Song of the Day: This Can’t Be Love

The Song of the Day for Thursday, November 8, 2012 is This Can’t Be Love.

About This Can’t Be Love

This Can’t Be Love was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the 1938 musical The Boys of Syracuse.  It’s been recorded by Nat Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, and Frank Sinatra, among others.

About This Version

This version comes from the 1973 Tony Bennett Songs 10 Rodgers & Hart Songs.

This album was the second album, after Life is Beautiful, that Mr. Bennett recorded on his own Improv label. While the label may not have been a financial success, it was very much an artistic success. The Rodgers and Hart albums are really quite beautiful.

The arrangement of this song (as well as the other songs on the album) are exceptional.  For both albums, Mr. Bennett worked with the Ruby Braff-George Barnes Quartet, which featured Ruby Braff on cornet, George Barnes and Wayne Wright on guitar, and John Giuffrida on bass. Coming off the Columbia years, I believe that Tony Bennett was brilliant in transitioning to the jazz sound, using jazz musicians, that has been a mainstay of the second half of his career. Ruby Braff’s cornet on these albums is a wonderful change from the larger orchestral arrangements many listeners were used to. These arrangements are timeless: they honor the original time period the songs were written in and yet sound as if they could have been recorded in any decade since. You can read more about Ruby Braff here and here. Note that Tony Bennett’s current guitarist, Gray Sargent, played with Ruby Braff.