Song of the Day: I Thought About You

The song of the day for Tuesday, January 9, 2018 is “I Thought About You.”

About This Song

I’ve been wanting to feature a Johnny Mercer lyric today and so I chose “I Thought About You,” written in 1939 by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Mercer.

In the biography Portrait of Johnny: The Life of John Herndon Mercer, author Gene Lees quotes Mercer about this song: “I can remember the afternoon that we wrote it. He [Van Heusen] played me the melody. I didn’t have any idea, but I had to go to Chicago that night. I think I was on the Benny Goodman program. And I got to thinking about it on the train. I was awake, I couldn’t sleep. The tune was running through my mind, and that’s when I wrote the song. On the train, really going to Chicago.” “I Thought About You” proved quite popular and has been recorded many times by jazz performers including Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Hartman, Shirley Horn, Dinah Washington and Mel Tormé.

About This Version

Tony Bennett recorded “I Thought About You” in 1992 for his album of songs sung by Frank Sinatra: Perfectly Frank. The arrangement is by Ralph Sharon,.

“I Thought About You,” as well as Perfectly Frank, is available from iTunes.