Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is a pop song that the composer Jerome Kern and the lyricist Otto Harbach wrote for their musical Roberta in 1933 . Cover versions of the song developed several times (1934, 1959) to number one hits ; besides, the song is a jazz standard .

History of origin

The composition was based on a theme that Kern had written for his musical Show Boat (1927) and initially wanted to use it for a tap dance interlude between two scenes. Harbach discovered the melody in Kern's documents and asked him to lengthen the short, march-like note values. Kern complied with this request and also wrote a B part, “which counteracted the harmoniously simple A part with key changes.” The song, which is consistently in major , is in the form of A-A'-B-A ', with the A part on the chord progression I –ii7 - V7 - I, then I - I7 (+5) (V7 / IV) - IV - # iv˚7 - I. The result was "an operetta-like melody with long notes on the first and a somewhat solemn attitude that calls for opulent orchestration". Harbach wrote a text based on the Russian proverb "When your heart burns, you get smoke in your eyes".

Reception history

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes was originally recorded by Gertrude Niesen for the Victor label; the recording session was on October 13, 1933. November 18, 1933, the first performance of the musical was on Broadway , where the play was very successful and was performed 293 times. Hollywood filmed the musical in 1935; in the film Roberta the song was sung by Irene Dunne and danced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers . As early as 1934, four cover versions made the American hit parade, with multiple top positions:

Artie Shaw was also successful with his version of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes , which he recorded with his Gramercy Five (1941, # 24). Victor Young recorded the song with Connee Boswell that same year . Nat King Cole recorded the song repeatedly since 1946. Vic Damone's version (1956) was also taken into account. Ray Conniff used Smoke Gets in Your Eyes as his signature tune. In 1958 , the song was recorded by the Doo Wop group The Platters , who had a number one hit with him on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959 ; their version of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes made it to number three on the American R&B charts . In the British charts, the Platters version led the charts for four weeks at the beginning of 1959.

The British band Blue Haze, formed by Johnny Arthey and Phil Swern, reached number 42 in the German charts in 1972 and number 27 in the American charts in 1973. Bryan Ferry interpreted the song on his album Another Time, Another Place , which reached number 17 in the UK charts in 1974.

Use in film

The song has been used several times in films:

Use in series

Use as a jazz standard

Numerous jazz musicians picked up the song at an early stage, such as Art Tatum , Tommy Dorsey , Benny Goodman or Teddy Wilson . Although innovators such as Thelonious Monk , Abdullah Ibrahim or Archie Shepp interpreted the song, "radical new interpretations of the flattering, but somewhat stiff melody remained the exception". Here is about John Lewis to name (1959). Most jazz interpretations chose either “the possibility of a quasi-vocal appropriation of the theme, as Clifford Brown attempted on his record With Strings , or a gentle ironization, as Artie Shaw performed with harpsichord and guitar parts in 1940. ” Singers also have each other of the song, such as Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald . Eartha Kitt recorded the song with a combo around Rolf and Joachim Kühn .

literature

  • David Ewen: The World of Jerome Kern, a Biography. Holt, New York 1960. OCLC 370890 .
  • Allen Forte: The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924-1950. Princeton University Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-691-04399-9 .
  • Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Schaal Jazz Standards p. 434f.
  2. ↑ a b song portrait at www.jazzstandards.com
  3. ^ Joel Whitburn: Top R&B / Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004 . Record Research, 2004, p. 463 .
  4. ↑ Simon Frith, Charlie Gillett: Rock File 4 . Panther Books Ltd, 1976, ISBN 0-586-04370-5 , pp. 388 .
  5. ↑ Michael Verity: One Hit Wonders: Blue Haze's “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on wnew.radio.com. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / wnew.radio.com
  6. ↑ Monk recorded Smoke Gets in Your Eyes several times, first in 1954 with the winds Ray Copeland and Frank Foster , later also solo. "While the version of the Platters is easy to get in the ears and can be carried away quickly, Monk seems to give his melodies barbed hooks that counteract the easy consumption ." - Schaal Jazz-Standards p. 435.