Never Been In Love (vocal) – Tadd Dameron & Irving Reid

This recording of Never Been In Love is mostly taken at a medium up swing tempo. In the arrangement by Per Husby, Karin Krog sings the verse rubato in the key of F, accompanied only by the piano. The key switches to B♭ when the band enters, remaining so for the head.

Lyric Description: Irving Reid's sophisticated lyric looks at love from two perspectives, before it happens, and after.

If another key would be better for you, send the key you'd like to Don and we'll post the transposition on the website for purchase. If you're not sure which key is best, send us your range and we'll work with you to figure out the best key.

We also have a Minus You audio version, an instrumental MP3 track with piano, bass & drums, that is perfect for a backing track to help you define your own performance. It features the excellent accompaniment skills of pianist Cecilia Coleman. Cecilia's sensitive phrasing will set you up for any way you care to approach the lyric.The piano gives you the first melody note before the short intro: CLIP.

Note from Don Sickler: This is a perfect song to explore "open phrasing," a term that vocalist/pianist/educator Gloria Cooper and I explained in our book "Jazz Phrasing - A Workshop For The Jazz Vocalist". Never Been In Love was our ballad example. Here's a brief composite excerpt drawn from the book showing Gloria's different "open phrasing" approaches to the song's first phrase, the emotionally-loaded title phrase [>].

Don's own instrumental "open phrasing" experiments can be heard here.

Don Sickler: Karin Krog had already recorded this song by the time I met vocalist Rachel Gould. I told Rachel I was looking for a real ballad version of Never Been In Love, and Rachel's recording shows how well it works as a vocal at a ballad tempo. It's not a complicated melody, so you have to really sell both the melody and the lyric as it flows over Tadd's wonderful chords. I love Rachel's interpretation. Her version features a half chorus of piano solo before she returns to the bridge.

A Minus You track is available for this ballad recording, so vocalists can work on this song in the lower key of A♭. The vocal lead sheet shows the melody an octave above the range where Rachel Gould sings it, to avoid too many ledger lines.