While Maceo Pinkard, Doris Tauber and William G. Tracey are given equal credit for “Them There Eyes,” published in 1930, it is likely that composers Pinkard and Tauber wrote the music and Tracey supplied the lyric. This was the biggest hit for Tracey and for Tauber, who also wrote “Drinkin’ Again” with lyricist Johnny Mercer. Pinkard, a bandleader and publisher, had several hits to his credit including “Sugar” and “Sweet Georgia Brown.”
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“Them There Eyes” was introduced by the Gus Arnheim Orchestra and appeared in the 1931 film Let’s Do Things, a comedy starring Zazu Pitts and Thelma Todd. The two young women sang the song in a music store with a group of male customers, one of whom was singer/actor Donald Novis. Bing Crosby recorded it with the Rhythm Boys in 1931 and it charted for five weeks, rising to number seven. Duke Ellington also recorded it in 1931.
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“This is another Pinkard song that seems to be more ordinary than it is,” say authors David A. Jasen and Gene Jones in Spreadin’ Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930. “The published version is in the key of C, yet the song keeps flirting with B-minor chords, and it springs an octave drop in the melody of a two-bar break. Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra made a definitive early recording in April 1931, and Billie Holiday made it hers on a Vocalion recording of 1939.” Diana Ross as Holiday sang “Them There Eyes” in the 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues.
In American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950, Alec Wilder, calls “Them There Eyes” a “jazz musician’s favorite.... There are treacherous moments in the melody when you’re sure it’s going to slide into cliche. But it always just evades it....It’s the octave drop in the fifteenth measure and the c sharp in the sixteenth that save it.”
The song is a favorite of vocalists for its clever lyric which begins with expressed admiration:
I fell in love with you
First time I looked into
Them there eyes.
However, the mood changes as the lyric ends with a caution:
Your overworkin’ ‘em
There’s danger lurkin’ in
Them there eyes.
“Them There Eyes” enjoyed a run of popularity in the decade of the early ‘50s and ‘60s when it was recorded by vocalists Anita O’Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, the Four Freshmen, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, and Carmen McRae as well as saxophonist Zoot Sims and the Benny Goodman band. Pianist Jimmy Rowles with saxophonist Al Cohn recorded a memorable duo version in 1977. The song experienced another surge in the ‘90s with recordings by vocalists Carol Sloane, Diane Schuur, and Joe Williams and pianists Oscar Peterson and Dick Hyman. It was recorded in 2007 and 2008 by vocalists Judy Niemack and Nnenna Freelon.
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