My Ship

Composer Kurt Weill

"My Ship" is a popular song written for the 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin.

The music is marked "Andante espressivo"; Gershwin describes it as "orchestrated by Kurt to sound sweet and simple at times, mysterious and menacing at other".^[1]

It was premiered by Gertrude Lawrence in the role of Liza Elliott, the editor of a fashion magazine. In the context of the show, the song comes in a sequence in which Elliott, in psychoanalysis, recalls a turn-of-the-century song she knew in her childhood.^[2]

The song was not included in the 1944 Hollywood film Lady in the Dark, a fact which Ira Gershwin found inexplicable:

Later, when Lady in the Dark was filmed, the script necessarily had many references to the song. But for some unfathomable reason the song itself—as essential to this musical drama as a stolen necklace or a missing will to a melodrama—was omitted. Although the film was successful financially, audiences evidently were puzzled or felt thwarted or something, because items began to appear in movie-news columns mentioning that the song frequently referred to in Lady in the Dark was 'My Ship'. I hold a brief for Hollywood, having been more or less a movie-goer since I was nine; but there are times ...

— Ira Gershwin^[1]

In 2003, Herbie Hancock won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo for a version of this song released on the album Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall.

Cover versions[]

Artists who have recorded the song include (in alphabetical order):

• Ernestine Anderson – The Toast of the Nation's Critics (1958)
• Dorothy Ashby – Soft Winds (1961)
• Cindy Blackman – Works on Canvas (1999)
• Jane Ira Bloom – Sixteen Sunsets (2013)^[3]
• Betty Buckley – An Evening at Carnegie Hall (1996)
• Dee Dee Bridgewater – This Is New (Verve, 2002), Midnight Sun (Decca, 2011)
• Ron Carter – Peg Leg (Milestone, 1978)
• June Christy – Duet (with Stan Kenton) (1955), Ballads for Night People (1959)
• Rosemary Clooney – Show Tunes (Concord, 1989)
• Jacqui Dankworth – As the Sun Shines Down on Me (2002)
• Miles Davis with Gil Evans – Miles Ahead (Columbia, 1957)
• Steve Davis – Eloquence (2010)
• Doris Day – I Have Dreamed (1961)
• Judy Garland (1953)
• Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker, Roy Hargrove – Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall (2002)
• Johnny Hartman – The Voice That Is! (1964), Hartman for Lovers (2010)
• Caroline Henderson – Lonely House (2013)
• Roland Kirk – I Talk with the Spirits (1964)
• Ute Lemper
• Carmen Lundy – Self Portrait (JVC, 1996)
• Doretta Morrow
• Hugh Masekela – Almost Like Being in Jazz (Chissa, 2005)^[4]
• Jessye Norman – Lucky to be me (Philips, 1992)
• Oscar Peterson and Nelson Riddle – Oscar Peterson and Nelson Riddle (Verve, 1963)
• Flora Purim - Perpetual Emotion (Narada, 2001)
• Sonny Rollins – The Standard Sonny Rollins (RCA Victor, 1964)
• Helen Schneider
• George Shearing – My Ship (MPS, 1975)
• Jeri Southern – When Your Heart's on Fire (1957), The Very Thought of You: the Decca Years 1951–1957 (1999)
• Cal Tjader – Soul Burst (1966)
• Dawn Upshaw – I Wish It So (Nonesuch, 1994)
• Cedar Walton – Cedar! (Prestige, 1967)
• Dionne Warwick - On Stage And In The Movies (Scepter, 1967)
• Larry Willis – This Time the Dream's on Me (HighNote, 2012)
• Cassandra Wilson and Jacky Terrasson – Rendezvous (1997)
• Nancy Wilson – Broadway – My Way (1964)

A few notes of the song are sung in a Sesame Street cartoon sequence promoting the letter R from the show's premiere 1969–70 season.^[5]

References[]

Further reading[]

• Furia, Philip (1996). Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist (First ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508299-0.
• McClung, Bruce (2007). Lady in the Dark, Biography of a Musical. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512012-4