"Witchcraft": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"Witchcraft"

David Ewen. American Songwriters, An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1987 (includes 146 bios of composers and lyricists).

Will Friedwald, Sinatra! The Song Is You A Singer's Art, New York: Scribners, 1995.
Da Capo Press
paperback edition
(shown above) 1997

The origins of "Witchcraft" are a bit murky It's not a problem of who wrote thestandard. The music comes from Cy Coleman; the words from Carolyn Leigh. And they wrote it early in 1957, not long after Coleman suggested to Leigh that they get together to write and she agreed. David Ewen in his article on Coleman and Leigh in his book American Songwriters (1987), says they wrote their first song together, "A Moment of Madness," recorded by Sammy Davis, Jr., only two days after Coleman asked her to collaborate; and pretty quickly the pair found some success writing at least four other songs in '57, one of which was "Witchcraft," the only big hit, as recorded by Sinatra, of that first bunch.

The conventional wisdom regarding the origins of the song, as related on many websites and some print sources, takes several forms: First, it is said, the song was introduced by Gerry Matthews in 1957 in the revue Take Five. Next, it was then recorded by Frank Sinatra and released later in 1957 reaching #20 on the charts. Finally, a number of sites suggest that Witchcraft's appearance in Take Five was not the song itself but an instrumental with music by Cy Coleman, the lyrics by Carolyn Leigh being added later. In print, as early as 1987, David Ewen also claims, as do several other sources, that the Coleman-Leigh "Witchcraft" was introduced by Gerry Matthews in the Cabaret revue Take Five (which was produced by cabaret impresario Julius Monk and opened on October 10, 1957 (running through the summer of '58) at the New York club, the Downstairs Room, part of a larger establishment called Upstairs at the Downstairs. The song's use in this show was, according to Ewen, "before it ["Witchcraft"] became a best seller in the recording by Sinatra" (p. 97). He says nothing about it having been an instrumental and given his credit to lyricist Leigh suggests he was referring to the a song with both words and music..

Almost all of the above is wrong. There was a song with the title "Witchcraft" sung by Gerry Matthews included in Julius Monk's revue Take Five which ran at the Downstairs Room from October 1957 through the summer of 1958 as indicated above. But that "Witchcraft" is not the "Witchcraft" most of us know that was written by Coleman and Leigh and recorded by Sinatra. It is a completely different song written by Michael Brown. One can find Brown's "Witchcraft" as part of the Take Five cast album on Amazon. If you buy the track or even just listen to Amazon's sample, it will be readily apparent that this is not the Witchcraft" made so familiar by the 1957 Sinatra recording. The liner notes written by Rogers Whitaker on the original LP jacket for the Take Five cast album describe the song and its performance is follows: "Then Gerry Matthews gets elbow room to do 'Witchcraft,' one of those rapid fire internal rhyme ditties that Michael Brown wrote in the days before he gave up performing and began producing bright-eyed revues himself. 'Witchcraft' is a wishful-thinking aria for anyone in need of supernatural powers."

The reason for the confusion promulgated on so many websites may be that, first, the Coleman/Leigh/Sinatra "Witchcraft" was also a product of 1957; and, second, that one of the songs in Take Five, titled "Westport," which, according to Thomas Hischak takes "the Connecticut suburbs to task for narrow mindedness." Also Thomas Hischak points out that Leigh returned in 1958 to write the lyrics for several of the songs in Julius Monk's next revue Demi-Dozen, one of which was "You Fascinate Me So" with her then new songwriting partner Cy Coleman. Furthermore, Hischak in his discussion of Take Five, makes no mention of Leigh or Coleman having anything to do with the song titled "Witchcraft" from that show, though he does mention Leigh as lyricist for "Westport," all of which reinforces the idea that the Take Five "Witchcraft" is not written by Leigh and/or Coleman. Wikipedia and other sites state that "Witchcraft" (meaning the Coleman/Leigh/Sinatra song) was first "composed as an instrumental piece by Cy Coleman for the revue Take Five; however, this such music is not included on the cast album and is not mentioned in its liner notes. It's not unlikely that Coleman would have composed music for a cabaret revue. He did that sort of thing, e.g. "You Fascinate Me So," but as yet have we have not found documentation to substantiate the claim that he did so for Take Five (Hischak, pp. 43-44).

Well-respected scholars who have written about Take Five or the Sinatra recording of "Witchcraft," make no connection between the two. James Gavin, a scholar of cabaret in New York City, doesn't mention "Witchcraft" in his discussion of Take Five in his highly regarded book Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret.

Neither does Will Friedwald discuss any relationship between Sinatra's song and Take Five in his book Sinatra! The Song Is You, even though he gives us a rather detailed account of the origins of the Coleman/Leigh "Witchcraft." According to Friedwald, in 1957, while Sinatra was filming Pal Joey in California, Sinatra's recording company at the time, Capitol, "got Hungry for" a new single by Frank and instructed the singer's producer, Voyle Gilmore, to pick something for him to record. A meeting was called at the Capitol Tower in Hollywood, and when Sinatra and his entourage (including Frank Military, Hank Sanicola and others) arrived, Gilmore had a pile of records for Sinatra to go through. Friedwald quotes Military recalling that Frank quickly nixed this plan telling Gilmore, "No, [you] pick one song. That's it." Gilmore, apparently having previewed the recordings, immediately pulled out a record called "Witchcraft" -- the Coleman-Leigh song. Military continued, "As [Gilmore] played it and it finished, Frank looked at us and we looked at him, and Hank [Sanicola] shook his head no." Frank said to play it again and after Gilmore did, the matter was settled. Frank said to Gilmore to do whatever he wanted with the others, but "This song I like." Interestingly, Sinatra must not have realized at that moment that he had picked a song with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh who had also written the words for his 1954 hit, "Young at Heart." (One would certainly like to know whose recording of "Witchcraft" Gilmore played for Sinatra, but we don't. Most likely it was a demo made by Coleman who was an accomplished singer and jazz pianist.)

The recording session with Riddle was set up and turned out to be long and difficult, but Sinatra stuck with it until "he got it down right." Between Gilmore's taste in choosing "Witchcraft" for Sinatra to listen to and Sinatra's and Riddle's manifest talents and perseverance a hit and a standard were created out of the Coleman and Leigh song. The session took place on May 20, 1957 (by that time Dave Cavanaugh had replaced Gilmore as producer), which was some five months before a song with the title "Witchcraft" was "introduced" in Take Five in the Downstairs Room in New York on October 12, 1957. (By the way, the Take Five cast album is also on Capitol.)

Friedwald adds that Coleman was very pleased with his song, especially liking how well the words and music worked together: "The words belong to the melody. That's when the lyric and music are good, too . . . you can't pull them apart." Finally, Friedwald takes us back to the very beginning: first Leigh had come up with the phrase, "It's Witchcraft." From that Coleman devised an "'exotic' melody to fit it. But when poking around at the piano, he came up with another melodic line that they instantly knew was better suited to the title" (Friedwald, pp. 250-251, hard cover Ed.). Again, there is no mention of the song being used in a cabaret show in New York, either as an instrumental by Coleman or otherwise. But there was a song (with both words and music) titled "Witchcraft" in that revue; it just wasn't the "Witchcraft."

Ed's. note: One needs to be cautious in suggesting that scholars like David Ewen as well as Robert Kimball and Robert Gottlieb (who in their book Reading Lyrics also state "Witchcraft" was introduced in Take Five ) have made an error. If we are missing anything and someone has more information on this matter, please submit a comment .

Click here to read the lyrics for "Witchcraft," as sung by Frank Sinatra on the CD
The Best of the Capitol Years and others. (Sinatra does not include the verse.

Leigh's lyric for the verse makes it clear at the outset that "Witchcraft" is about seduction, seduction that is devilish, poisonous and untrustworthy, seduction that should not be submitted to but is irresistible: Shades of old Lucretia! There's a devil in you tonight, 'N' although my heart adores ya, My head says it ain't right. Right to let you make advances, oh no! Under normal circumstances, I'd go, But oh! (Gottlieb and Kimball, p. 579) The refrain then delivers the specifics of the seduction and what makes it irresistible. Those fingers in my hair . . . . Finally, the onus is removed when at the end of the song, the singer admits or rationalizes her inability to resist by asserting, "There's no nicer witch than you."

• Frank Sinatra, 1957: Music4TheSoul1980
• Ella Fitzgerald: NuovaCanaria

Notes

• James Gavin Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret , New York: Back Stage Books (revised edition) 2006
• Thomas S. Hischak Off-Broadway Musicals since 1919: From Greenwich Village Follies to The Toxic Avenger , Scarecrow Press, 2011
• Will The Real "Witchcraft" Please Stand Up
• To hear Leigh"s and Coleman's verse, listen to Ella Fitzgerald's live versions on her album Twelve Nights In Hollywood .
• and on the album Ella Fitzgerald Vol. 11 Jazz Collection
• Video: same track as on album just above
• The complete, authoritative lyrics for "Witchcraft" can be found in:

Cite this page: "Witchcraft": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/w/witchcraft.html