Autumn Leaves (1945 song)


"Autumn Leaves" is a popular song and jazz standard composed by Joseph Kosma with original lyrics by Jacques Prévert in French, and later by Johnny Mercer in English. An instrumental version by pianist Roger Williams was a number 1 best-seller in the US Billboard charts of 1955.

Background

Kosma was a native of Hungary who was introduced to Prévert in Paris. They collaborated on the song :fr:Les Feuilles mortes|Les Feuilles mortes for the 1946 film Les Portes de la nuit where it was sung by Irène Joachim. Kosma was influenced by a piece of ballet music, "Rendez-vous" written for Roland Petit, which was itself borrowed partially from "Poème d'octobre" by Jules Massenet. The first commercial recordings of "Les Feuilles mortes" were released in 1950, by and by Yves Montand. Johnny Mercer wrote the English lyric and gave it the title "Autumn Leaves". Mercer was a partner in Capitol Records at the time, and Capitol recording artist Jo Stafford made the first English-language recording in July, 1950. The song was recorded steadily throughout the 1950s by leading pop vocalists including Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Doris Day, and Frank Sinatra. It was also quickly adopted by instrumental jazz artists including Artie Shaw, Stan Getz, Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal, Duke Ellington, and Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis. In 2012, jazz historian Philippe Baudoin called the song "the most important non-American standard" and noted that "it has been recorded about 1400 times by mainstream and modern jazz musicians alone and is the eighth most-recorded tune by jazzmen."

Structure and chord progression

The song is in AABC form. "Autumn Leaves" offers a popular way for beginning jazz musicians to become acquainted with jazz harmony as the chord progression consists almost solely of ii–V–I and ii–V sequences which are typical of jazz. It is originally in G minor.
The song's iv7–VII7–IIImaj7–VImaj7–iiø7–V7–i chord progression is an example of the circle-of-fifths progression.
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Other versions

As a jazz standard, "Autumn Leaves" has accumulated more than a thousand commercial recordings. Among those by notable performers are: