I'm Old Fashioned

I'm Old Fashioned is a ballad composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Johnny Mercer in 1942 for the Columbia Pictures film You Were Never Lovelier, starring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. In the film, Nan Wynn dubbed the vocal for Hayworth during a song-and-dance sequence with Astaire, and Astaire's own recording with John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra on Decca reached number twenty-three on the charts that year. Mercer later recalled bringing his lyrics to Kern, who was so pleased with their fit that he immediately played them for his wife Eva. The melody is built primarily from tonic triad notes, giving it a deceptively simple, hummable quality, while the song's structure is an uncommon thirty-six-bar form rather than the standard thirty-two bars, with sections that unfold in a theme-and-variations pattern. The song also has a twenty-four-bar verse that is rarely performed outside the original film context. With over three hundred and forty-five documented recordings, I'm Old Fashioned is one of the most widely covered compositions in the Great American Songbook. John Coltrane's 1957 instrumental version on Blue Train was particularly influential in establishing the tune as a vehicle for jazz improvisation, and it has since been interpreted by artists ranging from Ella Fitzgerald on her Jerome Kern tribute album to pianist Joanne Brackeen. Beyond jazz, choreographer Jerome Robbins created a ballet titled I'm Old Fashioned for the New York City Ballet, set to an orchestration by Morton Gould that expanded Kern's song into a larger concert work. The tune is typically performed as a ballad or at medium swing tempo.