Nice Work If You Can Get It is a 1937 jazz standard composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin for the Fred Astaire film A Damsel in Distress. It was published on September 16, 1937 and released as a single in November 1937, with the b-side Things Are Looking Up. The tune started as a nine‑bar phrase in 1930 under the working title There's No Stopping Me Now, and its famous line came from an English magazine. In the movie, Astaire performs the song with backing vocals by The Stafford Sisters. The first jazz recording appeared shortly after by Tommy Dorsey, and early versions were issued by Shep Fields, Teddy Wilson with Billie Holiday, Maxine Sullivan, and The Andrews Sisters. It quickly became a jazz standard later embraced by bebop players, with notable covers by Thelonious Monk, Art Tatum, Sarah Vaughan, Mel Tormé, Frank Sinatra, Erroll Garner, and Ella Fitzgerald. The song also features in the 1951 film An American in Paris and in the Cybill TV series, and it inspired the Broadway musical Nice Work If You Can Get It, which premiered on Broadway in 2012.
