I love Cole Porter and I have always really liked the song “Looking At You” but I don’t have a good version of it in my music collection.
There’s a charming amateurish version performed by Alan Alda in the movie Everyone Says I Love You.
I have a few Cole Porter “collection”-type compilation albums, but the only recording of “Looking At You” than I have in my music collection is a recording by Liza Minnelli from her early years. It is a good version of the song, but there’s some horrible attempts at rewriting the lyrics which is just inexcusable when you’re working on a Cole Porter song.
So, do any SDMB Cole Porter fans anyone have a favorite version of this song?
Lee Wiley recorded a sweet and mellow version in 1940. I couldn’t find a YouTube version. Amazon here has a sample of it, and that page could interest you in Lee’s other recordings.
Thanks, from_a_to_z! Will listen when I get home (at work now).
Hey, I love that song! It mystifies me that it’s not better known or better covered. There are hundreds, if not thousands of versions of “Night and Day,” “I’ve Got you Under My Skin,” and other Porter classics but “Looking at You” barely registers.
Anyway, there’s a nice, classy, but somewhat foppish version by Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson. I can’t find it on YouTube, but it is on Spotify.
In the meantime here’s a version that’s fun though way too up-tempo.
You know, this used to be pop music for people to dance to. That’s a great tempo for tapping a toe. It’s no more inappropriate than any rendition of the day.
Well, this song in particular (and a lot of the other standards of the era) were theatrical songs first, before becoming dance numbers, so I don’t know that that’s necessarily true. I do, in fact, like the song generally more upbeat than it is often played today, but the tempo on that record seems to me like overkill.
On the subject of tempos: I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook the other day and realized that while I love her voice and I love the song, I hate her rendition of “Let’s Do It.” It’s waaaaay too slow. That is a song you should be able to tap your toe to. It’s sly, jaunty, and funny, and it kills the joke to try to do it at the awful pace she does.
Thanks Rodgers01 for the Jack Payne link. He has some good sides, and a favorite is My Baby Just Cares For Me. That style of singing would have improved his version of “Looking at You”, at least for me. And speaking of “Let’s Do It”, Lee Wiley has an uptempo version. The link in Post #2 above includes a sample, but (why?) cuts off the end of one of the best lines of the song, about moths.
Speaking of Lee Wiley, I started an appreciation thread about her, with Lee Wiley, a sultry singer (I like her). Perhaps during the next 5 years she will have double the mentions that she has had in the past 5. A big thank-you to bienville for reminding me of her.
All I can add, Rodge, is that musical theater used to be a lot more musical and a lot less theater. It doesn’t do the songs of that era any favors to treat them with too much reverence.
I’ll add another “thank you” to bienville for this thread: I’m a jazz singer who loves Cole Porter but was unfamiliar with this song. I have a workshop coming up where I’ll be preparing three new tunes for performance, and now this might be one of them. 
My favorite rendition of “Looking at You” is by Mabel Mercer.
Gotta love the Dope. I was coming to post that I love Lee Wiley’s version… listening to her Cole Porter record at the moment.