Yesterdays (song)
Yesterdays is a ballad by Jerome David Kern with a text by Otto Harbach from 1933.
Yesterdays was written for the musical Roberta (1933, film versions 1935 and 1952). The ballad, which was originally held in 2/4 time , is kept in a minor key throughout and appears “melancholy without being desperate”. The composition consists of 32 bars in the ABAB song form , at a moderately slow tempo. The song deals with the memory of the bygone days of youth, which in addition to the painful side also has a comforting side: "Sad am I, glad am I."
Harmonious structure
The piece is in C minor throughout. The chord progressions are similar to the piece " Alone Together " in the first four bars (i - vi - ii7 - V7) and have descending chromatics like in " My Funny Valentine " in the second four (in the key, Cm - G7 / B - Eb / Bb - Am7 (b5)). A fifth case sequence follows in bars 9–12 and leads to As and Des, which surprisingly is led a semitone up to ii7 and then chromatically down to the tonic .
Impact history
The first recording of Yesterdays by Leo Reisman and his orchestra with singer Frank Luther reached number 3 in the American hit parade in 1933. It was interpreted by Irene Dunne in the 1935 musical film .
After a recording by Artie Shaw, the song became a jazz standard in swing and then also in modern jazz : The recordings by Billie Holiday (1939), Bud Powell (1950), Lee Konitz (1951, with Miles Davis ) and Coleman are considered essential Hawkins (1960, with Oscar Pettiford ), and 1963, with Sonny Rollins . The song was interpreted very often by Stan Getz . One of the most notable recordings of Yesterdays was by Ella Fitzgerald , published on her songbook album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Songbook (1963). More recent interpretations come from Fred Hersch / Bill Frisell , Branford Marsalis , Joshua Redman , Lynne Arriale and Melissa Walker . The discographer Tom Lord lists 1170 recordings in the field of jazz.
literature
- Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler, Christian Pfarr: Reclam's Jazz Guide . 4th, revised and supplemented edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-15-010355-X .
- Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .
Web links
- Song portrait at jazzstandards.com
- Lyrics online ( Memento from February 22nd, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marcus A. Woelfle, in Schaal, Jazz-Standards , p. 557
- ↑ "I'm sad, I'm happy."
- ↑ Lower case letters: minor level of the corresponding Roman numerals. Large: major
- ↑ The song was also interpreted in traditional jazz ( Peanuts Hucko ) and in the avant-garde ( Franz Koglmann ).
- ↑ Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed September 28, 2014)