Manhattan - Ella Fitzgerald (Mad Men, Season One)

"Manhattan" is a popular song and part of the Great American Songbook. It has been performed by Lee Wiley, Oscar Peterson, Blossom Dearie, Tony Martin, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme, among many others. It is often known as "I'll Take Manhattan" based on the opening line. 

The music was written by Richard Rodgers and the words by Lorenz Hart for the 1925 revue "Garrick Gaieties". It was introduced by Sterling Holloway (later the voice of the animated Winnie the Pooh) and June Cochran. The song appears to describe, in several choruses, the simple delights of Manhattan for a young couple. The joke is that these 'delights' are really some of the worst, or at best cheap, delights that New York has to offer, as anyone who has visited Mott Street will understand. A particular Hart delight is the rhyming 'spoil' with 'boy and goyl'.

Since its debut, it has regularly appeared in popular culture. It was first heard on the silver screen in the 1929 short Makers Of Melody, a tribute to Rodgers and Hart sung by Ruth Tester and Allan Gould. Since then, it has been used in the Rodgers and Hart biopic Words And Music (1948), Two Tickets To Broadway (1951), Don't Bother To Knock (1952) (sung by Anne Bancroft), Beau James (1957), Silent Movie (1976), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), The English Patient (1996), Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) and many other movies and TV shows, most recently in the 2007 AMC production Mad Men episode "New Amsterdam". In the film All About Eve (1950), the song is played on the piano at the party when Margo and Max are in the kitchen. 

In the early and mid-1950s, singer Julius La Rosa became a national celebrity for his exposure on several of the shows hosted by one of the most popular television stars of the era, Arthur Godfrey. On October 19, 1953, La Rosa sang "Manhattan" on one of Godfrey's radio shows. Immediately after he finished, Godfrey fired him on the air, saying, "that was Julie's swan song with us".

	D	F#m7	Bm7	A7	D	A7	G/B	A7	F#m7	Bm7-5
	Summer	journeys	to Ni	ag'ra a	nd to	other p	laces	aggra	vate all our	cares;

	Em7	A7-9
We'll s	ave our fa	res.

	D	F#m7	Bm7	A7	D	A7	G/B	A7
	I've a	cozy    l	ittle fl	at in w	hat is k	nown as	old Manh	attan;

	C9	B9	Bb9	Em7	A7-9
	We'll settle d	own	right h	ere in	town.

Melody:

	D	Fdim	Em7	A7/6	D9
	We'll have Ma	nhattan,	the Bronx and	Staten I	sland, too;

	Fdim	Em7	A7	A7+5	D	Fdim	Em7	A7
It's l	ovely	going t	hrough	the zo	o.

	D	Fdim	Em7	A7/6	Bm7
	It's very	fancy	on old De	lancy St	reet, you know;

	G7	F#7	F7	E7	F7	E7	A7	G/B	A7
	The	subw	ay ch	arms us	so	when balmy b	reezes blow	to and	fro.

	D	Am7	B7	Em7	A7/6	DM7
	And	tell me	what street	compares with	Mott Sreet	in July?

	F3m7	Fdim	Em7	G/B	A7+5	F#m7
	Sweet p	ushcarts	gently	gli -	ding	by.

	B7	Fdim	B7	Em7	G/B	Gdim	Edim	F#m	Bm7	E9
	The	great	big	city's a	wond'rous	toy	just	made for a	girl and	boy.

	D	Fdim	Em7	A7/6	A7-9	D6	Fdim	Em7	A7
	We'll turn Ma	nhattan	into an	isle	of    j	oy.

We'll go to Yonkers, where true love conquers in the wilds,

And starve together, Dear, in Childs'.

We'll go to Coney and eat baloney on a roll;

In Central Park we'll stroll

Where our first kiss we stole, soul to soul.

And "My Fair Lady" is a terrific show, they say;

We both may see it close someday.

The city's clamour can never spoil the dreams of a boy and goyl;

	D	Fdim	Em7	A7/6	A7-9	D6	Fdim	Em7	A7-9	D6
	We'll turn Ma	nhattan	into an	isle	of    j	oy.