Stories of Standards: “My Romance”

Tune in to Jazz with Victor Cooper – weekdays from 6-9 a.m. MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song all week long starting Monday, March 26!

Stories of Standards is sponsored by ListenUp – If you love music, you’ll love ListenUp.

“My Romance” (1935) was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the musical “Jumbo”, which starred Jimmy Durante and opened November 16, 1935. Despite excellent reviews, “Jumbo” covered just half of its record-breaking $344,000 production costs. The extravaganza also won top honors of the year, despite competition with Cole Porter’s “Jubilee” and George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess”. “My Romance” was first sung by Gloria Grafton and Donald Novis and their recording with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra went to #18 on the pop charts in 1936. In 1962, Doris Day and Martin Melcher used “Jumbo” as the basis for the movie “Billy Rose’s Jumbo”, described by Roy Hemmings as deserving a better fate than it found. Carly Simon used “My Romance” as the title recording on a 1990 album, which went to #46 on the charts, where it remained for over four months. While written in C major, “My Romance” is now more often played in B♭ major.

Richard Rodgers (1902-1979, composer) and Lorenz Hart (1895-1943, lyricist) collaborated from 1919 until Hart’s death of pneumonia in 1943, during which time they wrote 28 stage musicals and over 500 songs. They met in 1919 when they were asked to write an amateur club show at Columbia University. Their first Broadway musical was 1925’s “Garrick Gaieties”, which included the hit song “Manhattan”. From the early 1930s until their 1935 return to New York for “Jumbo” they produced Hollywood musicals featuring singers such as Maurice Chevalier, Bing Crosby and Al Jolson. Beginning with “Jumbo” and their return to New York they wrote a series of Broadway musical hits. The 1936 ballet “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue”, choreographed by George Balanchine, was incorporated into the musical “On Your Toes”. This was followed by “Babes in Arms” (1937) and “Pal Joey” (1940), the latter a harshly realistic musical, based on John O’Hara’s short stories for “The New Yorker”. Few composers/lyricists have come near matching them for lyricism, complexity and depth. They greatly influenced the Broadway musical’s relationship between song and story and remain greatly honored.