Song Discovery: "Why Try to Change Me Now?"

The other day I was browsing through one of my fake books (a book of lead sheets, usually jazz songs) to find new songs to incorporate into my repertoire.

At the very end of the book, I found a song with lyrics that immediately intrigued me.  Titled "Why Try to Change Me Now," I thought, "Wow, I hope this song has equally profound chords."  There's nothing more disappointing than reading amazing lyrics and then hearing lackluster chords or melodies that doom the song to musical oblivion and vice versa.

I sat at the piano and with my limited piano skills, playing basic jazz chords with the melody.  Success!  The chords and melody were as awesome as the lyrics.

I'd never heard the song before, so I went on iTunes to see if it was as obscure as I thought it was.  Nope!  The song has been covered by Frank Sinatra and Nancy Wilson.  Sweet!

So here's to discovery of a song written over sixty years ago--that amazingly is as relevant today as it was then.  But isn't that the hallmark of truly great music?

Caveat: I don't endorse smoking, so I'm going to tweak the lyrics a bit for the cigarette lyric line.

Here's "Why Try to Change Me Now" sung by Frank Sinatra.