"He Was Too Good to Me" is a song with music by Richard Rodgers

Richard Rodgers

Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

 and lyrics by Lorenz Hart

Lorenz Hart

Lorenz "Larry" Milton Hart was the lyricist half of the famed Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart...

. It was introduced in the tryouts of their 1930

1930 in music

-Events:*February 16 - al which opens to rave reviews. Of the film's song, "When The Little Red Roses Get The Blues For You", becomes a hit. Al Jolson records this song from the picture for Brunswick Records....

 Broadway musical Simple Simon

Simple Simon (musical)

Simple Simon is a Broadway musical with book by Guy Bolton, and Ed Wynn, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, music by Richard Rodgers, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, and starring Ed Wynn....

, but was dropped before the show's New York opening. Despite its inauspicious beginning, the song has become a jazz standard

Jazz standard

Jazz standards are musical compositions which are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be...

, and has been recorded by such artists as Chet Baker

Chet Baker

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...

, Thad Jones

Thad Jones

Thaddeus Joseph Jones was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader.-Biography:Thad Jones was born in Pontiac, Michigan to a musical family of ten . Thad Jones was a self taught musician, performing professionally by the age of sixteen...

, Nina Simone

Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon , better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music...

, Shirley Horn

Shirley Horn

Shirley Valerie Horn was an American jazz singer and pianist.-Biography:Encouraged by her grandmother, who was an amateur organist, Horn began piano lessons at the age of four. At twelve, Horn studied piano and composition at Howard University and later majored from there in classical music...

 and Carmen McRae

Carmen McRae

Carmen Mercedes McRae was an American jazz singer, composer, pianist, and actress. Considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century, it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and her ironic interpretations of song lyrics that made her memorable...

.

The song is occasionally sung as “She was too good to me”, especially by male singers, including The Vogues

The Vogues

The Vogues are an American vocal group from Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. The original group consisted of Bill Burkette , Don Miller , Hugh Geyer and Chuck Blasko .-Career:...

 on their album Till

Till (album)

Till was an LP album by The Vogues, released by Reprise Records in 1969, under catalog number RS 6326.The album was reissued, combined with the 1968 Vogues album Turn Around, Look at Me, in compact disc format, by Taragon Records on November 6, 2001....

.

More recently, the song was covered by Bette Midler

Bette Midler

Bette Midler is an American singer, actress, and comedian, also known by her informal stage name, The Divine Miss M. She became famous as a cabaret and concert headliner, and went on to star in successful and acclaimed films such as The Rose, Ruthless People, Beaches, and For The Boys...

 on her album Some People's Lives

Some People's Lives

Some People's Lives is the seventh studio album by American singer Bette Midler, released on the Atlantic Records label in 1990. It contains one of her biggest hits, "From A Distance", which won her a Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991....

in 1990, as a medley paired with Since You Stayed Here. Australian singer Renée Geyer

Renée Geyer

Renée Rebecca Geyer is an Australian singer who has long been regarded as one of the finest exponents of jazz, soul and R&B idioms. She had commercial success as a solo artist in Australia, with "It's a Man's Man's World", "Heading in the Right Direction" and "Stares and Whispers" in the 1970s and...

recorded the song on her album Difficult Woman in 1994. On Midler's version the second verse contains the revised line "I was a queen to him. Who's gonna light my way now?", while Geyer's version reprises the original "I was a queen to him. Who's gonna make me gay now?".

This song was also recently released by Bob Shane, of the Kingston Trio, on his new album "The World Needs a Melody".