If You Hadn’t (but You Did) {FOUR VIDEOS}

“If You Hadn’t (but You Did)” is a patter song composed by Jule Styne with a lyric by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from the 1951 Broadway revue Two on the Aisle and was introduced by Dolores Gray. One of the things I like best about the lyric is how easily the words are understood despite their extreme foreshortening to force a rhyme with if: terrif’, diff’, Pacif’, prolif’, beautif’, signif’, specif’ and certif’. Below is Dolores Gray’s performance from the original cast album.

Here is a live performance by Carol Channing and Perry Como, presumably from a 1956 episode of The Perry Como Show, with an entirely rewritten introduction. Carol couldn’t keep up with the pace and flubbed the whole thing, but this is still one of my favorite renditions of it.

This is a video clip of a live performance by Kristin Chenoweth apparently from “From Screen to Stage: Kristin Chenoweth and Rob Marshall,” an episode of Evening at Pops originally televised 1 August 2004.

And this is Chenoweth’s studio recording from her 2001 album Let Yourself Go.

Related

• Yandere [Susan Weaver], “Kristin Chenoweth—If,” Yandere: Anime and Game Obsessed, 7 July 2008.
• Yandere [Susan Weaver], “Kristin Chenoweth—If (You Hadn’t, But You Did) Video. Yandere~,” Yandere: Anime and Game Obsessed, 25 January 2010.
• Mark Rothman, “‘South Pacif’’, Part One,” markrothmansblog, 31 August 2010.

• Last modified 5 January 2010.
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