Friday, October 27, 2017

Duke Ellington - Autumn Leaves

The leaves are turning color near Castle Borepatch.  This has for years been one of my favorite songs about the autumn.



It has perhaps the greatest jazz violin of all time, by (sometimes trumpeter) Ray Nance.  Ozzie Bailey does a spectacular job on vocals in both French (written by poet Jacques Prévert) and English (by Johnny Mercer).  The music was composed by Joseph Kosma.

Fun fact: this was Yves Montand's signature song.  Just about everyone recorded this (Sinatra, Doris Day, Andy Williams, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, and Nat King Cole who recorded it in Japanese), but I love this version.

And just to show how the absurd can rise to the sublime, here is Nat singing this in Japanese.  I'm not sure that anyone other than him could have pulled it off, but he did pull it off.

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