"I'll Get By (As Long As I Have You)": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"I'll Get By"

• 1929: Ruth Etting*; Nick Lucas; Aileen Stanley;
• 1944: Harry James/Dick Haymes*; Ink Spots*; King Sisters

I'll Get By" had several lives in terms of its recording history. Professional songwriters and often collaborators Fred Ahlert and Roy Turk wrote the song for independent publication and must have been gratified by the number of recordings made almost immediately after its publication in late 1928. These included Aileen Stanley, Gus Arnheim and His Orchestra, Nick Lucas, and Bing Crosby with the Ipana Troubadours. Recordings by all of these artists appeared in December, 1928, and were quickly followed by the song's major hit recording made by Ruth Etting on Feb. 1, 1929, reaching the charts on April, 13, 1929, staying there for ten weeks, and peaking at #3. The popularity of the song intensified when in October of 1929, the market crash made the need to "get by" more sharply felt.

Although Billie Holiday's 1937 recording has achieved its own immortality, it was the capacity of the song, especially of its lyric, to tap into the feelings engendered by the pain of separations wrought by World War II that gave it a second life in the early 1940s. Recordings by The Harry James Orchestra with vocal by Dick Haymes, The Ink Spots and The King Sisters returned "I'll Get By" to popularity in Big Band and R & B modes. Its use in the 1943 A Guy Named Joe where it is sung by Irene Dunne and the 1944 movie Follow the Boys in which Dinah Shore performs it also helped the song's revival during this period.

Jazz breathed new life into "I'll Get By" when artists such as John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Erroll Garner, Jonah Jones, and Charlie Parker recorded instrumental versions while Peggy Lee, Cleo Lane, Keely Smith, Dionne Warwick and other singers recorded jazz inflected versions. By this time, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, "I'll Get By" had become a standard and has remained one ever since.

I'll Get By" is not a song that has received a lot of critical attention, perhaps suggesting its slightness. Nevertheless the distinguished critic (and composer), Alec Wilder liked it. He writes of Ahlert that he was a "better-than-average writer, and though his best songs were not many, he deserves mention among the great craftsmen." As for "I'll Get By" Wilder points out that it was Ahlert's first big hit and that the song "deserved its success." Wilder believed that songs written for the theater were generally superior to popular songs written only for the popular consumption and that " I'll Get By"

doesn't go as far as it might have had it been written for the theater, but it's so good that one wishes it hadn't been confined to the unwritten limitations of pop song writing (Wilder, p. 416, hardcover Ed.)

Click here to read the lyrics for "I'll Get By," as sung by Frank Sinatra. Like so many singers, Sinatra, changes up the lyrics to suit his particular needs. First he omits the versewith which Roy Turk begins his lyric. There are at least two versions of the verse. To hear one, listen to the 1929 Ruth Etting recording in the Record/Video Cabinet. Here is the other:

I've neither wealth nor power, But now that you said you're mine "Wherever I go, Whatever I do, I'll be doin' fine. For . . . I'll get by As long as I have you . . . .

Then Sinatra alters Turk's refrainby omitting its central section. Finally, Sinatra returns to Turk's refrain singing its ending: "Poverty / May come to me . . . ," etc.
This set of alterations is not that different from what most singers do with this song. For example, along with the Etting version, listen to Billie Holiday. Much of this may be dictated by the need to fit the lyrics into the time available on a single 78 rpm disc while still giving the accompanying orchestra time for its solo portion.

• Bing Crosby: bingcrosby1903
• Ruth Etting: CatsPajamas1
• Billie Holiday: purple0accident
• Dick Haymes / Harry James: 53FordVick
• The Ink Spots: Haku1234567890
• John Coltrane: JckDupp
• Coleman Hawkins: JkcDupp
• Peggy Lee: vladimirsmartins
• Jacke Jones: king's collection

Notes

• "I'll Get By" on the Charts:
• Source: Joel Whitburn, Pop Memories 1890-1954: The History of American Popular Music , 1986
• *Listen to recordings in the Cafe Songbook Record/Video Cabinet .
• The complete, authoritative lyrics for "I'll Get By " can be found in:

Cite this page: "I'll Get By (As Long As I Have You)": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/i/ill_get_by_m.html