Andrews Sisters/Sophie Madeleine – Bei Mir Bist du Schon (Chords)

Sophie Madeleine – Bei Mir Bist du Schon (Chords)

I have a bone to pick with the end of this song: it really annoys me when a song that’s been in a minor key switches to major right at the end. You never hear a major song turning minor right at the end (watch the comments fill up with examples). It’s the worst sort of discrimination in the world by far.

Nevertheless, it’s an excellent song and picked up a fair few requests when I posted the uke version by Sophie Madeleine and Pearl with the Beard.

It’s worth keeping your index finger barred on the third fret to make for easier chord changes. But that does make it tough on the left hand because you’re barring for the whole song. So if it starts feeling sore while you’re practicing take a break.

Suggested Strumming

For the longer strums you can use old faithful:

d – d u – u d –

And for the short ones just two down strums:

d – d –

The tricky bit comes at the end of the choruses. On the C7 do old faithful then two down strums. One down strum each for Db7 and C7. Two down strums each for Fm and Db7. Then back to old faithful for C7.

On the Fm at “things that you do to me” she plays crochet triplets. But old faithful will work fine there if you’re not comfortable with those yet.

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17 Comments

  1. Abbie August 14th, 2012 8:15 pm

    Thanks for posting this. Do the Andrews Sisters really sing “Bei mir bist du shANE” so that it rhymes with “explain”?! I only know the Puppini Sisters’ version and they make it sound a little more German :-P

    I discovered Pearl and the Beard through a friend (went to see them live – they’re great) and Sophie Madeleine through your other posts – turns out it’s a match made in heaven!

  2. Josh August 14th, 2012 10:56 pm

    It’s not German, it’s Yiddish.
    “Bei mir bistu shein”, which indeed rhymes with “explain”.

  3. Josh August 14th, 2012 10:56 pm

    (And I just discovered this message board won’t let one make entries in Hebrew script.)

  4. Daniel August 15th, 2012 6:16 am

    By the way, the title makes no sense the way it is written. Schön as in beautiful is writen with the ümlaut over the o. Otherwise it is “schon” which essentially means already. So the title would be- “You are already with me” in your case.

    Sorry, I don’t think anyone but German speakers will pick up on that, so maybe you’ll want to leave it.

  5. Phredd August 15th, 2012 10:18 am

    I always thought it was “My Dear Mr. Shane”. That’s the Mondegreen I hear anyway!

  6. Abbie August 15th, 2012 7:23 pm

    Whether it’s schön, schon or shein, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean you’re the fairest in the laaaand.

  7. David Gehrig August 20th, 2012 4:32 am

    The Andrews Sisters had kind of a strange gig, doing all sorts of ethnic music but filtered through the three-girls-from-Minnesota thing to make it safe for 1940’s ears. The Andrews Sisters’ recording was released wïthöüt thë ümläüt. It’s a Yiddish tune from Sholom Secunda and Jacob Jacobs with a new set of English lyrics by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin. (I can tell you this because it’s in my “to learn” binder.)

  8. Yukon August 24th, 2012 11:54 pm

    Aw, don’t be hating on the picardy third! It’s been around for centuries!

  9. Woodshed August 26th, 2012 11:27 pm

    Yukon: So has syphilis.

  10. martin August 31st, 2012 10:45 pm

    don’t know if it’s jiddish – but there are a couple of german dialekts, where you would use ‘shen’/’shein’/’shane’ and not the written ‘schön’ – and yes that would rhyme.

  11. ZJ December 8th, 2012 9:01 pm

    Try a Cdim in there: [C7]Bei [Em]mir [Cdim]bistu schön[Em][C7][C7]Please [Em]let [Cdim]me [C7]explain.

    Cdim is 3434

  12. Woodshed December 9th, 2012 8:16 am

    ZJ: Thanks. I’ll try it out.

  13. Suki Damson October 29th, 2013 3:58 pm

    ‘Bei mir bist du Shein’ is Yiddish for ‘To (or by) me you are beautiful’ and was originally a Yiddish musical theatre song with completely Yiddish words. It was banned in Nazi Germany when it’s Jewish authorship was discovered. It’s not in a German dialect. There are similarrities because yiddish developed in the European Jewish diaspora and contains influences from German Polish and Hebrew languages.

    Nice acoustic version of the song ! thanks for posting :-)

  14. Woodshed October 30th, 2013 9:22 am

    Suki: Thanks for the info.

  15. SML December 3rd, 2013 9:03 pm

    I loved your performance! Your voices are perfectly “Andrew Sisters-y”. You are totally getting into it and it makes the whole performance lots of fun. Your “instrumental” vocal break totally cracked me up! That was so inventive and cool. You should definitely perform more. Let me know if you ever perform in the Chicago area.

  16. Yontef March 24th, 2014 8:01 am

    The “is it Yiddish or is it German” argument is kind of silly because the phrase is the same in both languages… The original question was why the word for “beautiful” rhymes with “explain” and the answer is just that in this song it does!

  17. loren July 12th, 2014 7:14 am

    my band always did it as the bear missed the train

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