Which one is your favorite? - LIII -

Here is a song for the season. It dates back to 1945 and the original was in French. The tune was popularised by Yves Montand. It has been  a leading standard in the jazz repertoire.

Here is the song for this week;

"Autumn Leaves"

The song was composed by Joseph Kosma with original lyrics by Jacques Prévert in French, and later by Johnny Mercer in English. An instrumental version by pianist Roger Williams was a number 1 best-seller in the US Billboard charts of 1955.

Kosma was a native of Hungary who was introduced to Prévert in Paris. They collaborated on the song "Les Feuilles Mortes" ("The Dead Leaves") for the 1946 film Les Portes de la nuit (Gates of the Night) where it was sung by Irène Joachim. Kosma was influenced by a piece of ballet music, "Rendez-vous" written for Roland Petit, which was itself borrowed partially from "Poème d'octobre" by Jules Massenet.

Marcel Carné decided to use it in his film Les portes de la nuit and wanted it sung by Marlene Dietrich — who declined. In the movie, it is played by the whole orchestra, then by a harmonica, then hummed and sung briefly by Yves Montand, then sung by Irene Joachim (dubbed for actress Nathalie Nattier).

 The first commercial recordings of "Les Feuilles mortes" were released in 1950, by Cora Vaucaire and by Yves Montand. Johnny Mercer wrote the English lyric and gave it the title "Autumn Leaves". Mercer was a partner in Capitol Records at the time, and Capitol recording artist Jo Stafford made the first English-language recording in July, 1950. The song was recorded steadily throughout the 1950s by leading pop vocalists including Bing Crosby (1950), Nat King Cole (1955), Doris Day (1956), and Frank Sinatra (1957). It was also quickly adopted by instrumental jazz artists including Artie Shaw (1950), Stan Getz (1952), Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal (separately in 1955), Duke Ellington (1957), and Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis (together in 1958). In 2012, jazz historian Philippe Baudoin called the song "the most important non-American standard" and noted that "it has been recorded about 1400 times by mainstream and modern jazz musicians alone and is the eighth most-recorded tune by jazzmen.

Over the years since its first publication, the composition has undergone several adjustments. The verse is a 24-bar AAB form, though originally it was written in twelve bars. The AABC form chorus was originally written in sixteen bars, but is now commonly seen as a 32-bar structure. The tune is usually played in 4/4 at a medium tempo in the key of G minor, although the original edition is in A minor.

Here are the 8 versions I picked for you;

• Sarah Vaughan - "Autumn Leaves"

• Chet Baker & Paul Desmond - "Autumn Leaves"

• Iggy Pop - "Les Feuilles Mortes"

• Dee Dee Bridgewater - "Autumn Leaves"
  

• Paula Cole - "Autumn Leaves"

• Dalida - "Les Feuilles Mortes"

• Nat King Cole - "Autumn Leaves"

• Patricia Kaas - "Autumn Leaves"

Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).

nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.