"It's a Most Unusual Day": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"It's a Most Unusual Day"

Other songs written for A Date with Judy currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook: none

"It's a Most Unusual Day" is introduced in A Date with Judy (1948) by Jane Powell (title character Judy sings the song with the school orchestra at the high school in the opening scene where she is joined by Elizabeth Taylor). It is also sung later in the movie by Elizabeth Taylor, and once more in the finale by the cast ensemble.

Jane Powell and then Elizabeth Taylor (dubbed by Jean McLaren) sing
"It's a Most Unusual Day" in the 1948 movie
A Date with Judy.

Jane Powell and ensemble (including Elizabeth Taylor, Carmen Miranda, Wallace Beery, Xavier Cugat, Robert Stack, Scotty Beckett, Selena Royle, Leon Ames, George Cleveland, and Jerry Hunter) perform "It's a Most Unusual Day" in the finale to
A Date with Judy (1948)

Alyn Shipton in his biography [See in left column] of composer Jimmy McHugh writes, "Perhaps their (McHugh's and Adamson's) best cinema song was also one of their last, 'It's a Most Unusual Day' . . . which was written for Jane Powell. The film was composed during one McHugh's final contracts at MGM after almost two decades of writing movie songs" (Shipton, p. 184).

I find {"It's a Most Unusual Day] to be a waltz in the grand Richard Rodgers manner. It's what is known as a waltz "in one," that is, the three beats of the measure are conducted in one sweep of the baton. And it's everything one asks of a truly waltzing waltz. It's romantic, direct, uncluttered and extended beyond normal length. It's seventy-two measures and none too long. It sweeps and soars and sings. . . . This is a great, free, happy and healthy waltz. (Wilder pp. 410 and 411, hardcover Ed.)

Most recorded performances of "It's a Most Unusual Day," including even Jane Powell's performance in the movie A Date with Judy (for which the song was written) exclude, both music and lyrics for the verse as written by Jimmy McHugh (music) and Harold Adamson (words). Of the performances included in the Cafe Songbook Record/Video Cabinet (this page), only Michael Feinstein (who is pretty much a stickler for singing the lyrics as originally written), Wesla Whitfield and Jodi Sandhaus keep the verse. The others just cut it from their recordings. (Feinstein, it should be noted, keeps it but shifts its position to after the refrain before repeating it (a not that unusual move). Just below we have repeated Sandhaus' 2001 recording so you can hear the verse, placed at the beginning of the song, as the songwriters originally intended.

To set the verse off even more sharply, Sandhaus sings it in ballad tempo before picking things up for the remainder of her performance.

Here is the verse as Adamson wrote it and only Sandhaus, as well as Feinstein and Whitfield -- among all of our selected recordings -- sing it:

I woke up singing this morning, Got out of the right side of bed. I woke up singing this morning And wondering what was ahead. I took one good look at the sun And was I the luckiest one!

It's a most unusual day, Feel like throwing my worries away.

that pretty much captures the lyric's mostly optimistic theme. It's a gorgeous day that makes the singer feel carefree as if he/she is falling in love. The first couplet is immediately followed by a second somewhat more perplexing one:

As an old native born Californian would say, It's a most unusual day.

Does the singer mean southern California days do not typically make people feel like being carefree, like throwing their worries away, like falling in love (like "throwing their heart[s] in the ring?" --a line that suggests that falling in love will involve taking a few punches along the way? Apparently the lyric will not answer such a question. It will only assert, "It's a most unusual day."

Although lyricist Harold Adamson might qualify as an "old . . . Californian," having been in Hollywood long enough to work on sixty-five movie songs including five that were nominated for Academy Awards, he was not "native born" coming originally from New Jersey and having gone to Harvard where he contributed to the legendary Hasty Pudding shows. Jane Powell's character Judy who sings the song in the movie "A Date with Judy" was most likely a native of the state, and is a high school student who was undoubtedly speaking figuratively when she describes herself as "an old native born Californian ," perfectly within the realm of poetic license of course, something that a "worldly" high school senior might indeed say about herself especially when she is under the spell of "a most unusual day" not to mention a day on which she feels like falling in love, like "throwing her heart in the ring" -- taking a chance on whatever that may lead to.

From: IJMA 10/21/2018: After watching the film 'North By Northwest' for almost the 50th time I realized that the song being played as Cary Grant's character (Roger Thornhill) enters the Plaza Hotel is 'It's A Most Unusual Day'. And it certainly was an unusual day for him.

Cafe Songbook responds: Thanks for the comment. Here is a portion of the North by Northwest Soundtrack featuring "It's a Most Unusual Day" played by MGM studio musicians.

• Jane Powell sings "It's a Most Unusual Day" and Finale from A Date with Judy: MrBearNaked

Notes

• For a complete listing of songs used in the original production of this movie, see IMDB Soundtrack .
• DVD A Date with Judy 1948
• Alyn Shipton, I Feel a Song Coming On: The Life of Jimmy McHugh, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2009
• Alec Wilder would seem to agree with Alyn Shypton's high rating (just above) for "It's a Most Unusual Day." He writes:
• Reading Lyrics , Edited and with an Introduction by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball, New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.
• Authoriative Lyrics for "It's a Most Unusual Day" can be found in the volume shown above.
• Jodi Sanhaus' 2001 recording of "It's a Most Unusual Day" in which she includes the verse.
• The lyric begins with the title as the first line of an opening couplet:

Cite this page: "It's a Most Unusual Day": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/i/its_a_most_unusual_day_m.html