Get Me to the Church on Time

"Get Me to the Church on Time" is a song composed by Frederick Loewe, with lyrics written by Alan Jay Lerner for the 1956 musical My Fair Lady, where it was introduced by Stanley Holloway.

It is sung by the cockney character Alfred P. Doolittle, the father of the show's main character Eliza Doolittle. He has received a surprise bequest of four thousand pounds a year from an American millionaire, raising him to middle class respectability.^[1] Consequently, he feels he must marry Eliza's "stepmother", the woman with whom he has been living for many years. Doolittle and his friends have one last spree before the wedding and the song is a plea to his friends not to let his drunken merriment forget his good intentions and make sure he gets to his wedding.^[2]

Covers and parodies

• On the children's show Sesame Street, Oscar the Grouch and his girlfriend Grundgetta get engaged by accident, but they agree to get married anyway to have a huge trashy party. Amid the chaos of all the wedding preparations, Oscar sings "I'm Getting Married in the Trash Can", a spoof of "Get Me to the Church on Time"^[3]

Notable recordings

• André Previn and Shelly Manne - My Fair Lady (1956)
• Bing Crosby recorded the song in 1956^[4] for use on his radio show and it was subsequently included in the box set The Bing Crosby CBS Radio Recordings (1954-56) issued by Mosaic Records (catalog MD7-245) in 2009.^[5]
• Johnny Mathis - Swing Softly (1958)
• Kay Starr - Movin' on Broadway (1960)^[6]
• Rosemary Clooney - Rosie Solves the Swingin' Riddle! (1961)
• Nat King Cole - Nat King Cole Sings My Fair Lady (1963)
• Stanley Holloway - My Fair Lady (1964)
• Andy Williams - The Great Songs from "My Fair Lady" and Other Broadway Hits (1964)
• Frank Sinatra - Sinatra at the Sands (1966)
• Mel Tormé - Mel Tormé and the Marty Paich Dektette - Reunion (1988)
• June Christy - Through the Years (1995)
• The Brian Setzer Orchestra - Jumpin' East of Java (2001)

References