The Shadow of Your Smile

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The Shadow Of Your Smile is a song by Johnny Mandel (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics) from 1965. The ballad created for Vincente Minnelli's film The Sandpiper (initially under the title Love Theme from The Sandpiper ) is now one of the greats American Songbook and has also become the jazz standard .

Features of the song

The text of the ballad is about the farewell and the smile of the person walking, whose shadow remains with the abandoned and consoles again and again. The 32-bar song is in the simple form of AA '. It begins with an ascending eighth note sequence (he-fis-gh) in the prelude , which falls back down to the cis in the first measure, a very memorable, catchphrase-like motif. This phrase is varied several times; then long note values ​​follow over a bossa nova beat.

Impact history

The Shadow of Your Smile was initially used as the Love Theme from The Sandpiper in Minnelli's film in an instrumental version, with Jack Sheldon contributing a trumpet solo. A version sung by a choir can be heard in the credits. In 1966 the ballad was awarded the Oscar for best film song . Mandel also arranged and conducted the song for Tony Bennett , who had a minor hit with it; this version received the Grammy Award in 1966 as "Song of the Year" . Eddie Harris opened his album The In Sound (1965) with the song in 1965 .

Jazz singers such as Carmen McRae (1965) and Blossom Dearie (1966) provided early versions. Also Astrud Gilberto contributed to the popularity with the song, by making it one of their albums for the title song. Mandel also arranged The Shadow of Your Smile for Rosemary Clooney for a concert at Carnegie Hall . Lenny Andrade and vocalists like Jenny Evans and Greetje Kauffeld followed later .

Numerous jazz musicians such as John Patton , Benny Goodman , Erroll Garner , Hampton Hawes , Bill Evans , Johnny Smith , the Modern Jazz Quartet , Oscar Peterson and Wes Montgomery recognized the potential of the melody and included the song in their repertoire within a short time. In 1966 Oliver Nelson played one of the “most thoughtful versions” with his quartet; In the 1970s, other saxophonists such as Illinois Jacquet , Dexter Gordon or Art Pepper took on the ballad. In the 1990s Tito Puente interpreted the song as well as the Singers Unlimited or Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen . Guitarists like Joe Pass , Herb Ellis , Gene Bertoncini , John Pizzarelli or Biréli Lagrène also used The Shadow of Your Smile as a template for their improvisations.

Some interpretations cross the line with kitsch ; Performers such as Joey Baron and Anthony Ortega have impaled this “with heavily satirical means” . The song Helmut Owiewohl by Udo Lindenberg from 1985 also falls into this category , in which he sings a satirical-biting text about a fictional homoerotic adventure with Helmut Kohl on the same melody .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e H. J. Schaal Jazz-Standards , p. 424f.
  2. ↑ a b c song portrait (jazzstandards.com)
  3. ^ David Roberts: British Hit Singles & Albums , 19th edition, Guinness World Records Limited, London 2006, ISBN 1-904994-10-5 , p. 135.
  4. ↑ Holger Stürenburg Forever Young: The Sounds of the Cool Decade Munich 2001, p. 61