Blue Skies (song)

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Blue Skies is a jazz standard composed in 1926 by Irving Berlin and made a top hit in 1927 by Ben Selvins Knickerbockers .

History of origin

Blue Skies is originally from Vaudeville star Belle Baker (Bella Becker). She was not satisfied with the title This Funny World , which the famous team of authors Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart had planned as a solo number for her in the Ziegfeld production Betsy . Without contacting Rodgers / Hart, the successful composer and music publisher Irving Berlin, who was a friend of Baker, was asked by Baker if he could leave a title as a solo for Betsy . It was about Blue Skies , which he spontaneously wrote in the evening at Belle Baker's home on December 16, 1926.

Structure of the song

The 32-bar song is structured in the song form AABA. The song plays with the ambiguity of the English word blue : "Blue days" are on the one hand "sad days", on the other hand the "blue sky" is the bright blue sky - also musically. “The A part begins in a draped E minor with line cliché and opens in the middle to G major : the blue sky breaks through.” While the melody of the A part “sluggishly extends to 14 tones in 8 bars limited, the pace in the B section seems to double. 36 syllables phrased in eighth-notes suggest a break in jazzy lightheartedness: freshly in love, someone seems to be strolling through the streets whistling. "

Producer Florenz Ziegfeld interpolated the title into the complete works of Betsy from Rodgers / Hart . The actual Betsy authors were very angry about the title incorporated into their complete works. Just 12 days after its composition, Blue Skies became the outstanding song of the performance at Betsy's opening show in New York's New Amsterdam Theater on December 28, 1926, as 24 encores were required from the audience that evening.

The copyright was published on January 14, 1927 in Irving Berlin's own music publisher. Belle Baker only sang the song in just 39 performances of Betsy , with Irving Berlin from the audience joining in the last performance; however, the musical itself was not a success. Baker did not record the track on record.

Al Jolson sang the song as one of a total of nine pieces in one of the first sound films, The Jazz-Singer , which premiered on October 6, 1927.

Cover versions

Paul Whiteman & Orchestra - Blue Skies (1939)
Mel Powell & Orchestra - Blue Skies (1942)

Recordings followed in 1927, seven versions, including that of Ben Selvin and his orchestra, which worked here under the pseudonym Knickerbockers . Selvin's recording was made on January 15, 1927 and, after its release in April 1927, reached first place on the hit parade, where it stayed for two weeks. This version with singer Charles Kaley remained the most successful version of the title.

Further American cover versions in 1927
  • George Olsen and His Music (1927, # 2)
  • Vincent Lopez and His Orchestra (singer Frank Munn, 1927, # 9)
  • Johnny Marvin and Ed Smalle (1927, # 9)
  • Harry Richman (1927, # 13)
  • Vaughn De Leath (1927, vocals, # 15)

These versions also made it onto the American charts. In August 1927 singer Al Bowlly played the first European recording of the song with pianist Edgar Adeler in Berlin . In Europe, the song was performed in 1927 by Josephine Baker and Fritz Kreisler .

In Berlin, the team of authors Fritz Rotter and Otto Stransky composed a German text based on Berlin's melody, which was published by Verlag Alberti, Berlin. The tenor Sergei Abranowicz, who was born in Bydgoszcz , Poland, sang the song entitled “Eine has küsst mich” in April 1928, accompanied by Paul Godwin and his jazz orchestra, for the “Grammophon”. It was under this title that Fred Bird and his “Salon Symphonie Jazzband” recorded the song on Homocord . The orchestras of Dajos Béla and Marek Weber also played it instrumentally , the latter in an arrangement provided by Friedrich Hollaender .

On April 4, 1939, Paul Whiteman recorded a version with his orchestra in the USA ; in February 1942, a version was created by Mel Powell & His Orchestra; both missed the hit parade. Further cover versions were made by Moon Mullican (1939), Slim Gaillard (1940-1942) and the Tommy Dorsey orchestra (with Frank Sinatra ) (1941). Benny Goodman reached number 9 in the American charts with his version created on May 14, 1945, Count Basie with his recording on October 9, 1945 after publication in September 1946 to number 8.

On October 16, 1946, a musical film with Bing Crosby / Fred Astaire of the same title was released in US cinemas, which also contained the song (German film title: Blue is the sky ).

Willie Nelson recorded the title on December 12, 1977 under the direction of Booker T. Jones as a producer, and after it was released in June 1978, it topped the country charts for a week for a week. The US collecting society ASCAP has inventoried a total of 101 versions of Blue Skies , for composer Irving Berlin 456 titles are copyrighted by ASCAP. The pianist Kris Bowers received a Grammy nomination in the category of best instrumental or a cappella arrangement for his version, which was used in the soundtrack of the Don Shirley biopic Green Book .

Success as a jazz standard

By the early 1940s at the latest, the song was very widespread in the repertoire of jazz bands: In addition to the recordings of Goodman, Basie, Dorsey and Slim Gaillard, the versions by Ella Fitzgerald (1958), Harry James , Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong should be mentioned. In 1952 Dizzy Gillespie and Joe Carroll changed the naive text. But it took “until the eighties before sovereign new interpretations of the song could be heard. Stan Getz played it in 1982 as a floating mid-tempo ballad , Cassandra Wilson sang it in 1988 so darkly, as if it consisted only of blues and despair in a minor key. "

Filmography

literature

  • Ken Bloom: The American Songbook - The Singers, the Songwriters, and the Songs - 100 Years of American Popular Music - The Stories of the Creators and Performers . New York City, Black Dog & Leventhal, 2005, ISBN 1-57912-448-8 )
  • Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hans-Jürgen Schaal, Jazz-Standards, 2004, p. 72f.
  2. ↑ a b song portrait Blue Skies (Jazzstandards.com)
  3. ↑ Ken Bloom, The American Songbook , p. 188.
  4. ↑ Betsy 1926
  5. ↑ Homocord 4-2386 (Matr. M 19372), im wax A6 10 27. Cf. Bowlly discography
  6. ↑ Odeon 166.042 (Matr. KI 1247), to be heard on youtube
  7. ↑ His Master's Voice DA 880 / 7-7966 (Mat. A 38 215), rec. 1927, to be heard on youtube
  8. ↑ Gr. 21 273 / B 42 641 (mx.?) One kissed me (Blue Skies), Fox Trot from Berlin, Rotter & Stransky, to be heard on youtube
  9. ↑ Homocord 4-2426 (M 19487-2) Fred Bird The Salon Symphony Jazz Band.
  10. ↑ Odeon A 45 163 / O-2178 a (Be 5868) Blue Skies. Foxtrot (Irving Berlin): Dajos Béla dance orchestra, 1927
  11. ↑ His Master's Voice AM 871 / Electrola EG 634 / 8-40206 (Matr. BwR 1067-II) Blue skies. Fox Trot (I. Berlin, edited by F. Holländer): Marek Weber and his orchestra. See the music archive of the DNB
  12. ↑ For more information on this recording, see Roland, Tom: The Billboard Book Of Number One Country Hits . New York City / New York: Billboard Books; London: Guinness Publishing Ltd., 1991, pp. 218f
  13. ↑ ASCAP database on Blue Skies
  14. ↑ ASCAP entry about Irving Berlin
  15. ↑ 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards (2019) - Nominations: Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella: Blue Skies. Grammy Awards, December 1, 2019, accessed December 21, 2019 .
  16. ↑ In this version she is accompanied by the Paul Weston Orchestra on her Verve album Sings the Irving Berlin Songbook ; The soloist is Sweets Edison .

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