In the interests of time, I am going back to the basics this week with a solo piano rendering of Rodgers’ and Hart’s It Never Entered My Mind.  It comes from the failed 1940’s Broadway show Higher and Higher which was apparently remarkable only for a trained seal that appeared in it and tried, alas unsuccessfully, to compensate for a weak book.

  Nevertheless, from the ruins was salvaged It Never Entered My Mind, a song that is somehow pensive and touching even if the melody doesn’t ever seem to be doing much in particular. I think you have to give lyricist Hart a lot of the credit here. With his clever imagery he was able to create a feeling over a simple melody, making much of little.  The song was debuted in the show by Shirley Ross and over the years, it’s been performed by many singers including Sinatra (albeit with lyrics changed for a male singer).  Somehow in the cold rainy April gloom, it matched my mood.  To hear it click on the title in red. The lyrics are below.  I found the rarely-done verse in the library and included it as a curiosity.

 Verse:

I don’t care if there’s powder on my nose,

I don’t care if my hair-do is in place.

I’ve lost the very meaning of repose,

I never put a mudpack on my face.

Oh, who’d have thought that I’d walk I a daze now,

I never go to shows at night,

But just to matinees now.

I see the show

And home I go.

Refrain:

Once I laughed when I heard you saying

That I’d be playing solitaire,

Uneasy in my easy chair.

It never entered my mind.

Once you told me I was mistaken

That I’d awaken with the sun

And order orange juice for one,

It never entered my mind.

Bridge:

You have what I lack myself

And now I have to even scratch my back myself.

Once you warned me that if you scorned me,

I’d sing the maiden’s pray’r again

And wish that you were there again

To get into my hair again,

It never entered my mind.