Richard Rodgers wrote 43 Broadway musicals and more than 900 songs with two very different lyricists. Jazz musicians took most of their standards from the first partnership, with Lorenz Hart, and one of their biggest hits from the second.
Rodgers was born in New York on 28 June 1902. In 1919 a friend of his older brother introduced him to Lorenz Hart, a lyricist seven years older, and the pair had their first professional song, “Any Old Place With You”, in a show that same year.
For more than two decades Rodgers and Hart turned out a show or film score almost every year. Hart’s lyrics were witty, rueful and full of internal rhymes, and Rodgers wrote melodies that moved in unexpected directions underneath them.
Hart’s heavy drinking made him increasingly unreliable in the early 1940s. Rodgers began working with Oscar Hammerstein II, and their first show, Oklahoma!, opened in 1943. Hart died in November 1943, of pneumonia brought on by alcoholism, days after a revival of their A Connecticut Yankee opened.
The jazz story of Richard Rodgers songs divides along the same line. The Hart songs are mostly compact, bittersweet ballads and swingers that suit improvisers, which is why so many of them turn up in our list of the best jazz songs. The Rodgers and Hammerstein songs were written for big, story-driven shows, and fewer became jazz standards. The exceptions include one of the best-known jazz recordings of the 1960s.
When Ella Fitzgerald recorded her Rodgers and Hart Song Book for Verve in August 1956, with Buddy Bregman arranging, it ran to four LP sides and 34 songs. All eight of the Hart songs below are on it.
Of the ten Richard Rodgers songs below, the first eight come from the Hart years and the last two from Hammerstein.
1. “Lover”
Rodgers and Hart wrote “Lover” for the 1932 film Love Me Tonight, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier. MacDonald sings it as a princess riding out in a horse-drawn carriage, with some of the lines sung to her horse.
Rodgers wrote it as a waltz, in 3/4. Jazz players usually take it in a fast four instead, which turns it into a test of technique.
Peggy Lee turned it into a hit for Decca in 1952. Her up-tempo, Latin-tinged arrangement, with Gordon Jenkins and his orchestra, reached No. 3 on the pop chart.
Bill Charlap recorded it with Peter and Kenny Washington for ‘S Wonderful, a trio album made for the Japanese label Venus and released in 1999.
Classic Lover version: Peggy Lee (Decca single, 1952)
Modern Lover version: Bill Charlap Trio (‘S Wonderful, 1999)
2. “Little Girl Blue”
Billy Rose’s Jumbo opened at the Hippodrome in New York on 16 November 1935. The 5,000-seat theatre was turned into a circus tent, with acrobats and animal acts, and at the end of every performance Jimmy Durante lay on the stage while a live elephant rested its foot on his head.
“Little Girl Blue” was introduced by Gloria Grafton. It is a slow, sad ballad about a woman on her own, with nothing to do but count the raindrops.
Nina Simone made it the title track of her debut album, recorded for Bethlehem in a single long session in late 1957 and released in February 1959.
Keith Jarrett’s trio recorded it live in Cologne in 1989 for their Tribute album, on which each standard is dedicated to a jazz musician. Jarrett dedicated “Little Girl Blue” to the singer Nancy Wilson.
Classic Little Girl Blue version: Nina Simone (Little Girl Blue, recorded 1957, released 1959)
Modern Little Girl Blue version: Keith Jarrett Trio (Tribute, recorded 1989, released 1990)
3. “My Romance”
“My Romance” also comes from Jumbo, where Donald Novis and Gloria Grafton introduced it.
In Hart’s lyric, the singer runs through the romantic props the couple can do without, from the moon in the sky to a castle in Spain.
Bill Evans recorded it at the Village Vanguard on 25 June 1961 with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. LaFaro was killed in a car accident about ten days later, and the performance was released on Waltz for Debby in 1962.
Brad Mehldau included it on his first album as sole leader, Introducing Brad Mehldau (1995), with Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy.
Classic My Romance version: Bill Evans Trio (Waltz for Debby, recorded 1961)
Modern My Romance version: Brad Mehldau (Introducing Brad Mehldau, 1995)
4. “Where or When”
Babes in Arms opened on Broadway on 14 April 1937. In the story, a group of teenagers whose vaudevillian parents have gone off on tour put on their own show to avoid being sent to a work farm by the local sheriff.
“Where or When” was one of several hits from the score. Hart’s lyric is about déjà vu, the feeling of having met someone before without being able to say where.
Ella Fitzgerald’s version is on the Rodgers and Hart Song Book, which also turns up in our guide to the best Ella Fitzgerald albums. Bill Charlap’s trio recorded it on Written in the Stars in 2000, with Peter and Kenny Washington.
Classic Where or When version: Ella Fitzgerald (Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book, 1956)
Modern Where or When version: Bill Charlap Trio (Written in the Stars, 2000)
5. “My Funny Valentine”
Also from Babes in Arms, “My Funny Valentine” was introduced by Mitzi Green. In the show it is sung to a young man called Val, rather than about St Valentine’s Day.
Jazz musicians took it up in the early 1950s, and it is now among the most covered jazz songs. Chet Baker played it with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet in 1952 and sang it on his 1954 album Chet Baker Sings, which we’ve written about here.
Miles Davis recorded it with his first great quintet in 1956 for Cookin’, and returned to it at a 1964 Carnegie Hall concert released as My Funny Valentine. Bill Evans and Jim Hall recorded a well-known duo version on Undercurrent. For more ballads in this vein, see our list of the best jazz ballads.
Classic My Funny Valentine version: Miles Davis Quintet (Cookin’, recorded 1956)
Modern My Funny Valentine version: Chucho Valdés (Live at the Village Vanguard, 2000)
6. “Have You Met Miss Jones?”
I’d Rather Be Right opened at the Alvin Theatre on 2 November 1937, a political satire with George M. Cohan playing President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Have You Met Miss Jones?” was sung by the young lovers of the story, played by Joy Hodges and Austin Marshall.
Jazz musicians know the song for its bridge, which moves through keys a major third apart before returning home. That pattern of modulation by major thirds is often cited as a forerunner of the chord cycles in John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” and “Countdown”, though Coltrane drew on several sources.
George Shearing’s bebop version of 1947 helped bring the song back into circulation. When Ella Fitzgerald recorded it to open her Rodgers and Hart Song Book, she sang it as “Have You Met Sir Jones?”.
McCoy Tyner closed his 1963 Impulse! trio album Reaching Fourth with a short version, recorded with Henry Grimes and Roy Haynes the year before. Mel Tormé sang it in 1995 with Rob McConnell’s Boss Brass big band on Velvet & Brass.
Classic Have You Met Miss Jones? version: McCoy Tyner (Reaching Fourth, 1963)
Modern Have You Met Miss Jones? version: Mel Tormé with Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass (Velvet & Brass, 1995)
7. “This Can’t Be Love”
1938 was a busy year for Rodgers and Hart. In May they opened I Married an Angel, which gave jazz players “Spring Is Here”, the song Bill Evans recorded for Portrait in Jazz in December 1959. In November came The Boys from Syracuse, based on Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors and usually described as the first musical adapted from a Shakespeare play.
“This Can’t Be Love” was introduced in The Boys from Syracuse by Eddie Albert and Marcy Westcott. Hart’s joke is that the singer feels far too well for it to be love, because love in songs is supposed to bring sighs and sorrow.
Ben Webster recorded a ten-minute version in November 1959 with Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen, the longest track on Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson.
Diana Krall chose it as the opening track of her debut album, Stepping Out, recorded with John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton in October 1992 and released the next year.
Classic This Can’t Be Love version: Ben Webster and Oscar Peterson (Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson, recorded 1959, released 1960)
Modern This Can’t Be Love version: Diana Krall (Stepping Out, 1993)
8. “It Never Entered My Mind”
Higher and Higher opened at the Shubert Theatre on 4 April 1940 and closed within a few months, but it produced “It Never Entered My Mind”, introduced by Shirley Ross. The lyric is a list of small domestic regrets from someone who never imagined being left alone.
Miles Davis recorded it twice. The first was for Blue Note in 1954. The second, at a Prestige session on 11 May 1956 with Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones, opens his album Workin’. Davis’s recordings of the song were later heard in the films Lenny and Runaway Bride.
Wynton Marsalis recorded it for Standard Time, Vol. 5: The Midnight Blues (1998), a ballad album with Eric Reed on piano and a string orchestra arranged by Robert Freedman.
Classic It Never Entered My Mind version: Miles Davis Quintet (Workin’, recorded 1956)
Modern It Never Entered My Mind version: Wynton Marsalis (Standard Time, Vol. 5: The Midnight Blues, 1998)
9. “It Might as Well Be Spring”
After Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote their only original film score, for State Fair (1945). “It Might as Well Be Spring” is sung by a farm girl, Margy Frake, who has spring fever even though the season is wrong. Jeanne Crain played Margy on screen, but her singing voice was dubbed by Louanne Hogan.
Hammerstein suggested the title and Rodgers agreed at once. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Dick Haymes had the first hit record.
It is one of the few Rodgers and Hammerstein songs that jazz musicians picked up widely. Ike Quebec made it the title track of a Blue Note album recorded in 1961 with Freddie Roach on organ. Brad Mehldau opened Introducing Brad Mehldau with it in 1995.
Fred Hersch and Bill Frisell opened their 1998 duo album Songs We Know with it.
Classic It Might as Well Be Spring version: Ike Quebec (It Might as Well Be Spring, recorded 1961)
Modern It Might as Well Be Spring version: Fred Hersch and Bill Frisell (Songs We Know, 1998)
10. “My Favorite Things”
The Sound of Music opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway on 16 November 1959, with Mary Martin as Maria. It was the last show Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote together; Hammerstein died of stomach cancer in August 1960.
Over three days in October 1960 John Coltrane recorded an album for Atlantic with McCoy Tyner, Steve Davis and Elvin Jones. The title track, “My Favorite Things”, runs for 13 minutes and 41 seconds, with Coltrane on soprano saxophone. The quartet stretched the waltz into long improvisations over one or two chords.
The album came out in March 1961, and the song became Coltrane’s most requested tune. He called it “my favorite piece of all those I have recorded”, and he was still playing it at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1963.
The Indonesian pianist Joey Alexander used it on his debut album, My Favorite Things, recorded in New York in October 2014 with Larry Grenadier on bass and released by Motéma in 2015.
Classic My Favorite Things version: John Coltrane (My Favorite Things, recorded 1960, released 1961)
Modern My Favorite Things version: Joey Alexander (My Favorite Things, 2015)
After Hammerstein’s death, Rodgers worked with other lyricists and wrote his own words for No Strings (1962), the only Broadway score for which he wrote both music and lyrics. He is usually credited as the first person to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, and he also won a Pulitzer Prize.
He died at his Manhattan home on 30 December 1979, aged 77. More than 50 years earlier, his and Hart’s show Betsy had been upstaged by an Irving Berlin song inserted without their consent, a story we tell in our Irving Berlin songs article.
Looking for more about the great songwriters of jazz? We highlighted 10 of them here.
Which other Richard Rodgers songs would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments below.
