I Can’t Give You Anything But Love – Fiddle Tune a Day – Day 250

I really love these old swing tunes. I Can’t Give you Anything but Love is just a cool tune. The melody is playful and interesting, the chords are classic for a swing tune, and the lyrics are lighthearted and optimistic – even though they are talking about being broke.

It’s great having David Wiatrolik around Fort Collins. It’s only been a couple of months since we met, but we’ve already gotten to gig together a few times, and I really like having a Swing Guitar player in the neighborhood.

I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby From Wikipedia

This article is about the song. For the film, see I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby (film).

“I Can’t Give You Anything but Love”

Music by Jimmy McHugh

Lyrics by Dorothy Fields

Published 1928

Language English

Original artist Adelaide Hall

Recorded by Many artists

“I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” is an American popular song and jazz standard by Jimmy McHugh (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics).

The song was introduced by Adelaide Hall at Les Ambassadeurs Club in New York in January 1928 in Lew Leslie’s Blackbird Revue, which opened on Broadway later that year as the highly successful Blackbirds of 1928 (518 performances), wherein it was performed by Adelaide Hall, Aida Ward, and Willard McLean.

Background

Some controversy surrounds the song’s authorship. Andy Razaf biographer Harry Singer offers circumstantial evidence that suggests Fats Waller might have sold the melody to McHugh in 1926 and that the lyrics were by Andy Razaf.[1]

Alternatively, Philip Furia has pointed out that Fields’ verse is almost identical to the end of the second verse of Lorenz Hart’s and Richard Rodgers’ song “Where’s That Rainbow?” from Peggy-Ann, the 1926 musical comedy with book by Fields’ brother Herbert and produced by their father Lew:[2]

My luck will vary surely,

That’s purely a curse.

My luck has changed–it’s gotten

From rotten to worse.

“I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” was the hit of Blackbirds of 1928, was McHugh and Fields’s first hit, and has been covered extensively by subsequent popular artists and jazz musicians.

I Can’t Give You Anything But Love Lyrics

Gee, but it’s tough to be broke, kid.
It’s not a joke, kid, it’s a curse.
My luck is changing, it’s gotten from 
simply rotten to something worse
Who knows, some day I will win too. 
I’ll begin to reach my prime.

Now though I see what our end is,
All I can spend is just my time.

I can’t give you anything but love, baby.
That’s the only thing I’ve plenty of,baby.

Dream awhile, scheme awhile
We’re sure to find

Happiness and I guess
All those things you’ve always pined for.

Gee I’d like to see you looking swell, baby.
Diamond bracelets Woolworth doesn’t sell, baby.

Till that lucky day you know darned well, baby.
I can’t give you anything but love.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, kid.
You have to pay, kid, for what you get.
But I am willing to wait, dear, 
Your little mate, dear, will not forget.

You have a lifetime before you.
I’ll adore you, come what may.

Please don’t be blue for the present, 
When it’s so pleasant to hear you say

I can’t give you anything but love, baby.
That’s the only thing I’ve plenty of,baby.

Dream awhile, scheme awhile
We’re sure to find

Happiness and I guess
All those things you’ve always pined for.

Gee I’d like to see you looking swell, baby.
Diamond bracelets Woolworth doesn’t sell, baby.

Till that lucky day you know darned well, baby.
I can’t give you anything but love.