Take Two
Where we take two different jazz interpretations of a song
It Never Entered My Mind
I don't care if there's powder on my nose
I don't care if my hairdo is in place
I've lost the very meaning of repose
I never put a mudpack on my face
Rodgers and Hart wrote the lovely, sad song It Never Entered My Mind for the show Higher and Higher in 1940. Since then it has understandably become a jazz clssic. The show was made into a film in 1943 with Frank Sinatra in a small part, but the movie had different songs by Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh.
Oh who'd have thought that I'd walk in a daze
Now I never go to shows at night but just to matinees
Now I see the show
And home I go
The verse to the song (above) is often not included, but it is here in our first take by American vocalist Siri Vik.
Once I laughed when I heard you saying
That I'd be playing solitaire
Uneasy in my easy chair
It never entered my mind
And once you told me I was mistaken
That I'd awaken with the sun
And ordered orange juice for one
It never entered my mind
Our second take is an instrumental version of the song from the album Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster. In a series in Jazzwise magazine in 2024, American tenor saxophonist and bass clarinettist David Murray told Brian Glasser how the album with the two tenor titans set him off on his musical life’s journey (here). "... When Coleman Hawkins played, his rhythm was so dominant; whereas Ben Webster’s sound and vibrato stood out when he played .... a friend of mine, Steve Potts, told me that one time he got a chance to play alongside Ben Webster, and he said you couldn’t stand too close to Ben ‘cause you might get hit with some spit! There was air in his sound. He was so dynamic because you could hear the note before he played it – you could hear his breath forming the note before it actually came out. Coleman Hawkins was quite different. ... Coleman Hawkins was like fighting with an axe, Ben Webster was like fighting with a feather! .....'
Once you warned me that if you scorned me
I'd say a lonely prayer again
And wish that you were there again
To get into my hair again
It never entered my mind
© Sandy Brown Jazz 2025.7