My Ship
"My Ship" is a popular song written for the 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin.
The music is marked "Andante espressivo"; Gershwin describes it as "orchestrated by Kurt to sound sweet and simple at times, mysterious and menacing at other".[1]
It was premiered by Gertrude Lawrence in the role of Liza Elliott, the editor of a fashion magazine. In the context of the show, the song comes in a sequence in which Elliott, in psychoanalysis, recalls a turn-of-the-century song she knew in her childhood.[2]
The song was not included in the 1944 Hollywood film Lady in the Dark, a fact which Ira Gershwin found inexplicable:
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In 2003, Herbie Hancock won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo for a version of this song released on the album Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall.
Cover versions
Artists who have recorded the song include (in alphabetical order):
- Ernestine Anderson – The Toast of the Nation's Critics (1958)
- Dorothy Ashby – Soft Winds (1961)
- Cindy Blackman – Works on Canvas (1999)
- Jane Ira Bloom – Sixteen Sunsets (2013)[3]
- Betty Buckley – An Evening at Carnegie Hall (1996)
- Dee Dee Bridgewater – This Is New (Verve, 2002), Midnight Sun (Decca, 2011)
- Ron Carter – Peg Leg (Milestone, 1978)
- June Christy – Duet (with Stan Kenton) (1955), Ballads for Night People (1959)
- Rosemary Clooney – Show Tunes (Concord, 1989)
- Jacqui Dankworth – As the Sun Shines Down on Me (2002)
- Miles Davis with Gil Evans – Miles Ahead (Columbia, 1957)
- Steve Davis – Eloquence (2010)
- Doris Day – I Have Dreamed (1961)[4]
- Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass - Easy Living (1986)
- Judy Garland (1953)
- Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker, Roy Hargrove – Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall (2002)
- Johnny Hartman – The Voice That Is! (1964), Hartman for Lovers (2010)
- Caroline Henderson – Lonely House (2013)
- Wynton Kelly – Undiluted (1965)
- Roland Kirk – I Talk with the Spirits (1964)
- Ute Lemper
- Liza Minnelli –
- Hugh Masekela – Almost Like Being in Jazz (Chissa, 2005)[5]
- Sarah Vaughan – Great Songs From Hit Shows (1956)
A few notes of the song are sung in a Sesame Street cartoon sequence promoting the letter R from the show's premiere 1969–70 season.[6]
References
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Further reading
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- McClung, Bruce (2007). Lady in the Dark, Biography of a Musical. Oxford University Press. Template:ISBN
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