Harry Barris, music · Gordon Clifford, lyrics · First recorded by Gus Arnheim's orchestra with Bing Crosby, 1931
I Surrender Dear
Harry Barris and Gordon Clifford wrote this 1931 song, which became Bing Crosby's first solo hit. Musicians return to it because the music keeps putting off its ending, which gives it an unsettled, lonely feel. Hear it from Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Art Pepper, Paul Gonsalves and Peter Brötzmann.
Listen in this order
The path starts with the two 1931 records that launched the song, Bing Crosby's hit with a dance orchestra and Louis Armstrong's jazz vocal. It then follows the tune through Benny Goodman's sextet, Lennie Tristano's trio, Thelonious Monk alone at the piano, Art Pepper's quartet and Paul Gonsalves's tenor saxophone, and ends with Peter Brötzmann's solo saxophone album from 2019.
1930sGus Arnheim and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra, vocal refrain by Bing Crosby1931
Louis Armstrong1931
1940sBenny Goodman Sextet featuring Charlie Christian1940
Lennie Tristano Trio1946
1950sThelonious Monk1956 · Hard bop
Art Pepper Quartet1956 · Bebop
1960sPaul Gonsalves Quartet1960
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010sPeter Brötzmann2018
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Hear the song as the public first met it
Gus Arnheim and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra, vocal refrain by Bing Crosby · 1931
78 rpm single
Gus Arnheim's orchestra recorded it in Los Angeles on January 19, 1931, with Bing Crosby singing the refrain. According to JazzStandards.com, it became Crosby's first solo hit, reached third place on the charts and led to his first radio show on CBS.
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Listen for
Bing Crosby sings the refrain with Gus Arnheim's orchestra behind him. Hear the tune and its mood here first, then notice what later players keep and what they change.
Try it on your instrument
Play the first eight with the from the chart: , , Dm7 , , Am7, D7, Dm7 , Cmaj7 . If are new to you, play only the first chord of each bar and hum the melody over them.
Armstrong recorded it with his orchestra on April 20, 1931, three months after the Crosby record. According to Wikipedia, he was the first jazz singer to record the song.
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Listen for
Armstrong sings, and in one he changes both the tune and the words, with a short stretch of scat singing, which means wordless syllables.
Try it on your instrument
Play or sing the melody once as written. Then play it again, moving each phrase a little early or a little late against a steady pulse, the way a singer loosens a tune. No are needed.
Benny Goodman Sextet featuring Charlie Christian · 1940
“I Surrender, Dear”, Columbia sextet sides
Benny Goodman's sextet recorded it on April 10, 1940, in Los Angeles, with Charlie Christian on electric guitar and Lionel Hampton on vibraphone.
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Listen for
Try to pick out three sounds: Benny Goodman's clarinet, Charlie Christian's electric guitar and Lionel Hampton's vibraphone. Piano, bass and drums sit underneath them.
Try it on your instrument
Play the of the first eight once per beat, short and even, while you hum the melody. Keep them light, so the tune stays on top.
“I Surrender, Dear”, 78 rpm single, I Surrender, Dear / Coolin' Off with Ulanov
Lennie Tristano recorded it in New York on October 8, 1946, with guitarist Billy Bauer and bassist Clyde Lombardi. Keynote issued it on a 78 rpm single in 1947.
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Listen for
Three instruments play it: piano, guitar and bass. Try to follow which of the three has the tune from moment to moment.
Try it on your instrument
Split the job as a trio would. Play one bass note per from the chart in your left hand and the melody in your right, for the first eight bars.
Monk plays it alone at the piano on Brilliant Corners, recorded at Reeves Sound Studios in New York on December 7, 1956. According to JazzStandards.com, it is the only standard on that album.
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Listen for
Monk plays by himself for more than five minutes, so every pause and every change of pace is his own choice.
Try it on your instrument
Play the melody with your right hand and one per with your left, very slowly, as a solo pianist must. If that is too much, play the melody alone and add a chord only at the start of each four bars.
Alto saxophonist Art Pepper recorded it in Los Angeles on November 23, 1956, with Russ Freeman on piano, Ben Tucker on bass and Gary Frommer on drums. The quartet record came out in 1957.
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Listen for
Pepper's alto saxophone stays out front for more than five minutes, with piano, bass and drums behind him. Compare how long one horn holds the spotlight here with the shorter records earlier on the path.
Try it on your instrument
Play the middle part from the chart: , , E7, Am7, E7, Am7, , then . Hold each for a bar and listen to how the middle keeps leaning toward without settling there.
Paul Gonsalves, the tenor saxophonist of Duke Ellington's band, recorded it in New York on December 20, 1960, with Wynton Kelly, Sam Jones and Jimmy Cobb, for the album Gettin' Together!.
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Listen for
Gonsalves's tenor saxophone carries the song over Kelly's piano, Jones's bass and Cobb's drums. Cornetist Nat Adderley plays on other tracks of this album, but he sits this one out.
Try it on your instrument
Play the melody with long, even notes, the way a tenor saxophone shapes a slow tune, and add one per from the chart if you play chords.
The German free-jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann recorded this solo album on tenor saxophone in Vienna in July 2018. Trost issued it in 2019 and named it after the song, which appears on it twice.
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Listen for
Brötzmann plays alone, so no band keeps time for him. Notice how much of the song you still recognise when one saxophone has the whole job.
Try it on your instrument
Play the melody alone, with no and no beat, and let the pauses run as long as you like. Then play it against a steady pulse and notice what changes.
Gus Arnheim's orchestra records it in January 1931 with Bing Crosby singing, and it becomes his first solo hit. Louis Armstrong makes the first jazz vocal record of the song that April.
1940s
Benny Goodman's sextet, with guitarist Charlie Christian, plays it in 1940. Lennie Tristano records it in 1946 with a trio of piano, guitar and bass.
1950s
Nat King Cole records it with a quartet in 1955. In 1956 Thelonious Monk plays it alone at the piano, and Art Pepper leads a quartet on alto saxophone.
1960s
Paul Gonsalves plays it on tenor saxophone with a piano trio in December 1960, and Aretha Franklin sings it on her 1962 Columbia album. Monk records it alone again in 1964.
1970s
Joe Venuti and Zoot Sims record it in 1975 for Chiaroscuro. Roy Eldridge plays it for more than ten minutes with Oscar Peterson at the 1977 Montreux Jazz Festival.
2010s
Peter Brötzmann, a German free-jazz saxophonist, records it alone on tenor saxophone in Vienna in 2018 for an album named after the song.
More great versions
6 more, from 1947 to 1977. Tap a cover to play it here.
“I Surrender, Dear”, The Electrifying Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin sings it on her Columbia album The Electrifying Aretha Franklin, released in March 1962. According to Wikipedia, the record reached number 87 on the US Hot 100.
Violinist Joe Venuti and tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims recorded it in New York in May 1975, with John Bunch, Milt Hinton and Bobby Rosengarden, for Chiaroscuro.
The tune's layout, its keys and the chord chart, for anyone who wants to play along.
Show the form and chords
How the tune works
C majorusual key
32 barsA · A · B · A form
C majorkey centers
A8 bars
A8 bars
B8 bars · bridge
A8 bars
C
The iReal Pro chart runs 32 in four 8-bar sections and stays in throughout. Each A starts on and moves through , Dm7 and , reaches Am7 in bar 5, and finishes with D7 and Dm7 . The first A closes with Cmaj7 , which leads back to the top; the second A closes on a plain Cmaj7. The alternates E7 and Am7 three times, leaning toward without settling there, then plays D7 and Dm7 G7 to return. The last A opens with Dm7 where the earlier ones open on Dm7 alone. JazzStandards.com says the harmony keeps delaying its arrival home until the last line of the , and that the melody ends on the fifth note of the scale instead of the home note.