It’s always interesting to hear a rather different version of a song that you feel like you know inside out… well, make that many different versions! Let me take you on a musical tour of many decades, with this hit song as our vehicle, “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home,” one of the songs in our choirs’ spring 2024 repertoire. Penned by the prolific team of Roy Turk and Fred Ahlert, “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home” first rose to the charts in 1931, when the version by Nick Lucas made it to No.Mat 8. Those of you who are in the 2024 Spring session with the Sounds Good or Good Memories choir will likely be most familiar with the 1952 Nat King Cole version, on which our version for choir is based. Cole’s smash hit is a medium-tempo swing piece… and I didn’t really know you could do this song any other way.

Back in 1931, Nick Lucas was doing it with much less swing, for the most part using what we might call “straight 8th notes.” In fact, the record label of the original calls it a “Fox Trot with Vocal Refrain.” It sounds a little squarer than the version I’m used to. Here’s that label: you’ll see the subtitle translated into Spanish—”Llevando mi novia a casa”—but I can’t find a version recorded in Spanish.

The great musician Louis Armstrong also did a 1931 recording of this tune, opening with a long trumpet solo before starting into the lyrics. More surprising to me, however, is the variation in the lyrics. Both of the 1931 versions that I heard, by Nick Lucas and Maurice Chevalier, begin with a totally different short intro section before launching into “Gee, it’s great after bein’ out late…”. Chevalier has some new verses of his own—in a heavy French accent that seems to have been his calling card, he concludes “Oh! She’s sweet, but it’s bad on my feet… walkin’ my baby back home.” In addition, the version that Nick Lucas recorded doesn’t have anything about the narrator “drying her tears all through the night” (a very clever lyric indeed, or ending the song going “hand in hand to a barbecue stand.” He even has an updated 1951 “music video” version with a lovely lady companion, and those now-famous words still don’t appear.

Around the end of World War II, Harry Richman recorded what to feels me like a pretty nerdy, though earnest, rendition with swing band (1947). The horn section in the bridge does feel more like the Nat King Cole version than Nick Lucas’s version does. Richman also stretches the old lyrics a bit, as he refers to his lady as his “neighbor,” “princess,” and “heiress.” He riffs on one of Maurice Chevalier’s verses: “It might be sweet, but it’s hard on my feet / Walking my baby back home.” Richman’s lyrics are the first that I can find which introduce a verse about a late-night snack: “Hand in hand to a hamburger stand…”. Still, you can’t beat the Nat King Cole version’s reference to barbecue—which feels so right that I would have sworn it was original, even though it’s not.  

A slew of recordings of this song came out in the early 1950s. Dean Martin’s 1951 version has a syncopated swing and a terrific horn section. His middle section, “We stop for a while…”, has a slower tempo nicely evocative of the mood before it pops back up to the original tempo to close. Johnnie Ray covered it the following year with the Bobby Cole Quartet, and he does the same thing with a slow middle section. According to The78Prof, a music scholar and YouTuber who publishes online, Nat King Cole recorded this song in September 1951 with the Billy May Orchestra, but it wasn’t until Johnnie Ray’s version started climbing the charts that Capitol decided to bring the Cole/May version out, eventually doing so in 1952.

Among the great covers of our tune is a 1962 Swedish version by Monika Zetterlund, whose work with the great pianist Bill Evans truly defined her career. The 1997 version by James Taylor is a superb version by one of my musical heroes—it brings us a slower groove than many, with a nice whistling section in the middle.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, the version of “Walkin’ My Baby” for choir and piano that Paul Langford and his team put together for us to sing (here’s Paul’s terrific practice track), takes a sharp turn partway through and drops in a completely different song: “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You.” Take a listen to the 1942 Helen Forrest version of “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You,” that includes a long trumpet introduction by bandleader, Harry James. Our choral arranger, Mac Huff, makes the two songs sound more similar than they usually are separately, as he keeps them in the same tempo and overall feel; I’m guessing that he is building on the idea of walking as the unifying element.

It’s the sign of a great song when it can stand up to so many different treatments! If you have a favorite version among the ones I’ve mentioned above—or a different one altogether—please leave a comment and let me know. Come to one of our spring concerts to hear our version in person. Happy listening… and if you’re in our choirs, happy singing!