Look for the silver lining
Look for the Silver Lining is a song composedby Jerome Kern in 1916with lyrics by Buddy DeSylva , which is now part of the Great American Songbook . The best known recordings are those by Judy Garland (1946) and Chet Baker (1954).
Kern originally composed the piece in 1916 for the Zip Goes A Million show , which flopped. With new lyrics by DaSilva, who at that time was already considered one of the most talented poversmiths on Tin Pan Alley , the song was reused for the musical Sally , which premiered in 1920, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. , at New York's Princess Theater. With Marilyn Miller in the lead role, the play became the biggest hit of a Broadway musical to date, and Look for the Silver Lining became a hugely popular song.
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| Score of the song for Sally , 1920 | ||||
Judy Garland sang Look for the Silver Lining in 1946 in Till the Clouds Roll By , a free film adaptation of Kern's life, in the role of Marilyn Miller (the scene was filmed by her then-husband Vincente Minnelli at her express request). In the following years the song also became a jazz standard , in particular the version recorded by Chet Baker in 1954 had a formative effect on performance practice.
Known recordings
- Marilyn Miller (1929)
- Connee Boswell (1930)
- Helen Forrest (1944)
- Judy Garland (1946)
- Chet Baker (1954)
- Paul Desmond (1956)
- Aretha Franklin (1962)
- Sylvia McNair (1994)
- Susanna McCorkle (1998)
The discographer Tom Lord lists a total of 147 cover versions in the field of jazz.
literature
- Jaehee Choi: They Do That Voodoo So Well: A Critical Examination of Selected Songs of the Founders of the American Standard Songbook . Dissertation at the University of Southern California 2007. Published as UMI Microfilm, Ann Arbor 2008.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tom Lord: Jazz Discography (online)