What to expect at our Sammy Davis Jr. celebration shows!

Published: 27 Mar 2025

by conductor Mike Paul-Smith

This summer, the Down for the Count Swing Orchestra (our 30-piece “big band with strings”) is on tour celebrating the music of Sammy Davis Jr. to celebrate the centenary of his birth.

Preparations are in full swing (pun absolutely intended) and today I thought I’d let you know a bit about some of the tunes we’ve been working on which will probably feature in the show.

Sammy Davis Jr really was an extraordinarily versatile performer, and doing a show of his music gives us so many opportunities to delve into different styles of music. We’ll be performing some straight-ahead jazz, beautiful ballads, songs from musicals, songs from films, and more!

Here are just a few of the songs you can expect to hear in the show.

 

Celebrating Sammy Davis Jr. tour:
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Birth of the Blues

One of Sammy’s signature tunes was Birth of the Blues, so that song will of course feature in our show. Sammy recorded this song countless times in his career, and almost always included it in his live shows as well.

I’ve been transcribing his 1954 recording, which was written by his musical director Morty Stevens a few years. It was the first arrangement that Morty wrote for Sammy, whilst they were working together in New Jersey – Morty was a clarinettist in the house band and Sammy heard him practising, and asked Morty if he would be interested in writing an arrangement for him – one that he could use to express himself as a vocalist.

It's such a fabulously exciting arrangement and it’s certainly going to feature in our show. It launched a long and productive collaboration between Sammy and Morty, who became his main musical director.

 

 

The Rhythm of Life

And now for something completely different! In the Celebrating Sammy Davis Jr. shows we’ll touch on Sammy’s career on the silver screen. Two of his film roles particularly stand out for me and we’ll perform at least one song from each.

Probably Sammy’s most memorable film role was in the film Sweet Charity, in which he played the role of Big Daddy – essentially spiritual guru, which is quite appropriate actually as Sammy was going through a hippy stage himself at the time. Apparently he was wearing his own rings in this scene, which isn’t hard to believe – Sammy certainly had extravagant spending habits which caused him problems throughout his life and he was known to spend a small fortune on fashion.

The garage scene from Sweet Charity in which Sammy stars is certainly memorable and whilst we won’t have quite the same surroundings when we perform Rhythm on Life on this tour, we certainly hope to raise the roof of the beautiful concert halls we get to perform in with this catchy tune.

 

 

 

It Ain’t Necessarily So

Another song we’re hoping to include in the show is It Ain’t Necessarily So from the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess. The opera was turned into a film in 1959, to mixed reviews; but Sammy certainly made the most of the character Sportin’ Life.

This song is an opportunity to do something different – the music of Porgy and Bess has a really distinctive sound which to some extent defies description. It is first and foremost an opera in the classical sense, however there are clear influences of American music – jazz, blues and folk – giving it a really unique sound. You can hear it in this performance of the song, as there are multiple tempo changes, moments of real jazz and then moments of pure classical playing. It’s such a unique and effective piece of writing and it’s going to be a lot of fun to put it together!

Whilst Sammy sung the song in the film, he wasn’t able to participate in the Original Sound Track recording for contractual reasons; although that’s perhaps not a bad thing, as he released a version of him singing the song on Decca which definitely has a big band “punch” which really brings the song to life more so than the performance in the film (in my opinion, anyway).

This tune is full of drama and is also going to be a feature for our bari sax player; we can’t wait to perform it!

 

 

 

What Kind of Fool Am I

I’ve loved the song What Kind of Fool Am I for years. I first heard it in the West End production of The Rat Pack: Live from Las Vegas when I was a teenager; that show was a tribute to Frank, Sammy and Dean and was probably my first exposure to the music (and antics) of The Rat Pack.

I really remember this song as a stand-out moment of that show, and I’ve been wanting to perform it for years. It was written by Sammy’s friends Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for their musical Stop The World – I Want To Get Off.

Sammy’s arrangement of the song was written by conductor Marty Paich and, in particular, I love the string writing – some of the lines accompanying Sammy’s singing are just so beautiful and I can’t wait to hear our fabulous string section bring them to life.

 

 

Two Sleepy People

Another song I love is Two Sleepy People, written by Hoagy Carmichael (of Stardust fame) and Frank Loesser (of Guys and Dolls fame).

Sammy performed this song as a duet with Carmen McRae (with whom he recorded loads of fabulous songs) – however we’ll be doing my own arrangement of the song on our tour shows.

 

 

 

Mr. Bojangles

And, of course, a show celebrating the life of Sammy Davis Jr wouldn’t be complete without Mr. Bojangles which is, without a doubt, the most enduring hit of Sammy’s career. My task for this tour is to try and find the definitive answer for the question: “why does everyone love Mr. Bojangles so much?”. Feel free to get in touch with your answers!

My working theory is that Mr. Bojangles has stood the test of time because it tells an emotional story which is grounded in real life (it’s a long song, but for me whenever someone cuts some of the 5 verses the song just loses its impact – which is why we always do the full thing). Perhaps it’s the combination of the story and Sammy Davis Jr – he had to endure more than most performers to reach the top of his profession, and perhaps that’s why the emotion in the song resonates so much. The song was also recorded relatively late in his career, so maybe it’s simply that this song is in the living memory of many of our current audience members. It’s also helped by the fact that Robbie Williams kept the song fresh by including it on his Swing When You’re Winning album in the early 2000s.

Whatever the mystery of this songs timeless appeal is, I can’t wait to perform it for you all this summer – here is our Orchestra performing it live last November in Cardiff with Marvin Muoneké on vocals.

 

 

Of course this is just a selection of the songs we’ll be performing for you at Celebrating Sammy Davis Jr – come along to the show to hear these songs and much, much more besides!

 

Celebrating Sammy Davis Jr. tour:
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