what those songwriters had written, that Shaw had been keen of and playing in a style all his own long before most others. It's all just so "natural" or "sensible" or dare I say "simple" it is utterly overlooked that THAT is why it still speaks to us so directly on so many levels - the melody, the harmony, the arrangement and the solos - so many decades long after the fact. Therein also lies why Cole Porter at the time once said to Shaw "I'm glad to meet my collaborator".
Ed Liss
Thanks for the history lesson and your passion for it all Kevin.. I share the same passion for the music and certainly understand how it all evolved. I am fortunate to be able to hear the original 78rpm pressings on the 'jukeboxes that played them.. Wurlitzer used a single 15" dynamic range speaker with a 5200 ohm voice coil. 78rpm had a limited dynamic range of around 5000 cycles, but the music was clean, pure, and had 100% of the overtones in the playback so it has "soul" -- unlike digital which is shallow, hollow, and soul-less. There is nothing like the real thing. The best sound is analog -- period. Digital music has no overtones(colorization) and it just sounds different. Analog will always be better -- it also has a higher dynamic range than digital. Digital for the world, but when it comes to music, analog is the best.
Ella Cooper
wow this is smart people comments
whole paragraphs
heber luna diaz
fantástico, muy buena canción
Socratess2007
Absolutely Fabulous ! Big Band at it's Best - could listen to this music all day ;-) Thanks for sharing Miguel
nicolas olmos olmos
THIS IS AN OUTSTANDING RENDERING OF THE UNFORGETTABLE 30s JAZZ MUSIC .THANKS VERY MUCH FOR SHARING
perla51
I love this song!!!! Big hugs Perla.