[78-L] It's in the Book

[DAVID BURNHAM]

I've been reading 78L for a few years now and I depend on you folk for all the ammunition I need to impress my less record savvy friends with my wisdom.  The subject of "It's in the Book" came up the other day and I bravely announced that there was only one recording of it - on Capitol with Johnny Standley.  Well today I was going through my mountains of records and found a second recording of it by Al Bernie on Mercury;  actually on this disc it's listed as "(It's In) The Book", which is strange because the way the line is presented there should be no parenthesis.  Bernie uses exactly the same inflections as Standley does throughout, even what sound like ad-libbed asides are ad-libbed in exactly the same manner and there is an obviously canned laughter added.  This record really doesn't offer any reason for it's existence along side the Standley version which is superior in every way.

Another observation.  I read somewhere that the story goes that Connie Francis never wanted to record "Who's Sorry Now" and kept putting it off but her father kept pressuring her to do it.  Finally, on what was to be her last recording session, since she was retiring from the recording business she decided to record it, but she was going to spoof it and sing it as a slow ballad, even though it was always sung very up-beat with an "in your face" attitude, along the lines, I think, of, "Cry me a River", or Theresa Brewer's "Jilted".  But I just found another recording of the song, probably from about the same time, sung by Gloria DeHaven, also on MGM and it's sung the same way as Connie Francis.  Is the story above not true, (I've never heard an up-beat version of the song), or did Francis start a custom of singing it as a ballad which other singers adopted?

db