Despite music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Joshua Logan (who also directed), the 1940 musical comedy Higher and Higher played for only 84 performances at the Shubert Theater on Broadway (there was a brief return engagement that summer).

Rodgers and Hart. Yes, they probably did write the song around the piano, wearing coats and ties.

June Allyson was in the original cast, as was Jack Haley, who also starred in the film released in 1943.  Maybe you don’t remember “A Barking Baby Never Bites” or “Disgustingly Rich,” but one song from the musical is well known to everyone who treasures the Great American Songbook: From Act Two, “It Never Entered My Mind.”

It’s simply a gorgeous song, and unbelievably tender. The singer—of either sex—describes living a new solitary life, the contours of which are wholly new.

“Once I laughed when I heard you saying/That I’d be playing solitaire/Uneasy in my easy chair/It never entered my mind.”

There are literally hundreds of versions of this song, evenly distributed between vocal and instrumental takes. It’s been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Johnny Hartman, Carol Sloane, Cybil Shepherd, Julie London, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, Stan Getz, Jeri Southern, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Chet Baker, Anita O’Day, Chris Connor, Rosemary Clooney, June Christy, Jackie McLean, Suzanne McCorkle, Linda Ronstadt, Hugh Masakela and Mark Murphy.

And, of course, Miles Davis. I was reminded of the version that appears on the Prestige album Workin’, released in ’59, when I heard it in the new documentary Birth of the Cool (reviewed by me for New York City Jazz Record). Miles had recorded the song earlier, in ’54, with Art Blakey for Blue Note, but this is the version that gets me every time.

Although John Coltrane appears right at the end, the take is primarily Miles’ trumpet, Red Garland’s piano and Paul Chambers’ bass. The group wouldn’t last long after this recording. Miles would defect to Columbia Records, and fire both Coltrane and drummer Philly Joe Jones over their drug addiction. But here they caught lightning in a bottle.

This is from The Music Aficionado blog:

I find the classic quintet recording more mature and delicate [than the earlier version], and a large part of the credit goes to Red Garland who shines on this tune, playing a repeated four-note pattern over Chambers’s pedal-point bass during the muted trumpet melody. Garland also gets the only solo, a masterful showcase of ballad playing in which he sticks in a 10-second quote from Country Gardens at 3:58. The ending is unique with the same pattern played in double-time, a bowed bass and Coltrane’s only contribution to the song—the last two notes.

I listened to Miles’ version of this song over and over, maybe a dozen times. I played it for wife Mary Ann, and she fell for it, too. And she still hadn’t heard the lyrics.

“And once you told me I was mistaken/That I’d wake up with the sun/And order orange juice for one/It never entered my mind/You had what I lack, myself/Now I even have to scratch my back myself.”

That night, Mary Ann and asked Alexa (our Amazon Echo) to play some vocal versions of “It Never Entered My Mind.” We sampled Carol Sloane, Linda Ronstadt, Stacey Kent, Johnny Hartman, Helen Merrill, Johnny Hartman and Peggy Lee. The last two inhabited the lyrics most completely, and had the greatest emotional resonance. (I know Ms. Lee could be difficult, but when she sang she was without peer.) the definitive Hartman version is on his album The Voice That Is! on Impulse, but here he is doing it live, on TV with Sammy Davis Jr. You have to fast-forward through Sammy’s surprisingly good jazz vibraphone playing:

We can’t read COVID-19 “Alerts” 24-7. We need escapes, places of refuge. And right now, “It Never Entered My Mind” is ours.

Once you warned me that if you scorned me/I’d say a lonely prayer again/And wish that you were there again/To get into my hair again/It never entered my mind.”

I’m just going to jump into this. How are musicians coping with COVID-19? Simultaneously, many have lost the live gigs necessary to support life, a public interested in buying CDs or downloads (because everyone is focused on not getting sic), their side jobs working in public-facing gigs, and vital teaching income, too.

I read a story about a Washington, DC-based freelance musician who lost all three of her jobs—“working security at the 9:30 Club, one of the city’s most beloved music venues; providing paraprofessional support at a charter school; and playing a weekly gig at a local club.”

But musicians are amazingly resilient, and because they can’t not make new music, they’ve come up with work-arounds. My fiddler friend Andrea Asprelli writes, “Last week I couldn’t sleep and funneled my insomnia into getting my friends to play this song with me. I started to get nervous halfway through that I’d come down with a fever and never get to finish it. But here it is!” It looks like Zoom, a tool a lot of us are using to stay connected; instead it’s video magic by Kaitlyn Raitz:

Andrea adds, “Hope you’re all quarantining well—getting into baking or gardening or taking up the banjo, calling friends and learning something you never thought you wanted to know about your quarantine-mates. But no quarantine is complete without a good wallow, so let yourself have that too.”

Many musicians are hosting live streams. I heard a great one from Eilen Jewell and her husband Jason Beek from their living room in Boise, Idaho. That show was live-streamed on Radio Boise, which like my station, WPKN (and our sister station, WFMU) is producing a lot of content from home these days. Jewell and Beek have another live stream Friday, April 3. And here’s how independent radio stations are coping right now.

Ukelele queen Victoria Vox is just one of many musicians whose tour calendars were wiped clean for March, April and maybe May. She’s responded by doing a daily original song and cover with her husband, Jack, who’s right next to her in the living room. The heartwarming shows are on their page together as Jack and the Vox, with videos here.

The Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn usually has old-time music almost every night, but now it’s shuttered, and the Brooklyn Folk Festival it produces is postponed until November 6-8. In the meantime, there’s its “Stay the Folk Home” shows on Facebook Live. Nora Brown is at 8 p.m. EST on Friday, April 3. Past shows have featured Zoe Boekbinder, Stephanie Jenkins, Ali Dineen and others.

I’ve heard Miss Tess sing live at least five times; now I can also hear her virtually, via Facebook Live.

The great chameleon Susan Werner is doing “Susie on Sundays” shows from 7-7:45 pm EST, again Facebook Live. Here’s an archived example on YouTube, with her taking requests.

Abbie Gardner of Red Molly is live streaming; check it out here. The Mammals blank tour page ends, hopefully, on May 23 with a gig accompanied by The Restless Age in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the meantime they’ve been posting and emailing new songs, including “Radio Signal.” Last week, they said, “Today we are very pleased to present ‘Radio Signal’ the second single from our upcoming album Nonet. May it provide light during these trying times.” Check it out here. They also did Dylan’s “I’ll Keep it With Mine,” accompanied by the kids, for the Passim Emergency Artist Relief Fund here.

Our Band, featuring another couple, Justin Poindexter (guitar vocals) and Sasha Papernik (vocals, accordion and piano), has been posting regular new recordings, and emailing them out to all us shut-ins. The most recent was “Gayle’s Song,” which Justin explains:

Of all the many places we have travelled, the place that we return to most often is River House, way up in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Ashe County, NC along the Virginia Border. The lady who runs it, Gayle Winston, is a dear friend and hero to Sasha and myself. She is a real renaissance woman: the first female Broadway producer, an extraordinary cook and host, friend of many surprising celebrities, a spectacular designer, and much more. She is truly the great lady of the mountains. We wrote a song last summer for her 90th birthday, and I hope you’ll check it out. Paul Defiglia joins on bass. 

It would be possible to go on in this vein for hours. Don’t forget “Farm and Funtime,” the wonderful radio show hosted—even in the absence of COVID-19—by Bill and the Belles. Here’s a sample archived show:

Jazz at Lincoln Center is going to be releasing full-length concerts from the vaults to watch every Wednesday. The material includes Ted Nash’s “Presidential Suite”; Sherman Irby’s “Inferno”; Chris Crenshaw’s “God’s Trombones” and more.

Jazz singer Lizzie Thomas is making every Friday Date Night, with “The Duo Series.” She promises “classic with a smidge of camp.”

Drummer Devin Gray is doing a live chat with fellow jazz skins man Gerald Cleaver April 3 from 2-3 p.m. EDT. Check it out here.

Finally, I have to give a shout-out to Liz McNicholl, who’s my favorite ray of sunshine. She’s worried about John Prine, who’s critical with COVID-19, so here’s her take on “Angel From Montgomery” via the Localpalooza: