The Helen Morgan Page

… 1930, Helen Morgan recorded “Body and Soul” and “Something to Remember You By,” the two big numbers from the stage revue Three’s a Crowd.

She didn’t introduce the numbers … exactly … nor is it entirely correct to call these waxing merely covers of popular sings.

Johnny Green, Robert Sour, Edward Heyman and Frank Eyton originally wrote “Body and Soul” in 1929 as material for Gertude Lawrence, but the number failed to click. Regardless, Lawrence liked the number and took it back to England with her, where Jack Hylton’s jazz band played it well enough that it became popular in the UK.

While abroad in the summer of 1930, Morgan heard the song, liked it, and brought it back home with her, and put it into her act.

One problem: Producer Max Gordon also liked the song and acquired it as supplemental material for the new Dietz and Schwartz stage revue, About Town – later retitled Three’s a Crowd.

Gordon knew the song would be popular, especially when sung by his torcher, Libby Holman. He, and Harms (the music publisher) went so far as to run an advert (really, a warning) in the August 6, 1930 issue of Variety.

Evidently, Helen never got the memo. She sang the song without incident over the airwaves on September 5 and laid down three versions of the track the following day at the Victor studio. The label rejected her efforts, as well as the three takes she made of “Something to Remember You By.” Victor printed the waxings she made the following week.

Libby Holman made good with both of her Three’s a Crowd numbers, both on stage and on record, but Morgan’s version, if not definitive, remains her best vocal performance on record. It rose to number 16 on the charts.

Morgan’s performance of “Body and Soul” so impressed Max Gordon that he fancied taking Morgan along to lead a proposed London company of Three’s a Crowd. Sadly, the production never came about, perhaps because Morgan continued to sing the song while not under contract to Gordon. When she played the Palace in early 1931, she got around Gordon’s decree that the song could not be sung on any other Broadway stage while Three’s a Crowd played the Selwyn. She simply sat on the steps of Palace heading into the audience and crooned her tune.

It is unclear whether she included the gong heard in her Victor recording.

As for “Something to Remember You By,” Morgan’s recording remained popular, but always took a back seat to “Body and Soul.”

Her waxing of “Something to Remember You By” would not raise eyebrows until after her death … but more on that next month.

This site serves as a companion to the book Helen Morgan: The Original Torch Singer and Ziegfeld’s Last Star.