Track choice

If Ever I Would Leave You – Jo Harrop

marlbank8 March 20261 Mins read

Jo Harrop, photo: single artwork detail

Accompanied by Paul Edis what a remarkable version of Lerner and Loewe’s ‘If Ever I Would Leave You’ proves. It’s new from English jazz singer Jo Harrop.

Recorded in front of an audience in London the song was first performed by the baritone Robert Goulet in 1960. It’s from the famous Arthurian legend themed musical Camelot, sung by the character Lancelot du Lac who Goulet played in the first Broadway run. Much interpreted since by top singers, Billy Eckstine took to the swoonsome ballad early on.

Aretha Franklin did it on Laughing on the Outside as did Tom Jones in a very special treatment on the Welsh great’s 1966 album From the Heart.

Instrumentalists too have taken to the song and more recent versions include the much missed Joey DeFrancesco’s on Joey D which came out in 2008.

The song is something of an emotional rollercoaster. With such perfect, expressive simplicity found in the lyrics’ ringing phraseology as “seeing you in summer I never would go”… “Your hair streaked with sunlight”… “your lips red as flame, your face with a lustre that puts gold to shame” it’s unashamedly lush and romantic and rendered by Jo with her very special contralto voice sincerely with no over-emotion or fakeness in her reading a distraction.

There’s a lovely version of the song on Jo’s 2021 breakthrough Lateralize album What the Heart Wants with the great English ex Sting and Jeff Beck pianist Jason Rebello playing the piano accompaniment.

You can also view a different version on YouTube of the singer with Edis perform the song at the Lighthouse in 2024. Clearly a favourite of Jo’s given these different treatments and who does it on the just released single with plenty of vibrato and an appealing huskiness, the new version is her best yet with Edis – who is touring a programme of Evansiana with Noa Levy – so empathetic and subtle.