I’ve been hoping to get my son, Clint, to sing another Weekly Tune since he moved back from Boston. (He sang Time After Time here a long while ago.) Unfortunately the frenzy of graduate school got in the way and we’ve only found time for it now in the comparatively tranquil summer.

He chose George and Ira Gershwin’s Isn’t It a Pity?, a relatively obscure duet of theirs from a failed 1933 musical Pardon My English.  Apparently the play was to be a vehicle for Jack Buchanan, the English musical hall star, but the reviews were not kind.  The play was reworked and reopened with George Givot who sang Isn’t It a Pity with Josephine Huston.  The revised play was not a success either, but Isn’t It a Pity survived to become something of a standard.

  Clint knows the tune from a Mel Torme recording.  I think I first learned of it from David Stanley, a local piano player who was for a long time a fixture at the old Barclay Hotel.  Anyway, it’s a lovely song, and Clint, like Torme, includes the verse which is not often done.  Click above to hear it.  The lyrics are below.

 Verse:

Why did I wander

Here and there and yonder,

Wasting precious time,

For no reason or rhyme?

Isn’t it a pity?

Isn’t it a crime?

My journey’s ended;

Ev’rything is splendid:

Meeting you today

Has given me a wonderful idea,

Here I(‘ll) stay!

Refrain:

It’s a funny thing,

I look at you

I get a thrill

I never knew

Isn’t it a pity

We never met before?

Here we are at last,

It’s like a dream

The two of us

A perfect team,

Isn’t it a pity

We never met before?