[78-L] It's in the Book

[Taylor Bowie]

Hi David,

The Gloria De Haven version on MGM is from the soundtrack of Three Little 
Words (1950) so it's about ten years before Connie's record of the same 
song.

Taylor B.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "DAVID BURNHAM" <burnhamd at rogers.com>
To: <78-L at 78online.com>
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 6:21 PM
Subject: [78-L] It's in the Book


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
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