{"id":6366,"date":"2026-10-10T10:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T14:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=6366"},"modified":"2026-10-10T10:06:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T14:06:40","slug":"when-youre-smiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/when-youre-smiling\/","title":{"rendered":"When You&#8217;re Smiling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"When You&amp;apos;re Smiling\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Qh_k9a2BUjY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>For info on my November 2026 tour schedule, hitting Brooklyn, Bethlehem PA, Philly, State College, Pittsburgh, Marietta OH, and Cleveland, go to <a href=\"https:\/\/elijahwald.com\/concertdates.html\">https:\/\/elijahwald.com\/concertdates.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A pop standard from 1928, which I must have heard by all sorts of people, but really know from a 1930 recording by Georgia White with Jimmie Noone&#8217;s Apex Club Orchestra. As befits her name, <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-6367\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Georgia-White.jpeg?resize=191%2C254&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"191\" height=\"254\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Georgia-White.jpeg?w=331&amp;ssl=1 331w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Georgia-White.jpeg?resize=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 191px) 100vw, 191px\" \/>White was born in Georgia, but moved to Chicago and worked around town as a singer, sometimes accompanying herself on piano, sometimes working with bands. This song was her first recording, in 1930, and clearly influenced by Louis Armstrong&#8217;s version, recorded the previous year. She sang a bit of Armstrong-flavored scat, though otherwise it&#8217;s very much her own style &#8212; at that point she had a precise, almost mid-Atlantic theatrical diction, nothing like his soulful growl. I&#8217;d normally favor Armstrong&#8217;s version, but as it happens he performs it as a slow ballad, had just acquired his own orchestra and was emulating Guy Lombardo&#8217;s &#8220;sweet&#8221; style, complete with a sappy violin solo, and the only good thing about that record is his vocal. Noone&#8217;s band takes it a good deal faster, White swings the vocal, and it&#8217;s a really nice record.<\/p>\n<p>Which said, I would probably never have heard it if White hadn&#8217;t gone on to a quite different career, playing piano and singing blues, often with double-entendre lyrics, e.g. Andy Razaf&#8217;s &#8220;If I Can&#8217;t Sell It, I&#8217;ll Keep Sitting On It (Before I&#8217;ll Give It Away),&#8221; a cute little number that is ostensibly about selling a favorite chair. Also the ever-popular &#8220;Hot Nuts (Get &#8216;Em From the Peanut Man.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She wasn&#8217;t a deep blues singer like Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith, but she also turned in some solid, serious blues performances &#8212; Big Bill Broonzy particularly noted her version of &#8220;Trouble in Mind&#8221; (with a young Les Paul on guitar), saying it gave the old song a new vogue.\u00a0 She made dozens of records in the later 1930s and on into the 1940s, and Broonzy recalled working with her on the cusp of the 1950s:<\/p>\n<p><em>She was my pianist for a while. <\/em>I<em> had a band called the Laughing Trio. She would always tell us some kind of funny joke before we started to play&#8230;. That&#8217;s how we got the name of &#8216;laughing trio.&#8217; And we did good together.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Before Georgia White started playing with me, she and a girl trumpet player had an all-girl band, a twelve-piece band&#8230;. In 1950, after having played with me, she got a real good job in a small town just out of Chicago, and she&#8217;s still there now.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Rosetta Reitz, who released a nice LP of White&#8217;s work (and was one of my favorite people to visit when I swung through New York), wrote that White was still performing around Chicago in 1959, but had no news of her after that and didn&#8217;t manage to find and interview her, though she apparently lived until 1980. She clearly was a versatile musician who played a wide range of styles in a wide range of formats. But apparently that&#8217;s all we know about her, aside from what&#8217;s on the records.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-6368 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/When-Youre-Smiling.png?resize=193%2C230&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"193\" height=\"230\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/When-Youre-Smiling.png?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/When-Youre-Smiling.png?resize=251%2C300&amp;ssl=1 251w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 193px) 100vw, 193px\" \/>As for &#8220;When You&#8217;re Smiling,&#8221; it&#8217;s a nice little song that&#8217;s been sung by hundreds (thousands? millions?) of people over the years. It&#8217;s cheerful, it&#8217;s tuneful, it&#8217;s fun to play and sing, and what more can one ask?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For info on my November 2026 tour schedule, hitting Brooklyn, Bethlehem PA, Philly, State College, Pittsburgh, Marietta OH, and Cleveland, go to https:\/\/elijahwald.com\/concertdates.html A pop standard from 1928, which I must have heard by all sorts of people, but really know from a 1930 recording by Georgia White with Jimmie Noone&#8217;s Apex Club Orchestra. As &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/when-youre-smiling\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">When You&#8217;re Smiling<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>When You&#039;re Smiling - 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I got it from Woody Guthrie, but everyone had a version of it.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Samantha Bumgarner","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Samantha-Bumgarner-189x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1478,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/georgia-on-my-mind\/","url_meta":{"origin":6366,"position":1},"title":"Georgia on My Mind (Hoagy Carmichael)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The musical education I got from Dave Van Ronk was by no means limited to guitar lessons, or to his own work. By the third or fourth week, he shifted my lesson to the end of the day, and when it finished he would cook dinner, then we\u2019d break out\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"hoagy2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/hoagy2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1135,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/georgia-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":6366,"position":2},"title":"Georgia Rag (with advice from Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My largely accidental reworking of a great Blind Willie McTell piece, illustrating a long disquisition on my first lesson with Dave Van Ronk, and so forth.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/six-black-blues-mann.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":803,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sitting-top-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":6366,"position":3},"title":"Sitting on Top of the World (Doc Watson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Another I got from Doc Watson, long before I heard the Mississippi Sheiks' original recording. I love the Sheiks, but still do a variant of Doc's version.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Sheiks - Sitting on top of the World","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Sheiks-Sitting-on-top-of-the-World.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2245,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/down-and-out\/","url_meta":{"origin":6366,"position":4},"title":"Nobody Knows You When You&#8217;re Down and Out","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"January 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Most blues fans associate this song with Bessie Smith's version from 1929 and think it was written about the Depression, but it was originally popularized in the early 1920s by its composer, Jimmie Cox. Like most of the first round of commercial blues performers, Cox tends to be left out\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"jimmie-cox-and-magnolia-cox-from-lynn-abbott","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Jimmie-Cox-and-Magnolia-Cox-from-Lynn-Abbott.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6166,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/house-of-the-rising-sun\/","url_meta":{"origin":6366,"position":5},"title":"House of the Rising Sun","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 11, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"I've known \"House of the Rising Sun\" forever, in many different versions. I don't know which I heard first; maybe the Animals version, which was a number one hit in 1964, when I was five years old, but if so it would only have been as background music, or coming\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Woody-Guthrie-e1783782787690.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6366"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6380,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6366\/revisions\/6380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}