> Sandy Denny > Songs > Until the Real Thing Comes Along

Until the Real Thing Comes Along

[Sammy Cahn, Saul Chaplin, L.E. Freeman, Mann Holiner, Alberta Nichols]

This torch song—with Sandy and Diz Disley, guitar; Ian Armit, piano; Danny Thompson, bass; Dave Mattacks, drums; Bob Leaper, horn arrangements—is from Sandy Denny’s third solo album Like an Old Fashioned Waltz and was later included in the Who Knows Where the Time Goes? box set. Sandy commented in the original album’s sleeve notes:

A song which I loved as a child. When I first heard it, it was sung by a wonderful black pianist-singer—Fats Waller—a master of the keyboard, as is Ian Armit, the pianist on this rendering of the song. We recorded it as closely as possible to the aforementioned recording by Fats.

A live studio recording from 14 November 1973 for the BBC Radio 1 show “Sounds of the Seventies”, hosted by Bob Harris, was broadcast on 17 December 1973. In this session Sandy was backed by Hughie Burns, guitar, Pat Donaldson, bass, and Willie Murray, drums. This recording was first published in 1994 on the fan club cassette The Attic Tracks Vol. 4: Together Again and later included in the 1997 CD The BBC Sessions 1971-73, in 2004 on the 5CD Fledg’ling Sandy Denny anthology A Boxful of Treasures, and in 2007 on the 3CD+DVD box set Live at the BBC.

A historic recording of this song sung by Pha Terrell with Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, recorded in New York on 11 March 1936, can be found on the Topic jazz CD, Carrying the Torch: The Evolution of the Torch Song in Popular Music.

Lyrics

Sorry, I can't show the lyrics here as I don't have the copyright owners' permission to publish them. But please feel free and ask me to send you the song's lyrics.