Today’s Weekly Tune comes from a suggestion by Ray Smith, a long-time friend whom many Philadelphians may know as a frequent Plays and Players actor and director and a generally funny raconteur with a seemingly  encyclopedic knowledge of all things theatrical and cinematic.

     In any case, Ray was listening to the radio awhile back and heard the Glenn Miller recording of The Lady’s in Love With You, written in 1939 by Burton Lane with a lyric by Frank Loesser.    Sung by Tex Beneke with (citing Wikipidia) a rare spoken interlude by Glenn Miller himself, the recording became a hit.

   It’s a song that I somehow missed but when I looked it up I found that lots of singers have done it including Bob Hope, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan and, more recently, John Pizzarelli.  (And my Loesser song book says the song was in the movie Some Like it Hot.)  It’s a simple, nice little swinging tune.  At first I thought the lyrics vaguely arrogant or self-vaunting, but now I think they are more innocent than that, a  naïve realization of – as the (unrecorded) verse explains – “little things that mean the dawn of love”.

     After not having heard the song in decades, Ray said he was surprised that he could sing all of the lyrics right off.  Neither I, nor my wife, Kate, who has acted on stage many times with Ray and secretly suspects he still knows every line of every play he’s ever been involved with, was surprised at all.

   Click above to hear it.  The lyrics are below.  (There are many more lyrics that Bob Hope and others used).  I dragooned the only vocalist I could find on short notice…   Close enough….

If there’s a gleam in her eye

Each time she straightens your tie,

You’ll know the lady’s in love with you.

If she can dress for a date

Without that waiting you hate

It means the lady’s in love with you.

Bridge:

And when your friends ask you over to join their table

But she picks that faraway booth for two,

Well,sir, here’s just how it stands,

You’ve got romance on your hands

Because the lady’s in love with you.