Tunes on Tuesday – Teach Me Tonight – Oren Levine, jazz pianist and songwriter

Why this tune?

Teach Me Tonight was written in 1953 and became a hit several times in the 1950s, including Dinah Washington’s recording in 1954. It’s been recorded over 250 times and easy to see why – it’s clever, sexy (but not too much), and works for male and female singers. I’ve played it many times with Aaron Myers at shows at Mr. Henry’s on Capitol Hill.

Dig this detail!

On the bridge, Sammy Cahn could have just written about “writing ‘I Love You’ across the blackboard of the sky” which is lovely, but he took it to the next level, extending that image to a beautiful eight-bar story:

The sky's a blackboard,
High above you.
If a shooting star goes by.
I'll use that star.
To write I love you
A thousand times across the sky.

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One more note

I wore my Washington Women In Jazz Festival T-shirt in the video to promote this year’s festival, which was scheduled for this week before the COVID-19 virus sent us all indoors. The festival has been postponed to later in the year. Please check out the website to learn more about this event and the people behind it: