"Autumn Leaves" is a

popular song Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Funk ...

and jazz standard composed by

Joseph Kosma Joseph Kosma (22 October 19057 August 1969) was a Hungarian-French composer. Biography Kosma was born József Kozma in Budapest, where his parents taught stenography and typing. He had a brother, Ákos. A maternal relative was the photographe ...

in 1945 with original lyrics by

Jacques Prévert Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist moveme ...

in French (original French title: "Les Feuilles mortes"), and later by Johnny Mercer in English. An instrumental version by pianist

Roger Williams Roger Williams (21 September 1603between 27 January and 15 March 1683) was an English-born New England Puritan minister, theologian, and author who founded Providence Plantations, which became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantatio ...

was a number one 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 ' ("The Dead Leaves") for the 1946 film '' Les Portes de la nuit (Gates of the Night)'' where it was sung by

Irène Joachim Irène Joachim (13 March 1913 - 20 April 2001) was a French soprano, and later a vocal teacher. Early life Daughter of German officer Herman Joachim and French violinist Suzanne Chaigneau, and granddaughter of the violinist Joseph Joachim, she le ...

and Yves Montand. The poem was published, after the death of Jacques Prévert, in the book " Soleil de Nuit" in 1980. Kosma was influenced by a piece of ballet music, "Rendez-vous" written for Roland Petit, performed in Paris at the end of the Second World War, large parts of the melodies are exactly the same, which was itself borrowed partially from "Poème d'octobre" by

Jules Massenet Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are ''Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther'' ...

. 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 Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note ...

at the time, and Capitol recording artist

Jo Stafford Jo Elizabeth Stafford (November 12, 1917July 16, 2008) was an American traditional pop music singer, whose career spanned five decades from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. Admired for the purity of her voice, she originally underwent classi ...

made the first English-language recording in July, 1950.

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 Jazz harmony is the theory and practice of how chords are used in jazz music. Jazz bears certain similarities to other practices in the tradition of Western harmony, such as many chord progressions, and the incorporation of the major and minor s ...

as the chord progression consists almost solely of ii–V–I and ii–V sequences which are typical of jazz. Although it is in most times played in

G minor G minor is a minor scale based on G, consisting of the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has two flats. Its relative major is B-flat major and its parallel major is G major. According to Paolo Pietropaolo, it is the c ...

, the original key of the composition was A minor. The song's iv⁷–bVII⁷–bIII^maj7–bVI^maj7–ii^ø7–V⁷–i chord progression is an example of the circle-of-fifths progression. : \relative c'

Other versions

As a jazz standard, "Autumn Leaves" has accumulated more than a thousand commercial recordings. The song was recorded steadily throughout the 1950s by leading pop vocalists including Steve Conway (1950),

Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...

(1950),

Nat King Cole Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's music career began after he dropped out of school at the age of 15, and continued f ...

(1955), Doris Day (1956), and Frank Sinatra (1957). It was also quickly adopted by instrumental jazz artists including

Artie Shaw Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004) was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, actor and author of both fiction and non-fiction. Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led ...

(1950), Stan Getz (1952),

Erroll Garner Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1921 – January 2, 1977) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His instrumental ballad "Misty", his best-known composition, has become a jazz standard. It was first rec ...

and

Ahmad Jamal Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930) is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and educator. For six decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. Biography Early life Jamal was born Fr ...

(separately in 1955), Duke Ellington (1957),

Cannonball Adderley Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley (September 15, 1928August 8, 1975) was an American jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s. Adderley is perhaps best remembered for the 1966 soul jazz single " Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", wh ...

and Miles Davis, Vince Guaraldi (all 1958), and John Coltrane (1962, maybe earlier).

made the song a number-one hit in the U.S. in 1955, the first piano instrumental to reach number one. Composer

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for i ...

has written a

contrafact A contrafact is a musical work based on a prior work. The term comes from classical music and has only since the 1940s been applied to jazz, where it is still not standard. In classical music, contrafacts have been used as early as the parody mas ...

of the song (1965), using the same principle of small repetitive cells of melody and rhythm first put in use in his breakthrough piece, '' In C'' (1964). 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." The song is heavily referenced in "La Chanson de Prévert", a song by Serge Gainsbourg.

References

External links

"Autumn Leaves"
at jazzstandards.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Autumn Leaves (song) 1940s jazz standards 1945 songs 1955 singles Number-one singles in the United States Pop standards Torch songs Eva Cassidy songs Jerry Lee Lewis songs Manfred Mann songs The Coasters songs Nat King Cole songs Songs with lyrics by Johnny Mercer Compositions by Joseph Kosma