Pick Yourself Up

A&E Presents An Evening With Mel Torme - Live From The Disney Institute; Mel Torme, vocals

I was fairly oblivious to the song “Pick Yourself Up” for the first twenty-five years of my life. I’m sure that I heard it on various TV shows, movies clips or on the radio, but it didn’t grab a hold of me at those times. Jerome Kern composed the music to “Pick Yourself Up” and Dorothy Fields penned the lyrics for the 1936 film “Swing Time” featuring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

The band leader on the Crown Odyssey had a nice, swingin’ arrangement of “Pick Yourself Up” and that’s what got me hooked on the tune. I also like the key sequence. Like most songs from the era, it has a thirty-two bar structure, divided into four eight-measure sections or, if you will, phrases. The first eight measures start out in F Major. The next eight bars are one whole step up, in G Major. The third set of eight bars, which is different melodically from the first and second sets of eight measures, what we in the biz call a bridge, moves up to A-flat Major for four measures and then moves up again to C Major, also for four measures. The song ends back where we started with eight measures of F Major. Do you like the way that the chord sequence keeps moving up, imitating the sentiment of the song? I do.

How ‘bout these lyrics? They burst with optimism; nourishing the public with a much needed boost to an intensely shallow depression era national morale.

Nothing’s impossible I have found,

For when your chin is on the ground,

You pick yourself up, Dust yourself off,

Start all over again.

_____

Don’t lose your confidence, if you slip,

Be thankful for a pleasant trip,

And pick yourself up, Dust yourself off,

Start all over again.

_______

Work like soul inspired,

Till the battle of the day is won.

You may be sick and tire,

But you’ll be a man, my son!

_______

If you remember those famous men,

Who had to fall to rise again.

So take a deep breath, Pick yourself up

Start all over again.

Mr. Torme teams up with inspired jazz pianist Mike Renzi to channel J.S. Bach during their rendition of “Pick Yourself Up”. After a spirited opening, all the others drop back to allow Mr. Renzi to wax eloquent in the style of a Bach invention. And then Mr. Torme wants a piece of that. And then bassist John Leitham. And finally with a quasi roll-off from drummer Donny Osborne, they swing harder than they did in the beginning.

Mr. Torme finished his recording career with this album. He still sounded young, despite his seventy-one years. Believe it or not, I really dug his homage to J.S. Bach. You know, I think I like Bach more as a jazz cat than as an oratorio composer.

Credits: To Jerome Kern, one of America’s greatest composers. Thank you for “Show Boat”.