"You're Driving Me Crazy"
Song
Original 1930 Sheet Music for You’re Driving Me Crazy

"You’re Driving Me Crazy" is an American popular song composed (music and lyrics) by Walter Donaldson in 1930 and recorded the same year by Lee Morse, Rudy Vallée & His Connecticut Yankees and Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians (with vocal by Carmen Lombardo).

Successful recordings

The song became a hit and was added to the 1930 musical comedy Smiles, starring Marilyn Miller and Fred and Adele Astaire. It was recorded in 1930 by McKinney's Cotton Pickers and by Nick Lucas & His Crooning Troubadors. Nick Lucas's version, released on Brunswick, was a No. 7 hit: Brunswick 4987 (E-35404). Other popular artists issuing recording of this hit that same year included Rudy Vallée, Gene Austin and Guy Lombardo. The chords of "You're Driving Me Crazy" form the basis for Bennie Moten's great "Moten Swing."

In 1931, cartoon character Betty Boop sang a sexy version of the song in the pre-code cartoon Silly Scandals. As Boop sang the song, her dress slipped down repeatedly, revealing a lacy bra and causing her to squeal. Later in the song, Betty was joined on stage by a line of mechanical dancing penguins who stomped out the beat in accompaniment to her singing.

"You're Driving Me Crazy" has become a standard that has been recorded by over 100 artists. The artists who have recorded the song include Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker, Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Della Reese, Django Reinhardt, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Mel Tormé, Sarah Vaughan, and Lester Young. A version by The Temperance Seven made number one in the UK Singles chart in 1961.[1]

The song has also been performed in the movies including:

The Temperance Seven cover version

A cover version by The Temperance Seven, described as an art school band "who were retro before most of pop was even original," was produced by George Martin. It was recorded in 1961, reaching number 1 on the UK Singles Chart that May.[2] Their version is a pastiche on the original, and on 1920s dance band music in general, with Paul McDowell's insincere "whispering" helping to highlight this. Music critic Tom Ewing, writing for Freaky Trigger, concurrently described it as "one of the strangest number ones," "one of the most prescient [number ones]" and "the first meta-pop hit", citing the song's "deliberate, tongue-in-cheek commentary on pop via pop, the world of the dance orchestras pushed flippantly into the TV age," feeling this anticipated Roxy Music and Richard X, but also feeling as many people would have bought the single based on nostalgia as those who bought it due to its cleverness.[2]

Notable recorded versions

References

  1. ↑ Rice, Jo (1982). The Guinness Book of 500 Number One Hits (1st ed.). Enfield, Middlesex: Guinness Superlatives Ltd. p. 57. ISBN 0-85112-250-7.
  2. 1 2 Ewing, Tom (21 July 2004). "THE TEMPERANCE SEVEN – "You're Driving Me Crazy"". Freaky Trigger. Retrieved 4 July 2017.
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