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Thursday, May 23, 2024

Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh | “I’ve Got Your Number” from Little Me / 1962

my favorite broadway musical songs: “i’ve got your number

by Douglas Messerli


Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh

Performer: Sven Swenson (original cast recording, 1962

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnNzeYVYrVE

Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh

Performer: Cy Coleman and the Cy Coleman trio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4x-Puo9ef0

Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh

Performer: Cy Coleman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiauDSB0Q4o

Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh

Performer: Peggy Lee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE-rgcAORRg

Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh

Performer: Tom Wopat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltVaOzRfrTs


 

Originally produced on Broadway in 1962, with a book by Neil Simon, based on Patrick Dennis’ fiction, and music and lyrics by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, Little Me was dominated by the presence of one man, Sid Ceasar, who played all of Belle’s lovers and husbands, young and old.

     Yet the one song that stood out in the musical was not performed by Ceasar, but by the handsome, openly gay (he died of AIDS in 1993), Sven Svenson, playing George, a nightclub owner who seductively does something like a striptease (choreographed by Bob Fosse) as he courts the forlorn Belle, promoting his cause that they should hook up:

 

I've got your number,

I know you inside out,

You ain't no Eagle Scout,

You're all at sea.

Oh yes, you brag a lot,

Wave your own flag a lot,

But you're unsure a lot,

You're a lot

Like me.

 

He succeeds of course, Belle is most certainly no “Eagle Scout,” getting her pregnant.

     If Leigh’s lyrics are quite clever, it is Coleman’s jazzy score that makes this song so powerful. Just to hear his own jazz rendition of it, played by his Cy Coleman trio, makes this utterly apparent.

     The original version was not a big hit, but was revived in 1982, with Victor Garber and James Coco co-sharing the original Sid Ceasar characters (it lasted only 36 performances, but when I stopped by the boxoffice, I couldn’t get a ticket), and revived once more in 1998 (this time lasting for 99 performances), with Martin Short and the great Faith Prince playing the major roles.

     The song has been recorded extensively by various singers, including Jack Jones, George Chakiris, Nancy Wilson, Tom Wopat, and Peggy Lee; but Swenson’s version still rings right in my ears, although the sung version by Coleman is so good that it seems as if he might have written it for himself.

 

Los Angeles, December 21, 2017

Reprinted from World Theater, Opera, and Performance


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