"Ask Me Again": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"Ask Me Again"

Robert Kimball, Ed. The Complete Lyrics Of Ira Gershwin, New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 1993; shown here reprinted as paperback by Da Capo Press, 1998.

Typically Gershwin lyrics begin with a verse, a brief introductory section that typically connects the song's refrain to the plot, characters or themes of the show for which the song was written. "Ask Me Again," for which there is no verse, never made it into a show until it was interpolated into the 1990 and 1991 revivals of the Gershwins' 1924 musical Oh, Kay! This was some sixty years after the Gershwins wrote the song and after both George and Ira had died. So it's not unreasonable to deduce they never wrote a verse because they didn't know where or how the song was going to be used when they wrote it -- and weren't around when it finally was used.

The central trope of Ira Gershwin's lyric is the title expression "ask me again" which is not a literal request to hear a question asked over and over but rather a way of satisfying the singer's relentless need to describe his feelings for his new love.

He is so much moved by what his new love does to him that he wants to make sure everyone, especially the person he is directly addressing, knows who she is and even more what effect she has on him. And although he has difficulty containing himself on the subject of her, he is apparently too reserved and/or well mannered (Note how Ira, at several points, prefaces his requests with "Please") to speak without being spoken to. The emotional predicament he finds himself in drives the lyric. He tries to extricate himself from the predicament not only by asking to be asked about her but by dictating questions that themselves contain the answers he wants to hear and which reveal his feelings:

Ask me again Who's the one I've begun to adore. Ask me again Who's the partner my heart pounded for.

He is devilishly clever in the way he phrases his questions so that they contain figures of speech that capture his emotional predicament.

Who is the who has me tied in a bow knot So that I know not Just where I'm at?

Another goal he hopes to achieve by asking for advice is to figure out how to untie the "bow knot" that is constricting his ability to explain how he has felt "from the start," how she has reduced him to having a "one track heart and mind," how she is "the one he has looked high and low for" and the one "whom he will go for his whole life through." (Note the wonderful feminine rhyme between "go for" and "low for." But of course he is not really unable to ask her these things, because the last two lines of the first refrain resolve for us, if we hadn't figured it out already, that he has all along been describing his predicament to none other than the object of his affection:

Please ask me again -- Let me shout to the world: It's you.

By this point, halfway through the lyric, a certain tension is alleviated because everybody is in on it: He's speaking to his new love. The second refrain is mostly an opportunity for the singer to continue to drive home his feelings for her (and to her) and for Ira to demonstrate the fecundity of his lyric-writing gift.

Who thrills me more than the circus of Ringling? Who keeps me tingling From head to toe?

Lines such as these show how Ira can convert the merely sensational into the truly poetic and have his audience as well as his character tingling from head to toe.

All examples from lyrics taken from The Complete Lyrics of Ira Gershwin .

YouTube has videos of "Ask Me Again" by Michael Feinstein, Rosemary Clooney, Victoria Hart and Nancy La Mott as well as some instrumental piano recordings. Feinstein discovered the "lost" song in 1983 in stash of Gershwin music found in a Secaucus, NJ warehouse. Ira believed it was the best of their unpublished songs. It is believed that Rosemary Clooney was the first to record the song. I hope more information can be added soon as it is a really lovely song and deserves to be better known.

Cafe Songbook responds: We agree and will get to work on "Ask Me Again" soon. Also, besides the wonderful Songbook artists such as Rosemary Clooney and Nancy LaMott, scanning YouTube for "Ask Me Again," one comes across Leslie Sorci (c 2010) accompanied by Dean Burns performing "Ask Me Again," a version that is worth hearing: Leslie Sorcie accompanied by Dean Burns c. 2010 perform "Ask Me Again."

• Rosemary Clooney and Michael Feinstein: NoMudinJoyville
• Michael Feinstein from Nice Work If You Can Get It: wrycker
• Leslie Sorci: Martin Rojas Dietrich

Notes

• George Gershwin: His Life and Work Berkeley: Univ. of California Press 2006
• 1991 folio of previously unpublished Gershwin songs available from
• digital sheet music for "Ask Me Again" available from
• The sheet music for "Ask Me Again" was first published in 1991 in the folio Rediscovered Gershwin .
• The authoritative lyrics can also be found in The Complete Lyrics of Ira Gershwin :
• Posted by VocalDiva 10/24/2017:

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