Jimmy McHugh, songwriter: reference sources (web and print); selected songs; recordings, videos; miscellany

"Jimmy McHugh is one of the lesser-known songwriters to be included in the Capitol Sings series of compilations, but several of his songs, including "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," and "I'm in the Mood for Love," are standards, and many more, written during a 40-year career mostly devoted to Broadway and Hollywood, are familiar. McHugh's most successful work was written with lyricist Dorothy Fields in the late '20s and early '30s, and much of his catalog predates the founding of Capitol Records in 1942. So, necessarily, most of the selections here are 1950s recreations of songs written in previous decades. (One exception: Nat "King" Cole's popular recording of "Too Young to Go Steady," drawn from McHugh's unsuccessful attempt to return to Broadway with Strip for Action in 1956.) That means lots of vibrant studio orchestra music conducted by Nelson Riddle and Billy May, among others, and lots of bravura singing by people like Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Dinah Washington, and Sarah Vaughan. But there are also some performances that provide a change of pace, such as Julie London's smoky "I'm in the Mood for Love," accompanied only by bass and guitar, and Chet Baker's jazzy reading of "Let's Get Lost." The result is more a grab bag than a definitive McHugh compilation, but there are some excellent individual interpretations." ~ William Ruhlmann/CD Universe.

• Blue Again
• Can't Get Out of This Mood
• Don't Blame Me
• Exactly like You
• I Can't Believe That You're in Love with Me
• I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby
• I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night
• I Feel a Song Coming On
• I Just Found Out about Love
• I'm in the Mood for Love
• It's a Most Unusual Day
• Let's Get Lost
• Lost in a Fog
• A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening
• On the Sunny Side of the Street
• Say It (over and over again)
• When My Sugar Walks Down the Street (all the little birdies go tweet-tweet-tweet)
• Where Are You?
• You're a Sweetheart

Research Resources: Jimmy McHugh

• Amazon (publications by and about, recordings, videos, sheet music, etc.)
• Songwriters Hall of Fame (biography and song list)
• DBOPM (Database Of Popular Music: song list; awards; hit songs; co-writers)
• Wikipedia article
• Internet Broadway Database (IBDB) (Broadway productions and song credits)
• Internet Movie Database (brief biography, filmography, movie song credits)
• The New York Times (articles about or related to the songwriter)
• New York Public Library (catalog entries for books, personal papers, recordings, scores, etc.)
• Discogs.com (singles, LPs and CD's including songs by this songwriter)
• Time.com: March 10, 1930 review of the Lew Leslie's International Revue from which came the McHugh-Fields songs "Exactly like You" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street."
• Jass.com pages for Jimmy McHugh (stage, movie, and other songs with associated data);
• Indiana University Sheet Music Collection: Jimmy McHugh
• ASCAP Biographical Dictionary of Composers, Authors and Publishers, New York: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (1966 edition, entry p. ).
• Max Wilk, They're Playing Our Song: Conversations with America's Classic Songwriters (originally published 1973 as They're Playing Our Song: From Jerome Kern to Stephen Sondheim—The Stories behind the Words and Music of Two Generations), New York and Stratford, CT: Easton Studio Press, 2008 (multiple pages on Fields-McHugh collaboration in interview with Dorothy Fields).
• 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). -- a wide selection of used copies is available at abebooks.com (entry, pp. 275-279).
• Roy Hemming, The Melody Lingers On: The Great Songwriters and Their Movie
  Musicals, New York: Newmarket Press, 1986 (chapter on McHugh).
• Philip Furia, The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists,
  New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 (pp. 215-219 and others)
• Thomas S. Hischak. Word Crazy: Broadway Lyricists from Cohan to Sondheim. New York: Praeger, 1991 (pp. 75-77 and 114).
• David A. Jasen, Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song, New York: Routledge, 2003 (entry, pp. 493-494).
• Gary Marmorstein, Hollywood Rhapsody: Movie Music and Its Makers, 1900-1975,
  New York: Schirmer Books, 1997 (multiple references to McHugh).
• Ken Bloom. The American Songbook, The Singers, The Songwriters and the Songs. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2005 (entry--pp. 274-275 and others).
• Thomas S. Hischak. The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008 (entry--p 482.).
• Alyn Shipton. I Feel a Song Coming On: The Life of Jimmy McHugh. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009 (from The University of Illinois Music in American Life series).

Notes

• Capitol Sings Jimmy McHugh / "I Feel a Song Coming On"
• CD Universe || Amazon

Cite this page: Jimmy McHugh, songwriter: reference sources (web and print); selected songs; recordings, videos; miscellany, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songwriters/m_sws/mchugh_jimmy.html