"Whispering" is a popular song published in 1920 by Sherman, Clay & Co. of San Francisco. The 1920 copyright attributes the lyrics to Malvin Schonberger and the music to John Schonberger.

Initial and enduring popularity

"Whispering" was recorded by Paul Whiteman and his Ambassador Orchestra on August 23, 1920, for the Victor Talking Machine Company at their studios in Camden, New Jersey. Ferde Grofé arranged the composition and played piano on the recording. Whiteman's version was an eleven-week No. 1 hit in the United States, which stayed 20 weeks in the charts, and sold in excess of two million copies. In 2020, Whiteman's rendition was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The song charted twice in the 1960s. In 1963, Irish singers the Bachelors had a hit with their version which went to the Top 20 in the UK. In 1964, after recording their hit "Deep Purple", American brother-and-sister vocal duo Nino Tempo & April Stevens had a new hit with "Whispering". This version went to number eleven on the Hot 100, number four on the Easy Listening chart, and number 17 in Canada. According to Allmusic, there have been over 700 versions of the song. As of 2010, on the online music site www.LaLa.com, there were 161 listed albums or singles containing the song "Whispering". As of 2014, TJD Online, the online version of The Jazz Discography, listed 225 recording sessions, beginning with Ray Miller and his Black and White Melody Boys, who recorded it on about July 16, 1920, Okeh 4167-A. Also, as of 2014, TJD Online listed 281 recording sessions of Dizzy Gillespie's composition, "Groovin' High", a contrafact variation of "Whispering".

Compositional structure

"Whispering", originally scored in E ♭ major, is in time. It has a 12-bar intro, the last 4 of which is an optional vamp — then a 16-bar A-theme is followed by a 32-bar repeated chorus. The 32 bars is essentially a 16-bar B-theme played twice — or 4 times with the repeat. Dizzy Gillespie's 1945 composition, "Groovin' High", is a contrafact of "Whispering". Following a standard practice in jazz, Gillespie front-ran the static V7 chords with ii7 chords (a "static chord" is a chord that doesn't change), setting up a series of ii7–V7 progressions, which creates more structure for improvising. The ii7 chord has similar properties to a iv chord (as in the iv–V progression of church harmony). Because "Groovin' High" was a contrafact, performers, publishers, and record companies did not have to pay royalties to the original composers. Moreover, the contrafacted rendition followed a unified bebop convention — a series of ii7-V7 chord changes with a ii7–V7–I7 turnaround — for jazz artists.

Selected discography

Selected filmography

Accolades

Copyrights

[Inset photo: John Steel

(image courtesy of the UCLA Archive of Popular American Music) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Whispering///cover.jpg]