Dancing On The Ceiling

Album: Ever Green (1930)
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Songfacts®:

  • Not to be confused with the Lionel Richie song of the same title that was written half a century and more later, this jazz standard has lyrics by Lorenz Hart and music by Richard Rodgers. Written in 1930, it went into their show Ever Green which opened in December the same year, and was adapted as a 1934 film. When the musical came to London, the song - which is also known as "He Dances Overhead" - was performed on a revolving stage, the first of its kind in the Capital. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England
  • English actress Jessie Matthews, who sang the tune in both the stage production and film, also released it as a single in 1934.
  • Frank Sinatra recorded this for his 1955 album, In The Wee Small Hours. It was also covered by Ella Fitzgerald, Jo Stafford, Chet Baker, Johnny Mathis, Peggy Lee, and Jack Jones, among others.
  • In a 1980 episode of The Muppet Show, Beauregard, The Muppet Theatre's janitor, sings this in bed as a ghostly figure dances on his ceiling. The specter angers an upstairs neighbor when a particularly jaunty step busts a hole in the ceiling.
  • This was used in the 1989 Woody Allen film Crimes and Misdemeanors. It was also used in the TV shows Hawaiian Eye ("Waikiki Widow" - 1959) and Peter Gunn ("Death Watch" - 1960).
  • In 1977, a contestant on Name That Tune won the grand prize of $100,000 by correctly identifying this song.

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