On my last tour out east, my keyboardist Jonny Tobin, and I started digging into a tune called Tonight You Belong to Me. I feel like we are beginning to find our power with our own version of it. Tonight You Belong to Me was written in 1926 by lyricist Billy Rose and composer Lee David. I was familiar with the 1956 recording by Patience and Prudence, but even before this version, it had been recorded by a number of others, including Irving Kaufman, Gene Austin, Roger Wolfe Kahn and Frankie Laine.
Tom Waits said that his vision of having “made it” as a songwriter is one where he could walk down the street as an old man and hear his tunes being sung by children in the schoolyard, “playing jumprope, or on the swings.” To me, this song fits that bill. It is “in the culture” as Waits put it.
The simplicity of the lyrics could have you interpret its sweetness and melancholy for a number of different circumstances. If we consider it to be a love song, I see that love being held for anyone from lover to family to friend. For me, at its core, it is a song about the fleeting nature of the time we have with one another. Tomorrow, everything could change, so let’s be present and grateful for this night together, when “you belong to me,” or, we belong to each other.
*Recorded live at Pete’s Candy Store in NYC on October 18, 2022 by Irving Gadoury.
*Rough mix by Irving Gadoury.
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