One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)

"One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" is a hit song written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the movie musical The Sky's the Limit (1943) and first performed in the film by Fred Astaire.^[1] It was popularized by Frank Sinatra.

Harold Arlen described the song as "another typical Arlen tapeworm" – a "tapeworm" being the trade slang for any song which went over the conventional 32 bar length. He called it "a wandering song. [Lyricist] Johnny [Mercer] took it and wrote it exactly the way it fell. Not only is it long – forty-eight bars – but it also changes key. Johnny made it work."^[2] In the opinion of Arlen's biographer, Edward Jablonski, the song is "musically inevitable, rhythmically insistent, and in that mood of 'metropolitan melancholic beauty' that writer John O'Hara finds in all of Arlen's music."^[2]

Sinatra recorded the song several times during his career: In 1947 with Columbia Records, in 1954 for the film soundtrack album Young at Heart, in 1958 for Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, in 1962 for Sinatra & Sextet: Live in Paris, in 1966 for Sinatra at the Sands and finally, in 1993, for his Duets album.

Recordings

Countless renditions of "One for My Baby..." have been performed. The following is a list of notable/well-known versions which have been recorded thus far:

• Perry Como – 3:45 – Available on the long play record So Smooth
• Billie Holiday – 5:42 – Available on The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945–1959
• Chuck Berry – 2:44 – Available on Chuck Berry in London
• Ella Fitzgerald – 4:18 – Available on Ella Fitzgerald Sings Songs from Let No Man Write My Epitaph
• Ella Fitzgerald – 3:58 – Available on Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook
• Etta James – 3:26 – Available on The Second Time Around
• Frank Sinatra – 3:07 (1947) – Available on The Essential Frank Sinatra: The Columbia Years
• Frank Sinatra – 4:05 (1954) – Recorded for the soundtrack to the film Young at Heart; available on Frank Sinatra in Hollywood 1940–1964
• Frank Sinatra – 4:23 (1958) – Available on Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely; a piano-only rehearsal version is available on The Capitol Years box set
• Fred Astaire – 4:59 – Available on Somewhere Over the Rainbow: The Golden Age of Hollywood Musicals and Hollywood's Best: The 40's
• Fred Astaire - 3:02 - Available originally on Now [Kapp 1165 / 3049] (1959)
• Julie London – 4.10 – Available on Your Number Please (1959)
• Wes Montgomery – 7:38 (1961) - Available on SO Much Guitar!
• Frank Sinatra – 4:40 (1966) (live version) – Available on Sinatra at the Sands
• Frank Stallone – 4:31 – Available on Soft And Low
• Frankie Laine – 3:39 – Available on The Legend at His Best
• Harold Arlen – 4:15 – Available on Too Marvelous For Words: Capitol Sings Johnny Mercer
• Iggy Pop – 4:05 – Available on Party (1981)
• Iggy Pop – 6:04 (live version) – Available on Heroin Hates You (1997)
• Susannah McCorkle – The Songs of Johnny Mercer (1977)
• Johnny Mercer – 3.09 (1947) – Available on Capitol Collector's Series
• Johnny Mercer – 3:58 – Available on My Huckleberry Friend (1974)
• Laura Fygi – 5:59 (live version) – Available on Laura Fygi's Tunes of Passion
• Lena Horne – 3:24 – Available on Bluebird's Best: The Young Star
• Linda Eder – 4:23 – Available on It's No Secret Anymore
• Lou Rawls – 4:25 – Recorded May 2, 1968 for the album You're Good To Me; Later available on Great Gentlemen of Song: Spotlight on Lou Rawls
• Marlene Dietrich – 4:07 – Available on Love Songs
• Marvin Gaye – 4:30 – Available on Moods of Marvin Gaye
• Nana Mouskouri – 3:15 – Available on I'll remember you
• Sammy Davis, Jr. – 10:20 – Available on the 1967 live album That's All!
• Rosemary Clooney – 3:50 – Available on Ballad Essentials
• Jula de Palma – 3:24 – Available on Jula in Jazz 2
• Tony Bennett – 3:26 – Available on Perfectly Frank also a 1957 chart single and on Duets II with John Mayer
• Willie Nelson – 2:36 – Available on Willie & Leon: One For the Road
• Robbie Williams – 4:15 – Available on Swing When You're Winning
• Bette Midler – 4:06 – Available on Experience The Divine: Greatest Hits (1993)
• Chris Botti – 4:53 – When I Fall in Love^[3][4]
• Sylvia Brooks – Available on Dangerous Liaisons (2009) ^[5]
• Mina – Available on L'allieva (2005)
• Hugh Laurie – Available on Didn't It Rain (2013)
• Danny Aiello -- 2004 release I Just Wanted to Hear the Words
• Pat Martino with Bobby Rose -- Available on Alone Together with Bobby Rose 2012. High Note HCD7242
• Toots Thielemans with Jamie Cullum -- Available on One More for the Road 2006. Verve
• Laura Dickinson – 4:29 – Available on One For My Baby - To Frank Sinatra With Love (2014)^[6]
• Sal Viviano - 5:09 - Available on Perfectly FRANK - A CENTURY of SINATRA (2015)

In film and television

• Jane Russell sings it, wearing a metallic evening gown, in the Josef von Sternberg/Nicholas Ray film noir Macao (1952).
• "One for My Baby" is the theme song of the 1957–1958 NBC detective series, Meet McGraw, starring Frank Lovejoy.^[7]
• In the Twilight Zone episode "The Four of Us Are Dying", a woman sings a portion of the tune in a hotel lounge.
• The song was by sung by Bette Midler to Johnny Carson on the penultimate night of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (May 21, 1992). Both Midler and Carson got caught up in the emotion of the song, and a heretofore unused camera angle on the set framed the two and the performance. It earned Midler that year's Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program. The lyrics were adapted to suit the occasion – such as "And, John, I know you're getting anxious to close".^[8]
• Dianne Reeves' rendition of the song is featured throughout the closing credits of George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), and is available on the film's official soundtrack album.
• A piano rendition of the song is played in the background of a bar scene following the protagonist's wife leaving him in the film Invincible (2006).
• In the film Road House (1948), starring Richard Widmark, Ida Lupino and Cornel Wilde, Lupino played a saloon piano player and singer. The song she sang, or talked, was "One for my baby and one more for the road."
• In the Vincent Price film The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), the song (sung by Scott Peters) was "performed" by "Dr. Phibes' Clockwork Wizards".
• Mary sings an a cappella version to Lou as a semi-audition for a talent show on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
• In Stephen King's TV version of The Shining (1997) – song is played in a bar scene near the end of the movie. Song is being played on a jukebox and the artist is unknown.
• Some of this song was sung solo by "Gramoo Sultenfuss" on "My Girl" when the senile grandmother interrupts a funeral.
• The season 2 episode 13 of the USA Network TV show White Collar features characters Neal Caffrey and June, played by Matthew Bomer and Diahann Carroll singing a duet. Billy Dee Williams accompanies them on the piano.
• In the 1998 TV film The Rat Pack, the song is performed during the final scene by Michael Dees, with actor Ray Liotta who portrays Frank Sinatra, shown to appear singing in a recording studio.
• In the 1987 film Ishtar, down-on-his-luck songwriter Lyle Rogers (played by Warren Beatty) chooses the song on a jukebox at a bar with friend and partner, Chuck Clarke (played by Dustin Hoffman).

References