The story behind the song: “I Remember You”.

Frank Ifield’s recording of “I Remember You” was the best-selling single of 1962 in the UK. It was #1 for 7 weeks, from late July until mid-September.

The song was written over 20 years earlier, in 1941, by Victor Scherzinger and Johnny Mercer. Mercer wrote the words for Judy Garland, with whom he had had an affair when she was 19. He was 30, and married, and offered to divorce his wife to be with her. She said no, and he remained with his wife. Judy married someone else, who did get a divorce in 1941: David Rose, an English musician and composer. Rose would go on to have a US #1 in 1962 with “The Stripper”. The marriage lasted until 1944, and she married Vicente Minnelli in 1945.

As far as I can tell, Johnny Mercer offered the royalties to the song to Judy Garland, as a wedding present essentially. If so, it would have brought her a significant amount of income in the early 1960s when it became such a big hit.

The early recordings of “I Remember You” are ballads. I especially like Ella Fitzgerald’s version. Frank Ifield’s version has more of a country rock feel, and yodelling. There are similar recordings by Slim Whitman and Glen Campbell.

George Michael and Bjork also covered the song in the 1990s, as a ballad, without the yodelling.

Bjork’s version features just her vocals and a harp as accompaniment. There is a rather sinister story attached to it, about a stalker who sent a letter bomb to her home address. He then recorded a video, with Bjork’s version of the song playing in the background, and killed himself live on camera.

I have taken to performing this song myself recently, and introducing it with some of the information contained in the paragraphs above. Most of it comes from Wikipedia, as you’d expect these days. Without the back story I’m not sure that I would attach so much weight to it. For most of my life the song has barely registered with me, a pleasant enough but lightweight tune. But there’s so much more to it than that.

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