Tracks Unwrapped
I Could Write A Book
Exploring the stories behind the music
A B C D E F G,
I never learned to spell ,
At least not well.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7,
I never learned to count
A great amount.
But my busy mind is burning
To use what learning I've got.
I won't waste any time,
I'll strike while the iron is hot.
Rodgers and Hart's song originated before the classic film Pal Joey was released. It started out as a series of stories by John O'Hara in The New Yorker about a worthless 'heel' and his wealthy mistress. It was O'Hara that suggested to Richard Rodgers that the stories might be turned into a stage musical and it was agreed that Rodgers and Hart would write the songs if O'Hara wrote the book. Pal Joey was first staged in 1940.
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It was here that the true nature of Joey Evans was written. He was depicted as a totally immoral, ambitious song and dance man who dumps his girlfriend for a wealthy widow, Vera Simpson. Vera is happy to spend a great deal of money on Joey, buys him expensive clothes, a posh apartment and sets him up in a night club. But Joey is Joey, and in time he gets restless and looks for new conquests. Eventually, Vera leaves him and Joey runs into trouble with blackmailers. At the end of the play he is left alone and broke.
The production ran for 374 performances and received varying reviews. In his book Broadway's Greatest Musicals, Abe Laufe writes: 'The combination of sex, blackmail, frank lyrics, and an unromantic plot made for "adult theatre", as some critics called it, praising the production because it differed radically from standard musical fare. Pal Joey, however, was too far ahead for its time. Audiences were not yet ready to accept an unpleasant story that contained not a hint of romance, and in which the only wholesome character, Linda, was also the least colourful .... Since the story dealt with shoddy affairs, Rodgers and Hart restricted any semblance of a love song to one number, I Could Write A Book. Even this could not be interpreted as a true love song, for Joey's fickleness negated any belief audiences might have had in his sincerity.'
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Despite being 'ahead of its time' the stage show starred Gene Kelly as Joey and it brought him stardom as it did for another character, Van Johnson who was in the chorus and Gene Kelly's understudy. As for the songs, I Could Write A Book and Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered became popular classics. The stage show was revived in 1952 and times had changed. 'The innuendos and frank lyrics that had shocked audiences and critics in the 1940s show now seemed more acceptable and more palatable.' The two popular songs were also now well known and a draw for audiences. The play was named 'Best Musical Of The Year' by the Critics Circle. Harold Lang played Joey and Vivienne Segal was again Vera, the part she had played 12 years earlier.
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Perhaps it was inevitable that Pal Joey became a movie. It was directed by George Sidney and released in 1957, but many changes were made. Sinatra, a singer rather than a dancer, was cast as Joey and this time a happy ending saw him become a nice guy - (Sinatra won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor). Rita Hayworth played Vera, now a wealthy widow hiding a past as a stripper and in the movie it is she who performs the 'strip' number Zip (although Jo Ann Greer sang for Hayworth, and Kim Novak, now playing Linda, had Trudy Erwin singing her part). Rather than being Vera's 'toy boy', Sinatra was actually older than Rita Hayworth and there were 'new' Rodgers and Hart songs - The Lady Is A Tramp (originally from Babes In Arms) and There's A Small Hotel (originally written for Billy Rose's Jumbo and On Your Toes). Nevertheless, I Could Write A Book stayed firmly in place.
If they asked me, I could write a book
About the way you walk and whisper and look
I could write a preface on how we met
So the world would never forget
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Here is the clip from the film where Joey Evans sings the song to Kim Novak's Linda English:​
Since then it has become a 'Standard'. One of the classic jazz interpretations comes from 1956 and the Miles Davis Quintet's album Relaxin' : Miles Davis (trumpet); John Coltrane (tenor sax); Red Garland (piano); Paul Chambers (bass); Philly Joe Jones (drums). In the summer of 1955, Miles had played at the Newport Jazz Festival and was offered a contract by Columbia Records if he could form a regular band, so he put together his first regular quintet for a gig at the Café Bohemia in July. It had Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone, Red Garland, piano, Paul Chambers, bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums, but by the autumn, Rollins had left because of his heroin addiction. Miles replaced Sonny with John Coltrane - a partnership that lasted for five years and resulted in one of the legendary jazz combinations.
On the website Cafe Songbook, it is argued that Lorenz Hart was known for his acerbic wit and irony, so what was he doing writing a lyric for I Could Write a Book that is imbued with simplicity, directness and innocence, especially for a show sporting a cynical point-of-view character like Pal Joey? His partner Richard Rodgers explained: 'Throughout our score for Pal Joey, Larry and I were scrupulous in making every song adhere to the hard-edged nature of the story. Taken by itself, "I Could Write a Book" is perfectly straightforward and sincere in the context of the plot, however, Joey, who had probably never read a book in his life, sang it for no other reason than to impress a naive girl he had just picked up on the street.'
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Cafe Songbook says: 'One cannot be certain that Hart would completely agree with his partner's assessment. Seemingly ironic, Hart himself is on record as stating that "I Could Write a Book" is his favorite song from the show. One can be sure he doesn't like it so much for its romantic sentiment but much more likely for its irony, which not everyone, apparently including Rodgers, picks up on. It comes in Hart's line, "And the simple secret of the plot / Is just to tell you that I love you a lot." Joey is referring to the "plot" of the book he could supposedly write about his feelings for Linda, whereas Hart is referring to the plot of Pal Joey, which is not simple at all, but complex just as Joey (and Hart himself) is'.
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Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and many others have sung the lyrics. Ella's version includes lyrics from the stage show we don't always hear:
To explain, Cafe Songbook again, describes the setting for the original stage show: "'The scene is set in front of a large picture window looking in on a pet shop. Joey is admiring a puppy in the window when he spies Linda who is doing the same thing. Joey doesn't lose a beat before he is regaling Linda with how he had a puppy just like this one when he was a little boy and how it was killed when the family chauffeur, Chadwick, backed the car over it. Joey continues with the tale seeking to extract every ounce of pity he can from Linda. The audience is intended to see what Linda doesn't, that this is a line and an effective one. It is so effective that Linda is immediately taken with Joey, which leads to them singing, as a duet, the only love ballad in the show I Could Write a Book." The premise of the song is that although neither of them did well in school, presumably at least with regard to writing, each now could "write a book / About the way you walk and whisper and look," not to mention "a preface on how we met / So the world would never forget." The romantic innocence expressed in the lyric is a good match for Linda's character but stands in powerfully ironic contrast to Joey's machiavellian approach to love and life."
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Linda's reply in the duet is:
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Use to hate to go to schoolI never craked a book;
I pleyed the hook
Never answered any mail;
to write I used to think was wasting ink.
It was never my endeavor
to be too clever and smart.
how I suddenly feel
a longing to write in my heart.
Dinah Washington's version from 1955 is quite different. She sounds more confident than an uneducated Linda and the track carries some nice solos. Arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones it had Clark Terry (trumpet); Jimmy Cleveland (trombone); Paul Quinichette (tenor sax); Cecil Payne (baritone sax); Wynton Kelly (piano); Barry Galbraith (guitar); Keter Betts (bass) and Jimmy Cobb (drums).
Chilean pianist Omar Nahuel Garrido died in 1969, at just 33 years old, in a car accident while travelling to the branch of his jazz club in Viña del Mar. Inspired by Bill Evans, Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano he set up his Nahuel Jazz Quartet in 1960. His band starred in two of the most important milestones in the history of local jazz: the first live recording of a jazz concert in 1962 and the recording of the first full-length album made by a Chilean jazz ensemble in 1963. Nahuel was the starting point for new musical groups that would use the acoustic trio format plus alto saxophone, such as the Chilean Jazz Messengers. Nahuel recorded his Quartet's version of I Could Write A Book in 1965 and it is clear that he and the Quartet were very accomplished musicians:
I Could Write A Book sung by Harry Connick Jr was featured in the movie classic When Harry Met Sally. It was a big band version and the song has been taken up both by big bands and vocal groups - several versions of both are on YouTube together with other versions by jazz vocalists and musicians. The song has lasted across the generations and here is young Joana Casanova with saxophonists Scott Hamilton, Luigi Grasso and the Sant Andreu Jazz Band in 2018:
And the simple secret of the plot
Is just to tell them that I love you a lot.
Then the world discovers, as my book ends,
How to make two lovers of friends.
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