Pick Yourself Up

They Say...

Review by William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

This budget compilation is an odd mixture of recordings featuring Fred Astaire, borrowed from studio recordings and film soundtracks. The bare-bones packaging just gives a list of song titles on the back cover, with no indication of sources. Astaire made studio recordings of many of the songs he was singing in his stage shows and films (in addition to other songs), and half of this disc is made up of such recordings, with the rest taken from actual soundtracks. The studio recordings are "A Fine Romance," "The Way You Look Tonight," "I Love Louisa," "Pick Yourself Up," "No Strings," "Bojangles of Harlem," "Things Are Looking Up," "Fascinating Rhythm," "Puttin' On the Ritz," and "Crazy Feet." "Fascinating Rhythm," recorded for English Columbia in 1926, is a duet with Astaire's sister and stage dancing partner, Adele Astaire, with composer George Gershwin on piano; neither are credited here. The soundtrack recordings come from Follow the Fleet (1936), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Shall We Dance (1937), and Top Hat (1935). Ginger Rogers, Astaire's most frequent film dancing partner, duets on "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" and "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off"; she isn't credited, either. The soundtrack recordings are of sometimes iffy sound quality, and clearly were not made just to be listened to, as Astaire drifts away from the microphone and the arrangements leave lots of room for his dancing, which cannot be seen, of course, although quite a lot of tapping is audible. (He also taps on some of the studio recordings.) The collection will be sonically unacceptable to general listeners, and its jumble of different tracks will frustrate fans.