As you can see, I'm still hooked on I'll Be Around, one of composer Alec Wilder's best songs. He reportedly wrote the music in 10 minutes while riding in a cab in Baltimore. But the words "took much longer," he said in an interview before his death in 1980.
Recorded first by Cab Calloway, then by Eugenie Baird with Tony Pastor and after that by the Mills Brothers, who made it a huge hit, I'll Be Around became a major seller again when George Shearing recorded it for MGM in 1951.
The song in the hands of the George Shearing Quintet is still sheer perfection—the pacing, the pulse-like tempo and the quintet's gorgeous voicings all showcase what's special about this song. [Photo above of George Shearing]
Here's the George Shearing Quintet in a New York studio on I'll Be Around in February 1951, with George Shearing (p), Chuck Wayne (g), Don Elliott (vib), John Levy (b) and Denzil Best (d). Dig the neat evenness and elegant bop...
Bonus. Here's the same Shearing quintet playing the song for Snader Telescription Films on TV, this time in Hollywood six months earlier in August 1950...
Other Perfection tracks in this ongoing series...
- Paul Desmond and Jim Hall: Any Other Time, go here.
- John Coltrane: You Say You Care, go here.
- Quincy Jones: Funk Junction, go here.
- Art Farmer's Work of Art, go here.
- Miles Davis: A Gal in Calico, go here.
- Gene Krupa: Mulligan Stew, go here.
- Dave Brubeck: The Duke, go here.
- Horace Silver: The Back Beat, go here.
- Horace Parlan: Up & Down, go here.
- Dexter Gordon: Society Red, go here.
- Barney Kessel: You Go to My Head, go here.
- Count Basie: Corner Pocket, go here.
- Herbie Mann: Manteca, go here.
- Donald Byrd: Bronze Dance, go here.
