“If You Could See Me Now” | Stories of Standards

Tune in to First Take with Lando and Chavis – weekdays from 6-9 am MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song all week long!

 

Tadd Dameron worked as an arranger for Sarah Vaughan before he and Carl Sigman wrote “If You Could See Me Now” specifically for her. In 1946 she recorded the version which went into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. While never on the charts, “If You Could See Me Now” has been a favorite with both vocalists and instrumentalists ever since it was written. Recordings have featured piano, saxophone, trombone, guitar, drums and vocalists ranging from baritone to soprano.

 

Tadd Dameron (1917-1965) as a composer and arranger significantly affected swing and bebop during his 27-year career. Beginning as a pianist in Cleveland, he moved to Kansas City in 1940, where he met Dizzy Gillespie. He had started arranging songs for the big bands in 1938, and was the first to start incorporating bebop motifs into big band music. He toured as a pianist with a number of bands and led a sextet at the Royal Roost (a jazz club in New York City that started as a chicken restaurant and became a major bebop venue). He went to the 1949 Paris Jazz Festival with Miles Davis and stayed there a few months. Drug problems led to two years’ jail time in the late 1950s, but cancer caused Dameron’s death in 1965.

 

Carl Sigman (1909-2000) passed his bar exams before his friend Johnny Mercer convinced him to focus on songwriting instead. Sigman wrote the lyrics to “Pennsylvania 6-5000” in 1940 before going into the Army, where he won a Bronze Star for his service with the 82nd Airborne Division for whom he also wrote the official division song “The All American Soldier”. His lyrics were popular in genres ranging from swing to bebop to ballads to rock to reggae; he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972, having written more than 800 songs.