"I Get a Kick Out of You" is a song by Cole Porter

Cole Porter

Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...

, originally featured in the Broadway musical Anything Goes

Anything Goes

Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...

and the movie of the same name.

Originally sung by Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...

, it has been covered by performers including Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

, Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...

, Peggy Lee

Peggy Lee

Peggy Lee was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and...

, Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...

, Cesare Siepi

Cesare Siepi

Cesare Siepi was an Italian opera singer, generally considered to have been one of the finest basses of the post-war period. His voice was characterised by a deep, warm timbre, and a ringing, vibrant upper register. On stage, his tall, striking presence and elegance of phrasing made him a natural...

, Dinah Washington

Dinah Washington

Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones , was an American blues, R&B and jazz singer. She has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s", and called "The Queen of the Blues"...

, Bobby Short

Bobby Short

Robert Waltrip "Bobby" Short was an American cabaret singer and pianist, best known for his interpretations of songs by popular composers of the first half of the 20th century such as Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, Noel Coward and George and Ira Gershwin.He...

, Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

, Erroll Garner

Erroll Garner

Erroll Louis Garner was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad "Misty", has become a jazz standard...

, Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...

, Mary Martin

Mary Martin

Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

, Anita O`Day, Rosemary Clooney

Rosemary Clooney

Rosemary Clooney was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the novelty hit "Come On-a My House" written by William Saroyan and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian , which was followed by other pop numbers such as "Botch-a-Me" Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 –...

, Margaret Whiting

Margaret Whiting

Margaret Whiting was a singer of American popular music and country music who first made her reputation during the 1940s and 1950s.-Youth:...

, Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...

, Gary Shearston

Gary Shearston

Gary Shearston is an Australian singer and songwriter who was a leading figure of the folk music revival of the 1960s. He is notable as a performer of Australian traditional folk songs in an authentic style...

, Jamie Cullum

Jamie Cullum

Jamie Cullum is an English pop and jazz-pop singer-songwriter. Though he is primarily a vocalist/pianist he also accompanies himself on other instruments including guitar and drums. Since April 2010, he has been presenting a weekly jazz show on BBC Radio 2, broadcast on Tuesdays from 19:00.- Early...

, The Living End

The Living End

The Living End are an Australian rock band from Melbourne, Victoria, formed in 1994. The current lineup consists of Chris Cheney , Scott Owen and Andy Strachan...

, Dolly Parton

Little Sparrow

-Chart performance:-External links:*...

, Dwele

Dwele

Andwele Gardner , better known by his stage name Dwele is a soul singer, songwriter and record producer from Detroit, Michigan.-Biography:...

, Joan Morris

Joan Morris

Joan Morris, is a mezzo-soprano,Born in Portland, Oregon, she is one half of the famous musical duo of Bolcom and Morris. Her musical partner and husband is composer/pianist William Bolcom...

, Shirley Bassey

Shirley Bassey

Dame Shirley Bassey, DBE , is a Welsh singer. She found fame in the late 1950s and was "one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain during the last half of the 20th century"...

, The Gutter Twins

The Gutter Twins

The Gutter Twins is a musical collaboration between rock musicians Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan. Dulli and Lanegan have regularly contributed to each other's projects since 2000, most notably in Dulli's Twilight Singers; of the duo's origins, Dulli said "I think Mark told a journalist we were doing...

 Lisa Ekdahl

Lisa Ekdahl

Lisa Ekdahl is a Swedish singer and song writer in popular music. She has so far published 10 albums, most of them in the Swedish language but some entirely in English. Her voice has been described as "child-like" and "soft, supple and smooth"...

 and Landau Eugene Murphy Jr.

Alterations to the song

The lyrics were first altered shortly after being written. The last verse originally went as follows:

I get no kick in a plane

I shouldn't care for those nights in the air

That the fair Mrs. Lindbergh goes through

But I get a kick out of you.

After the Lindbergh kidnapping

Lindbergh kidnapping

The kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was the abduction of the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The toddler, 18 months old at the time, was abducted from his family home in East Amwell, New Jersey, near the town of Hopewell, New Jersey, on the evening of...

, Porter changed the second and third lines to:

Flying too high with some guy in the sky

Is my idea of nothing to do

In the 1936 movie version, alternative lyrics in the second verse were provided to replace a reference to the drug cocaine

Cocaine

Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...

, which were not allowed due to the Hays Code.

The original verse goes as follows:

Some get a kick from cocaine

I'm sure that if

I took even one sniff

That would bore me terrifically, too

Yet, I get a kick out of you

Porter changed the first line to:

Some like the perfume in Spain

One alternative version popularised by Alyson Ottaway changes the verse to:

Some like the bop

Bebop

Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...

-type refrain

I'm sure that if

I heard even one riff

RIFF

The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....

It would bore me terrifically, too

Yet, I get a kick out of you

Sinatra recorded both post-Hays versions: the first in 1953 and the second in 1962. On a recording live in Paris

Sinatra & Sextet: Live in Paris

Sinatra & Sextet: Live in Paris is a live album by American singer Frank Sinatra, recorded in 1962 but not released until 1994. The album was released by Reprise Records....

 in 1962, Sinatra sings the altered version with the first line as Some like the perfume from Spain. Other Porter-approved substitutes include "whiff of Guerlain

Guerlain

Guerlain is a French perfume house, among the oldest in the world. It has a large and loyal customer following, and is held in high esteem in the perfume industry...

." All three of the above alternatives are mentioned in the liner notes to Joan Morris and William Bolcom's CD, "Night and Day," but on the recording, Morris sings the original second verse.