As Time Goes By

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As Time Goes By is a musical song by Herman Hupfeld ( text and melody ) from 1931. The song became world famous more than a decade after it was released for use in the film Casablanca .

The song

The song is in the classic song form AABA and comprises 34 bars . The A section is in major and the B section is in minor . It was designed as a part of the Broadway - musicals Everybody's Welcome , which was performed from October 1931 to February 1932, and was there by Frances Williams sung.

content

The refrain is as follows:

You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss,
A sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

About to translate with:

You don't forget this:
a kiss is still a kiss,
a sigh is just a sigh.
The essentials remain
when time goes by.

Impact history

Not only Frances William recorded the song in the year of its creation. The recordings by Rudy Vallée and Jacques Renard reached the charts in 1931 (number 15 and 13 respectively). Another cover version recorded Teddy Wilson and Billie Holiday .

The song became known worldwide in 1942 with the film Casablanca , sung by Dooley Wilson . In Casablanca only the chorus of the song is played. Max Steiner , who was responsible for the film's music, actually planned to replace the song with his own, but Ingrid Bergman was no longer available for the post-recordings and Jack Warner liked As Time Goes By , so he worked with Hupfeld's song and used it as a leitmotif started in the soundtrack .

The recordings from 1931 were then marketed again because of the recording ban . Vallée's rendition was in Your Hit Parade for 16 weeks (four of which were number one); Renard's interpretation reached number three. In 1944 Billie Holiday played the song again (with Eddie Heywood ) for Commodore . In 1952 Ray Anthony recorded As Time Goes By with singer Tommy Mercer (number ten).

The song also became the jazz standard . Besides Holiday, Louis Armstrong (accompanied by Nat King Cole ) and Ella Fitzgerald should be mentioned here. Instrumental versions were produced by Bob Brookmeyer (1959, with Bill Evans ), George Cables , Erroll Garner , Freddie Hubbard , Duke Jordan , Rolf Kühn , Lucky Thompson (1965), Stéphane Grappelli and Jessica Williams .

In Woody Allen's film Play It Again, Sam (1972), the references to Casablanca contains the piece is also played (in the version of Dooley Wilson). It is also used by Barbra Streisand in Peter Bogdanovich's Is' was, Doc? (1972) sung. In 1993 the song was picked up in the feature film Sleepless in Seattle ; there the version by Jimmy Durante (from 1965) is used. A short excerpt is still in the cinematic logo of the Warner Bros. - to hear movies. As Time Goes By is also the theme song for the British television series of the same name, sung by Joe Fagin .

Harry Nilsson , who interpreted the song on his 1973 album A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night , believed that this was perhaps the best song ever written. In 1988 the song was covered by Klaus Lage as Die Liebe remains , which was able to place in the German single charts.

The National Public Radio beamed in 2000 a series (The NPR 100) with the 100 most important musical works of America in the 20th century, which also As Time Goes By was dedicated to an episode. In the list published in 2004 AFI's 100 Years… 100 Songs of the American Film Institute for the 100 most important songs in American film, it landed in second place.

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: Casablanca  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ William K. Zinsser Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs 2006, pp. 165 ff.
  2. ^ David A. Jasen Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song 2003, p. 208.
  3. ↑ Klaus Lage - Love stays on hitparade.ch (accessed August 22, 2017)
  4. ↑ http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/vote/list100.html (accessed June 3, 2015)
  5. ↑ AFI's 100 Years… 100 songs. (PDF; 134 kB) In: afi.com. American Film Institute (AFI), June 22, 2005, accessed August 28, 2015 .