I Get a Kick Out of You

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"I Get a Kick Out of You" is a song by Cole Porter, originally featured in Anything Goes (1934).

Originally sung by Ethel Merman, it has been covered by performers including Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney, Gary Shearston, Jamie Cullum, The Living End and Dolly Parton.

[edit] Alterations to the song

Around the late 1950s and early 1960s, a line referring to the drug cocaine was changed.

The original line goes as follows:

Some get a kick from cocaine

I'm sure that if

I took even one sniff

That would bore me terrifically, too

Yet, I get a kick out of you

The line was changed to:

Some like the bop-type refrain

I'm sure that if

I heard even one riff

It would bore me terrifically, too

Yet, I get a kick out of you

It should be noted that Sinatra recorded both versions: the first in 1953 and the second in 1962. On a recording live in Paris in 1962, Sinatra sings the original version, but with the first line as Some like the perfume from Spain.

[edit] Popular culture

In the film Blazing Saddles, Bart (Cleavon Little) and his fellow workers are told to sing a traditional Negro spiritual and sing this song despite (or because of) its anachronicity. Their version uses the seldom-heard cocaine lyric.

In the TV series Frasier, Ronee Lawrence (Wendie Malick) sings her altered version of the song, in The Babysitter episode from the 11th season:

I get no kick from champagne

Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all

So tell me then why it should it be true

That I get a kick out of you? I think you're cute, Marty Crane

I think that if your poor hip wasn't stiff

You could dance just terrifically too

And I get a kick out of you

In the Australian film "Children of the Revolution" a somewhat unorthodox and much abridged rendition of this song is given by F. Murray Abraham in the role of Josef Stalin, backed by Paul Livingston and Dennis Watkins as Beria and Khrushchev respectively.¹

¹http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115886/soundtrack