"WHAT ARE YOU DOING NEW YEAR’S EVE?" (1947)

Most jazz fans easily could compile a list of their top ten jazz songs with a Christmas theme, but just ask them to do the same for New Year’s Eve. They likely would have trouble compiling a list of ten songs about the holiday, period. Jazz composers seem to have ignored New Year’s Eve as an inspiration for songwriting and jazz musicians would rather be playing on New Year’s Eve than writing about it. The exception is Frank Loesser, who composed the music and lyrics for "What Are you Doing New Year’s Eve?" - the only notable jazz standard with a New Year’s Eve theme.
Loesser was a prolific songwriter who wrote for Hollywood and Broadway. Initially he worked as a lyricist collaborating with various composers, but his greatest successes occurred after he became his own collaborator, writing both the words and the music. The first song he wrote entirely was the 1942 wartime hit, "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition." Other jazz standards he wrote included "On a Slow Boat to China" and "Baby, It’s Cold Outside," for which he won the 1949 Academy Award for Best Song. However, Loesser wanted "to create situations" rather than songs. He said, "Songwriting is a little thing and I settled for a big thing." The "big thing" to which he referred was Broadway musicals. His first attempt, "Where’s Charley?" in 1948, ran for over two years and surprised doubters who thought he couldn’t write a successful integrated score on his first try. He went on to write four more musicals, including "Guys and Dolls," "Most Happy Fella," and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." After he began writing for Broadway, Loesser never again wrote single songs like "What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?"
Although the first recording of "What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?" isn’t verified, the November 1949 recording by the Orioles, a Rhythm and Blues vocal group of five singers, was likely the first to appear in the pop charts. It reached ninth place on the charts and stayed there for two weeks. Although the Orioles are virtually unknown today, by 1950 they were the most popular R&B vocal group in the country. Beginning in 1948 they had a string of hits that reached the R&B and pop charts, including "Tell Me So" and Crying in the Chapel." Their first hit, "It’s Too Soon to Know," reached first place on the R&B charts in 1948, but more surprisingly, reached thirteenth place on the pop charts, something that most "race ballads" didn’t do at that time.
The Orioles were one of the first black vocal groups to successfully crossover to white audiences. Tenor Sonny Til, leader of the Orioles, had this to say about their fan base: "I think we were aimed at the Negro market. I think that’s the way it was because at the time you had the colored records, race records, and you know, it was a different thing. Like you have soul music now. Soul music can be white or black. Then, the race music was black music by black artists. Although we were on the Negro market, we had quite a few white fans. I was surprised when we played mixed places. Then down south we played places with the white people upstairs and the colored people downstairs, or vise-versa. In the fifties, it was very nice to know we had mixed fans." - from Marv Goldberg’s R&B Notebooks – The Orioles
The Orioles have been characterized as harmonic pioneers. They differed from singing groups like the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers in that they provided vocal music accompanied by a solo guitar and a bass rather than a large backup band. Accompanying a lead vocal with a wordless falsetto, an innovation they popularized, would later become a key ingredient of the doo wop style. They inspired a generation of black musicians and their breakthrough led to the formation of more vocal groups who adopted bird names and sang in a similar style: the Penguins, the Flamingos, the Falcons and the Robins (later the Coasters).
"What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?" now is more closely associated with Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis, and its initial trip to the charts with the Orioles is mostly forgotten. Recent recordings include those by Diana Krall and Harry Connick, Jr., and Ella Fitzgerald made a memorable cover of the song in 1960.