“I Can’t Get Over a Boy Like You.” Words by Harry Ruskin, music by Martin Broones. Composed for LeMaire’s Affairs (1926). Recorded by Elsie Carlisle with the Gilt-Edged Four on February 7, 1927. Columbia 4275 mx. WA-4805-1.
Personnel: Al Starita-as / Ray Starita-t s/ Sid Bright-p-cel / Rudy Starita-d
Video by David Weavings (YouTube)
This recording of Elsie Carlisle singing “I Can’t Get Over a Boy Like You” to the accompaniment of the Gilt-Edged Four is remarkable for two purely physical or material reasons. First, it is one of only four recordings that Elsie made that are meant to be played at 80 revolutions per minute, and of those only it and “Meadow Lark” were issued to the public. Columbia records were a holdout against the general tendency to standardize gramophone speeds at 78 rpm, and the company stuck to its proprietary speed of 80 rpm until late 1927. Second, these records were made using the special Columbia “New Process” of laminating cores of low-quality shellac with higher-quality compounds that reduce surface noise, and the resulting sound is impressively clear.
The Gilt-Edged Four was a Columbia studio band led by saxophonist Al Starita. This particular song features his playing and that of his brothers Ray and Rudy, with whose bands Elsie would go on to make noteworthy recordings in 1932-1933. The piano and celeste are played by Sid Bright, twin brother of bandleader Gerald Bright, better known as “Geraldo.”
The song “I Can’t Get Over a Girl Like You (Loving a Boy Like Me)” — for that is how the lyrics usually go, insofar as they are usually sung by men — originated in a revue named “LeMaire’s Affairs” (after producer Rufus LeMaire), which was quite popular when it was based in Chicago and starred Ted Lewis and Sophie Tucker. It apparently bombed after moving to Broadway when Sophie Tucker was replaced with Charlotte Greenwood. The song compares the ease with which one can “get over” all manner of ailments (e.g.”[m]easles, mumps, and whooping cough, / The flu, and housemaid’s knee…”) to the difficulty of “getting over” being the object of someone’s affections. Elsie injects upbeat, girlish fun into this catchy foxtrot and delivers its simple argument rather fetchingly.
“I Can’t Get Over a Girl Like You” was recorded in America in 1926 by Johnny Hamp’s Kentucky Serenaders (with vocals by Billy Murray), Abe Lyman and His Hotel Ambassador Orchestra, Ted Lewis and His Band, Aileen Stanley and Billy Murray, Adrian Schubert and His Salon Orchestra (with vocalist Arthur Hall), and the Arkansas Travelers (with Lem Cleg).
The song was recorded in Britain in late 1926 and early 1927 by Bert and John Firman’s Devonshire Restaurant Dance Band, Billy Mayerl and His “Vocalion” Orchestra (with vocals by Billy Mayerl), the Savoy Havana Band (with vocalists Rudy Bayfield Evans, Abe Bronson, and Reg Batten), the Edison Bell Dance Orchestra (with vocalist Tom Barratt), and Jack Payne and His Hotel Cecil Orchestra.
