Begin the Beguine

"Begin the Beguine" is a popular song written by Cole Porter. Porter composed the song during a 1935 Pacific cruise aboard the Cunard ocean liner Franconia from Kalabahi, Indonesia, to Fiji. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee, produced at the Imperial Theatre in New York City.
The first successful recording was a swing orchestral version released by Artie Shaw and His Orchestra in 1938. In 1981, Julio Iglesias released a Spanish language version which reached No. 1 on the U.K. chart, the first fully Spanish song to top the chart in the country.
The beguine is a dance and music form, similar to a slow rhumba. In his book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900–1950, musicologist and composer Alec Wilder, described "Begin the Beguine" as
At first, the song gained little popularity, perhaps because of its length and unconventional form. Josephine Baker danced to it in her return to the United States in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, but neither she nor the song was successful. Two years later, however, bandleader Artie Shaw recorded an arrangement of the song, an extended swing orchestra version, in collaboration with his arranger and orchestrator, Jerry Gray.
After signing a new recording contract with RCA Victor, Shaw chose "Begin the Beguine" to be the first of six tunes he would record with his new 14-piece band in his first recording session with RCA Victor. The session was held at the RCA Victor's "Studio 2" at 155 East 24th Street in New York City on July 24, 1938. Until then, Shaw's band had been having a tough time finding an identity and maintaining its existence without having had any popular hits of significance. His previous recording contract with Brunswick had lapsed at the end of 1937 without being renewed.
Because RCA Victor was pessimistic with the whole idea of recording the long tune "that nobody could remember from beginning to end anyway", it was released as the "B" side of the record "Indian Love Call", issued on the RCA Victor Bluebird label as catalog number B-7746. Shaw's persistence paid off when "Begin the Beguine" became a best-selling record in 1938, peaking at no. 3, skyrocketing Shaw and his band to fame and popularity. The recording became one of the most famous and popular of the entire Swing Era. Subsequent reissues by RCA Victor (catalog number 20-1551) and later releases on LP, tape and CD have kept the recording continuously available ever since its original release in 1938.
After Shaw introduced the song to dance halls, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released the musical film Broadway Melody of 1940. The song is one of its musical numbers, first sung in dramatic style by mezzo-soprano Lois Hodnott on a tropical set, with Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire dancing in flamenco choreography. It is continued in the then contemporary jazz style by The Music Maids, with Powell and Astaire tap dancing to a big-band accompaniment.
In short order, all of the major big bands recorded it, including Harry James, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller, often as an instrumental, as in the film. As a vocal song, it also became a pop standard, beginning with Joe Loss and Chick Henderson, the first pop vocal record to sell a million copies; new interpretations are often still measured against renditions by Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, and Elvis Presley did an adaptation of his own. "Begin the Beguine" became such a classic during World War II that Max Beckmann adopted the title for a painting in 1946 (which the University of Michigan Museum of Art purchased in 1948). In the 1986 movie The Worst Witch, Tim Curry's character The Grand Wizard references Begin the Beguine in his song about Halloween.
Julio Iglesias recorded a Spanish version of "Begin the Beguine", titled "Volver a Empezar" in Spanish. Iglesias himself wrote new Spanish lyrics for this song, which is about lost love rather than a dance. Apart from the opening lines, the full song is in Spanish. The song was produced in Madrid with an arrangement by producer Ramón Arcusa, using the rhythm from Johnny Mathis's disco version of the song.
The song reached No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart in December 1981. It is the first fully Spanish language song to have reached No. 1 on the British chart, although Iglesias is the second Spanish act to top the chart (after Baccara who topped the chart with "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" sung in English). The song was certified Gold by the BPI in the UK. The song also spent three weeks at No. 1 in the Irish Singles Chart. In Japan, it sold 96,170 units. Iglesias also recorded the song in different languages – "Venezia a Settembre" in Italian; "Une chanson qui revient" in French, which reached No. 30 in France; and "...aber der Traum war sehr schön" in German, which reached No. 57 in the West German chart.