For info on my November 2026 tour schedule, hitting Brooklyn, Bethlehem PA, Philly, State College, Pittsburgh, Marietta OH, and Cleveland, go to https://elijahwald.com/concertdates.html

A pop standard from 1928, which I must have heard by all sorts of people, but really know from a 1930 recording by Georgia White with Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra. As befits her name, White was born in Georgia, but moved to Chicago and worked around town as a singer, sometimes accompanying herself on piano, sometimes working with bands. This song was her first recording, in 1930, and clearly influenced by Louis Armstrong’s version, recorded the previous year. She sang a bit of Armstrong-flavored scat, though otherwise it’s very much her own style — at that point she had a precise, almost mid-Atlantic theatrical diction, nothing like his soulful growl. I’d normally favor Armstrong’s version, but as it happens he performs it as a slow ballad, had just acquired his own orchestra and was emulating Guy Lombardo’s “sweet” style, complete with a sappy violin solo, and the only good thing about that record is his vocal. Noone’s band takes it a good deal faster, White swings the vocal, and it’s a really nice record.

Which said, I would probably never have heard it if White hadn’t gone on to a quite different career, playing piano and singing blues, often with double-entendre lyrics, e.g. Andy Razaf’s “If I Can’t Sell It, I’ll Keep Sitting On It (Before I’ll Give It Away),” a cute little number that is ostensibly about selling a favorite chair. Also the ever-popular “Hot Nuts (Get ‘Em From the Peanut Man.”

She wasn’t a deep blues singer like Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith, but she also turned in some solid, serious blues performances — Big Bill Broonzy particularly noted her version of “Trouble in Mind” (with a young Les Paul on guitar), saying it gave the old song a new vogue.  She made dozens of records in the later 1930s and on into the 1940s, and Broonzy recalled working with her on the cusp of the 1950s:

She was my pianist for a while. I had a band called the Laughing Trio. She would always tell us some kind of funny joke before we started to play…. That’s how we got the name of ‘laughing trio.’ And we did good together.

Before Georgia White started playing with me, she and a girl trumpet player had an all-girl band, a twelve-piece band…. In 1950, after having played with me, she got a real good job in a small town just out of Chicago, and she’s still there now.

Rosetta Reitz, who released a nice LP of White’s work (and was one of my favorite people to visit when I swung through New York), wrote that White was still performing around Chicago in 1959, but had no news of her after that and didn’t manage to find and interview her, though she apparently lived until 1980. She clearly was a versatile musician who played a wide range of styles in a wide range of formats. But apparently that’s all we know about her, aside from what’s on the records.

As for “When You’re Smiling,” it’s a nice little song that’s been sung by hundreds (thousands? millions?) of people over the years. It’s cheerful, it’s tuneful, it’s fun to play and sing, and what more can one ask?