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The sequences built around the song in The Girl Can't Help It sure were weird, but they helped make it a big ol' hit. Kinda sexy weird, though, for a movie that was all about the sex-mad youth demographic.
The background sure was trippy, too. Jack Webb was making a film with Ella. Webb's wife, Julie London, reached out to her old high-school friend Hamilton to get him to write a song for the film. Ella records it but it gets cut from Webb's film, and her version doesn't get released for a bunch of years. Julie herself gets encouraged to record it by fellow actor/musician Bobby Troup. It becomes her biggest hit, and when she divorces Webb, she ends up marrying Troup.
I came to know Troup and London not as musicians at all, but as supporting players in Emergency! playing Dr. Joe Early and Nurse Dixie Walker respectively. They seemed a generation apart from each other, and if you told me they were married, I'd've said you were nuts. But Troup could do anything he wanted, because he's the guy who wrote "Route 66," which has been recorded by more people even than "Cry Me a River," so he spent his whole career cashing residuals checks for a song recorded by acts he never heard of.
And to sort of connect the circle, Emergency! was created by Jack Webb, and was set in the same universe as Webb's Dragnet.
Returning to the song, I didn't like Merle Haggard's version much at all, when I first heard it, but now it's a favorite. Jazz crossing paths with country doesn't always feel natural, but once you tune your ear to it, it can really work. Heck, that's pretty much where Willie Nelson lives.
[YOUTUBE]rC6gIv5kpqk[/YOUTUBE]
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