"I Get a Kick Out of You" is a song by Cole Porter, originally featured in the Broadway musical Anything Goes and the movie of the same name.
Originally sung by Ethel Merman, it has been covered by performers including Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Marlene Dietrich, Cesare Siepi, Dinah Washington, Bobby Short, Louis Armstrong, Erroll Garner, Ella Fitzgerald, Mary Martin, Anita O`Day, Rosemary Clooney, Margaret Whiting, Django Reinhardt, Gary Shearston, Jamie Cullum, The Living End, Dolly Parton, Dwele, Joan Morris, Shirley Bassey, The Gutter Twins, Lisa Ekdahl and Landau Eugene Murphy Jr.
The lyrics were first altered shortly after being written. The last verse originally went as follows:
After the Lindbergh kidnapping,[1] Porter changed the second and third lines to:
In the 1936 movie version, alternative lyrics in the second verse were provided to replace a reference to the drug cocaine, which were not allowed due to the Hays Code.
The original verse goes as follows:
Porter changed the first line to:
One alternative version popularised by Alyson Ottaway changes the verse to:
Sinatra recorded both post-Hays versions: the first in 1953 and the second in 1962. On a recording live in Paris in 1962, Sinatra sings the altered version with the first line as Some like the perfume from Spain. Other Porter-approved substitutes include "whiff of Guerlain." All three of the above alternatives are mentioned in the liner notes to Joan Morris and William Bolcom's CD, "Night and Day," but on the recording, Morris sings the original second verse.
The Popular childrens' television show "Sesame Street" once did a parody of this song about the letter U performed by Ethel Mermaid, a fishy spoof of Ethel Merman. In the song, Ethel sings about how none of the other letters in the alphabet give her more joy than the letter U, backed up by a school of fish. A shark gets too close to her while she sings and is continuously smacked away by her tail.
The 1974 film Blazing Saddles features the song led by Bart (Cleavon Little) and his fellow railroad workers at the request of Lyle (Burton Gilliam) for a work song, but Lyle interrupts and suggests that "Camptown Races" is a better work song.