A Foggy Day
A Foggy Day is a film song with a composition by George Gershwin and a text by Ira Gershwin from 1937.
The song
A Foggy Day has a theme in the song form A – B – A – C and is consistently in (F) major . The Gershwin brothers wrote the song, as did others, for the film A Damsel in Distress . Ira Gershwin suggested the subject of Fog Day in London for this song. His brother sat down at the piano and within an hour the music and lyrics of the chorus were done. Originally the film in which the song was sung by Fred Astaire was even supposed to be called "A Foggy Day (In London Town)".
Impact history
Astaire recorded the song as a record in the same year and reached number 3 on the US hit parade. The next year, Bob Crosby , who recorded this song with his orchestra and singer Kay Weber, reached number 16 on the charts. In addition to Astaire (who recorded the piece again in 1952 with Oscar Peterson ), Frank Sinatra in particular made the song known, who first interpreted it in 1949 (in an arrangement by George Siravo ) and then in 1953 (for his Capitol album Songs for Young Lovers , in an arrangement by Nelson Riddle ) recorded in the studio. In 1960 Sinatra recorded the song again (for his reprise album Ring-a-Ding-Ding ! , in an arrangement by Johnny Mandel ), and in 1962 also interpreted it with the Bill Miller Sextet (in an arrangement by Neal Hefti ), and kept the piece in his program until 1994.
The title has been recorded in countless versions, for example by Tony Bennett and Mel Tormé , several times by Ella Fitzgerald , first in a duo with Louis Armstrong ( Ella and Louis 1956), later on her Gershwin songbook album ( Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook 1959), and several times by Sarah Vaughan (e.g. Sarah Vaughan Sings George Gershwin 1958). David Bowie interprets the song on Red Hot Organization + Rhapsody (The Gershwin Groove, 1998). A more recent interpretation comes from Michael Bublé (2005).
The song has become the jazz standard . Major instrumental versions come from Artie Shaw (1945), Bobby Jaspar (1954), Barney Kessel (1954), Jimmy Raney (1955), Ahmad Jamal (1955) and Charles Mingus (on his album Pithecanthropus Erectus from 1956). A recording by Wynton Marsalis from 1986 uses metric reinterpretations and attempts at irritation.
literature
- Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .