“It Never Entered My Mind” is a 1940 show tune from a production called Higher and Higher – a Rodgers and Hart musical. It ran on Broadway for 108 performances, which rates it as a moderately successful show. In the production, Shirley Ross introduces the song and later recorded a version with the Larry Carleton Orchestra.
For those who keep track of such things, a movie was later made of the stage play staring Michele Morgan, Frank Sinatra and Mel Torme, but it featured a new score by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson. Why someone would take a Rodgers and Hart score and toss it aside is a story probably known to someone, but not me.
The folks at JazzStandards.com (who rate this tune as number 181 of jazz standards of all time) note that generations of instrumentalists have covered the song (e.g., Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson), but it is the “memorable and poignant lyrics'” and the vocalists who have sung them that “keep the tune at the top of the jazz standards list,” with recordings by Sarah Vaugan, Julie London, Holly Cole, Ann Hampton Callaway, Jay Clayton, Dennis Rowland, Susannah McCorkle, Jane Monheit, and Tierney Sutton among others.
Lorenz Hart’s lyric is a heartfelt expression of loneliness. The woman who sings the verse is suffering the consequences of not having heeded the advice of her former lover. She confesses now to loneliness and a loss of interest in her appearance. This is a woman who once was desired and loved but who was a coquette who took love for granted. She tells in the refrain how she dismissed her lover’s predictions as to where her conduct would lead.
JazzStandards.com
It is hard to imagine a better voice singing this beautiful jazz classic than the one belonging to Sarah Vaughan. Bonus track is the Ross original, which is sweet in its own way but more playful and quicker-paced, and lacking the emotional depth of the later vocal treatments.