If I Could Be with You (One Hour Tonight)

"If I Could Be with You (One Hour Tonight)" is a popular song. The music was written by James P. Johnson, the lyrics by Henry Creamer. The song was published in 1926 and first recorded by Clarence Williams' Blue Five with vocalist Eva Taylor in 1927.^[1] It was popularized by the 1930 recording by McKinney's Cotton Pickers, who used it as their theme song^[2] and by Louis Armstrong's record for Okeh Records (catalogue No.41448), both of which featured in the charts of 1930.^[3]

The song has become a standard, with recordings by many other artists, including Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Bing Crosby (included on his New Tricks album), Carmen McRae, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry James, Kay Starr, Perry Como, and Frank Sinatra.

Film appearances

• 1933 Ladies They Talk About - played on a guitar by a prisoner and sung by Lillian Roth to a picture of Joe E. Brown.^[4]
• 1942 - Casablanca - played when the man gets his pocket picked and the Germans enter Rick's.^[5]
• 1947 - The Man I Love - performed by Tony Romano in a scene at the Bamboo Club ^[6]
• 1949 - Years after leaving her song-and-dance persona behind at MGM, actress Joan Crawford softly sings a few bars of the song to herself as a down-on-her-luck carnival dancer early in the Warner Bros. classic melodrama Flamingo Road (1949). The film's composer, Max Steiner, expands fragments of the song throughout that film.
• 1955 - In Mister Roberts, the lecherous Ensign Pulver, played by Jack Lemmon, sings, hums or whistles bits of the song whenever the subject of women comes up..
• 1957 - The Joker Is Wild - sung by Frank Sinatra.^[7]

References

See also

• List of 1920s jazz standards

QRS Player Piano Roll # Q-152

JAM Player Piano Roll # 69