Bunny
Berigan first recorded "I Can't Get Started" with a small group
that
included Joe Bushkin, Cosy Cole and Artie Shaw in 1936, the same
year that
the song, written by George Gershwin and Vernon Duke, made its debut
in the
Ziegfield Follies. (In the Follies it had been rendered as a duet
patter
number by Bob Hope and Eve Arden.) By 1937, when Berigan re-recorded
it in a
big-band setting, "I Can't Get Started" had become his signature
song. That
same year Billie Holiday recorded her well-known version of the
song backed
by Lester Young and the rest of the Count Basie Orchestra. In 1936,
Wiley
and Berigan, who were lovers for a time, began appearing together
on Wiley's
15-minute CBS radio spot, Saturday Night Swing Club. But in 1939,
when
Wiley recorded her album of Gershwin songs, both Berigan and "I
Can't Get
Started" were absent from the set. Berigan died from alcoholism-related
causes on June 2, 1942. Although "I Can't Get Started" is perfectly
suited
to Wiley's deep phrasing and succinct vibrato, she recorded the
song only
once, informally, in 1944, during a Los Angeles club date. The Spanish
Civil
War started in 1936 and ended in 1939 with General Franco's forces
entering
Madrid. "I've settled revolutions in Spain" goes Vernon Duke's lyric,
equally odd.
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