"Do It Again": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"Do It Again"

Kimball and Simon quote George listing the party goers at Jules Glaenzer's the evening he played and sang "Do it Again" for the first time (more or less in public), and Irene Bordoni demanded to be given the song. Gershwin says:

Let me tell you who was there. There was Paul Whiteman, John McCormack Charles Chaplin, George Carpentier (then training for his fight with Dempsey--there were the Duncan Sisters, Nora Bayes, Zes Confrey, Fred and Adele Astaire, Alex Aarons, Fanny Brice, Marilyn Miller, William Rhinelander Stewart, Noël Coward, Vincent Youmans, Florenz Ziegfeld, and Irene Bordoni. (p. 28)

Gauthier's accompanist for the "jazz songs" on her program was George Gershwin. As has been widely reported, Gershwin who was keenly aware of the the audience's bias against the popular music on the program, embellished his introduction to the singer's encore, a rendition of "Do it Again," with a quotation from Scheherazade. It was his retort to the palpable classical snobbery in the hall. Much of the audience did not miss Gershwin's alluding to their music. Ironically, the next year in the same hall Gershwin presented himself as a composer of serious music when he debuted Rhapsody in Blue.

"Do it Again" was written by George Gershwin and Buddy De Sylva in either late 1921 or early 1922. According to Gershwin biographer Edward Jablonski, De Sylva, who was already an established lyricist, and Gershwin were together in the office of music publisher Max Dreyfus when De Sylva suggested that they should just sit down and "write a hit." Despite thinking De Sylva wasn't serious, Gershwin found a piano and began noodling a melody with "a slow, sensuous" quality. De Sylva apparently taken by the tune said, "Oh, do it Again," perhaps imploring George to play the passage again or perhaps to create a starting point for the lyric. In either case, his utterance led to the remainder of the lyric which very nicely "coalesced" with the Gershwin's "sensual melody."

Gershwin, who was almost as famous for playing his songs at fashionable New York City parties as he was for writing them, soon after the creation of "Do it Again" found himself playing and singing it at a party given by one of the most prominent party-givers of both New York and Paris, Jules Glaenzer. The party was also attended by French/Italian musical theater chanteuse (and then wife of producer E. Ray Goetz) Irene Bordoni. Jablonski reports that when Bordoni heard Gershwin performing "Do it Again," she rushed over to the piano exclaiming "I must have that damn song! It's for me."* In no time her husband had it interpolatedinto his steamy production of "The French Doll" (which had opened on Broadway on February 20, 1922, with Bordoni as the title character) and Gershwin had his first success of the year (Jablonski, Gershwin, pp. 48-49, hard-bound Ed.).

Irene Bordoni performs another saucy
Gershwin/De Sylva (plus Arthur Francis (pseud. for Ira Gershwin)
number, "I Won't Say I Will (but I won't say I won't),"
which they wrote in 1923 especially for her
in the show Little Miss Bluebeard.

Gershwin's virtual obsession with playing at parties was apparently good for business, because just as Bordoni heard "Do it Again" played by the composer at a social gathering, so Al Jolson heard "Swanee" similarly performed. His prompt confiscation of this Gershwin song catapulted it into the biggest seller ever in the Gershwin catalog. Paul Whiteman's Victor recording of "Do it Again," though not the hit that Swanee was, reached number one on the charts in June of 1922 and since has become an American standard song.

George Gershwin turned 24 on September 26, of 1922, and by the time that year was over, he had achieved success on several levels of writing popular music: as a composer of individual songs interpolated into Broadway revues, as was the case with "Do it Again" in The French Doll; as the creator of an entire score for a Broadway show (the bedroom farce, La, La, Lucille, 1919); as the writer of entire scores for Broadway revues; and as the writer of the music of an enormous smash hit, "Swanee." By the time the year was over Gershwin had not only been fully initiated into the world of writing music for Broadway but had proven his versatility in that world.

The first revues for which George Gershwin wrote entire scores were George White's Scandals, a series of stage shows that successfully competed with Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies for almost two decades, finally concluding its run in 1936. George wrote the scores for the 1920-1924 editions, and much of his song production during that period was for these productions. For the 1922 version, Gershwin wrote the music for two works that are still remembered today: One, "Stairway to Paradise," was only his second collaboration with his brother Ira who at the time was writing under the pseudonym Arthur Francis, a name created from the first names of the two younger Gershwin siblings, Francis and Arthur. On "Stairway to Paradise," Ira joined up with Buddy De Sylva and George to write the song that was used as the finale of the first act of the 1922 edition of the Scandals, and has since gone on to become a standard. Aside from that song only two other Gershwin Scandals numbers are remembered now: "Somebody Loves Me," from the 1924 edition, and the one-act "Negro opera," "Blue Monday," (a precursor of Porgy and Bess) that was cut from the 1922 show after opening night because White thought it too depressing for the generally "light-hearted" Scandals. (Kimball and Simon, The Gershwins, p. xxix).

Besides "Swanee" the only other song from this early period that has lasted is "Do it Again," which was introduced in The French Doll by Irene Bordoni. Her energetically seductive rendition of the song certainly helped it on its way to success, and it has since become, along with "Stairway to Paradise" one of two songs from the early Twenties thought to contain elements of Gershwin's mature style.

Along with Irene Bordoni's introduction of "Do it Again," another important early performance of the song came when another French singer, Eva Gauthier" sang it (accompanied by Gershwin himself), as part of her controversial recital of songs "ancient and modern" at Aeolian Hall in New York City on Nov. 1, 1923. Gauthier disconcerted her classically oriented audience by singing songs by Gershwin, Kern, and Berlin in the company of works by "serious" composers such as Bellini, Bartók, Hindemith, Schoenberg, etc. . As her listeners became more and more enthralled by her renditions of the American popular music they demanded an encore. Ms. Gauthier obliged them with "Do it Again," and when they wanted yet more, as Deems Taylor, a supportive critic in attendance, put it, "she had to do it again."

George Gershwin and Maurice Ravel were acquainted at least from the time Gershwin approached the Frenchman about studying with him while Ravel was in New York in March of 1928. Later during the same visit, he and Gershwin together attended concerts as well as jazz events in Harlem. Ravel, who was known as an early fan of jazz among classical composers, admired both Gershwin's compositions, which he called "intriguing" as well as his playing of them, the facility of which left the composer of "Bolero" "dumbfounded."

According to Gershwin biographer and commentator Howard Pollack, Ravel's susceptibility to Gershwin may have predated the 1928 visit to New York. Pollack sites David Schiff who suggests that the fox-trot from Ravel's opera L'Enfant et les sortilèges was "modeled" after Gershwin's "Do it Again" (Pollack, p. 119).

Pollack also traces the performances of "Do it Again," especially with regard to the almost impossible to ignore sexual innuendo of title, melody and lyric. He begins with Marilyn Monroe singing it for the troops (Marines at Camp Pendleton in California as well as in Korea in 1952), which "nearly caused a riot." No wonder when Monroe included "little moans of longing and pleasure as she invited someone to 'come and get it, you won't regret it'."

Marilyn's recording in 1953 led pretty much directly to her getting the part of Lorelei Lee in the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the role that was largely responsible for her initial attainment of star status. Judy Garland in her 1961 Carnegie Hall concert similarly emphasized the explicit sexual elements of the song. Pollock states Gershwin and De Sylva "clearly had more ironic intentions in mind, but the lyric, with its string of 'no's and 'oh's,' and the melody with its sensuous curves, could easily be made to suggest sexual intercourse" (Pollock, p. 264).

Philip Furia confirms the intention of erotic double-entendre by pointing out that "Do it Again" when sung by Irene Bordoni, the "French Doll" who introduced the song on Broadway, "brought to the lyric not only insouciance but sensuousness" to the degree that the "three little words" of the title "radiated such erotic force that the song was banned from the radio (Furia, Poets of Tin Pan Alley, p. 160, paper-bound Ed.). Also, Furia makes the connection (here and in another place) between the Gershwin/De Sylva use of the phrase "do it" with its double double-entendre generated erotic overtones and Cole Porter's similar intention in his 1928 song "Let's Do It." On the other hand, Furia notes, when Ira Gershwin wrote "Do, do, do / What you've done, done, done / Before baby," he was not going for the erotic; in fact, he "adamantly insisted that his 'do' was purely about kissing and did not smack of 'musical comedy "Smart Smut." It had 'face not body value'"(Philip Furia, Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist, New York: Oxford UP, 1996, p. 57, hard-bound Ed.).

The verse for "Do it Again" doesn't make it entirely clear that, as many have pointed out, the antecedent of the "it" in the title phrase is a kiss. It's at least possible that what happened to the singer to give her that new thrill was happening while her lover's two lips were pressed to hers, not just the kiss itself. This view might stretch the grammar a bit, but it does take into account all the innuendos that permeate the verse and the refrain. Tell me, tell me, What did you do to me? I just got a thrill That was new to me. When your two lips Were pressed to mine. And even the direct reference to a "kiss" in the refrain , the one that her lips ache to give him, doesn't make the case for the meeting of their lips being all that was going on. She implores him to kiss her saying, "You know if you do, / You / Won't regret it, / Come and get it." It doesn't take that much to wonder what could possibly make him regret it unless the kiss was all there was to get. De Sylva provides and easy literal interpretation of the lyric for those who might otherwise wish to censor the song, but also gives the listener every opportunity to go in another direction as well, especially when the singer says, "I may cry, 'Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh'." One might ask, did she cry like that while she was being kissed. So much for the literal.

Currently Cafe Songbook does not offer a version of the complete lyrics for "Do it Again.
"The complete and authoritative lyrics for "Do it Again"
can be found in:

• Irene Bordoni: cdbpdx
• Paul Whiteman: Classic Mood Experience
• Marilyn Monroe in Korea, 1952: Marilyn Monroe Video Archives
• Diana Krall 2001: Sherry baby

Notes

• Other songs written for The French Doll currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook : none
• For a complete listing of songs used in the original Broadway production of this show, see IBDB song list .
• Edward Jablonski Gershwin A Biography, New York: Doubleday, 1987 (paper bound edition shown)
• The Gershwins Robert Kimball and Alfred Simon, Eds. New York: Atheneum, 1975
• Ruth Leon Gershwin London: Haus Publishing, 2004
• Eva Gauthier playbill for "Recital of Ancient and Modern Music for Voice, Nov. 1, 1923, Aeolian Hall, New York City
• "Do it Again" recorded by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, March 1922.
• George Gershwin: His Life and Work Berkeley: Univ. of California Press 2006
• Marilyn Monroe performs "Do it Again" for the troops in Korea, 1952, from the Marilyn Monroe Video Archives
• Ed's. question: Was Ira protesting too much? about songs like his brother's "Do it Again."

Cite this page: "Do It Again": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/d/do_it_again.html