I Won't Dance

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"I Won't Dance" is a song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics originally written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach, for the 1934 musical Three Sisters. However, Three Sisters flopped and was quickly forgotten, so when the time came to film the Kern-Harbach musical Roberta, the song was interpolated into the film. It became such a hit that it is now included in all stage revivals and recordings of Roberta.

For the RKO film Roberta (1935), Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh changed the lyrics of the song, only keeping the title, which Hammerstein originated. It is the Fields and McHugh lyrics which are best known today.

The song is anachronistically used as a musical number in the made-for-television biography of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Warm Springs, which largely takes place in the year 1924.

[edit] Notable recordings

• Anita O'Day - Pick Yourself Up with Anita O'Day (1956)
• Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong - Ella and Louis Again (1957)
• Ella Fitzgerald - Ella Swings Brightly with Nelson (1961)
• Peggy Lee - Mink Jazz (1963)
• Jane Monheit and Michael Bublé - Taking a Chance on Love (2004)
• Frank Sinatra - A Swingin' Affair! (1957), Sinatra-Basie (1962)
• Jula de Palma - Jula al Sistina (1970)
• Will Young - Pop Idol: The Big Band Album (2002)
• Sylvia McNair with Andre Previn and David Finck - Sure Thing: The Jerome Kern Songbook (1994)