"You Keep Coming Back like a Song": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"You Keep Coming Back like a Song"

Songs written specifically for the movie Blue Skies currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook: none

Other songs inlcuded in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbookthat are used in Blue Skies but not written spefically for the movie (all songs by Irving Berlin):

Although "You Keep Coming Back like a Song" was written by Berlin over the period, 1943-45 and copyrighted in 1945, it was not introduced until Bing Crosby sang it in the movie Blue Skies in 1946.

As Berlin biographer Edward Jablonski tells it, Blue Skies, like the earlier Berlin anthology film Alexander's Ragtime Band
(1938), has a story loosely structured around Berlin's songs. In fact the songs are presented in the order Berlin wrote them and are performed in a manner characteristic of the time when they were originally introduced. Crosby playing club owner and singer Johnny Adams is pitted against Fred Astaire's character Jed Potter, a dancer and singer who has focused his romantic intentions on Mary O'Hara (Joan Caulfield), though Mary is really in love with the Crosby character, Adams. As the plot proceeds Adam's owns and performs in one nightspot after another across the country. Via this device, Berlin's songs are "ingeniously woven" into the story.

"You Keep Coming Back like a Song" shows up while Crosby (Adams) is running and performing in a club called The Song Book. While Crosby is singing it, he hears Caulfield (O'Hara) --- dubbed by Betty Russell -- momentarily joining in from off-stage. She has come back like a song and their love flares.

Jablonksi points out that "You Keep Coming Back like a Song" is one of the few new songs in the score for Blue Skies, though, he speculates, its actual composition probably dated back to 1943 when Berlin was in New Guinea entertaining the troops during the war. He also notes that it was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Song in a 1946 film, losing out to "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. He also sees the song as autobiographical in the sense that it reflects Berlin's love for his wife Ellin (Jablonksi, pp. 232-233, hardcover Ed.).

Click here to read the lyrics for "You Keep Coming Back like a Song," as sung by Ella Fitzgerald on her Irving Berlin Songbook album. Ella includes the verse.

• Red Garland: FunkySkunk90
• Bing Crosby in Blue Skies: nicoley133
• Dinah Shore: gramophoneshane

Notes

• 1. All by Myself
• 5. How Deep Is the Ocean?
• 6. A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody
• 7. Puttin' on the Ritz
• For a complete list of songs used in the movie, Blue Skies , see IMDB soundtracks .
• Edward Jablonski Irving Berlin: American Troubadour , New York: Henry Holt, 1999
• The complete, authoritative lyrics for "title" can be found in:

Cite this page: "You Keep Coming Back like a Song": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/x-y-z/you_keep_coming_back_like_a_song_m.html