April in Paris (song)

April in Paris is a song from the Great American Songbook, the Vernon Duke in 1932 wrote to a text EY Harburg for the musical Walk a Little Faster. Ever since the song was played in 1955 by Count Basie, he develops into a jazz standard.

Genesis

Walk a Little Faster was the first musical to the Duke wrote all the songs. The song was not part of the initially formed songs for the musical. During the presentation of the request was loud, nor insert a love song. The idea for this new song, April in Paris, was created during a meal by Vernon Duke with his friends in a New York restaurant, as a guest, allegedly Dorothy Parker, expressed a wish to go to Paris in April, while Robert Browning paraphrased " Oh, to be in Paris now did April's here" Duke is immediately a stick have gone up to an old piano and worked out the melody.

Features of the song

The almost universally held in major song builds on a 32 taktigen song form with the scheme A- A' -BA. " On Building on the words, April in Paris ' was the basic motive: " Three short higher and a short lower tone lead to a long intervening tone. "This basic motif is presented in the A sections at different pitches. " the more moving motif of the B- part corresponds to four-fold variation in each case with the words, I never ' the anaphoric designed verses. " Alec Wilder has stated that that are " theater a perfect song. "

Effect story

April in Paris was sung during the Boston preview performance in Walk a Little Faster with good success by Evelyn Hoey. On Broadway, but the song was in the critique by - possibly because Hoey had laryngitis and was therefore not vocally at the height. However, the blues singer Marian Chase recognized the potential of the song and took it into their repertoire, so that other musicians such as Eddie Duchin, Paul Weston, Hildegarde, and the opera singers Lilly Pons, and Dorothy Kirsten it were attentive and the song interpreted likewise. Two shots of April in Paris came 1933/34 in the American charts, but where they remained only a few weeks:

  • Freddy Martin and His Orchestra ( 1933-34, with singer Elmer Feldkamp, # 5)
  • Henry King and His Orchestra ( 1933-34, with singer Joe Sudy, # 14).

End of the 1940s, the Bebopper had become aware of "the interesting changes" of the song: Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker developed into " lawyers of the song", they played over and over again; so sat by Parker that April was played in Paris on his album With Strings 1949. 1952 Doris Day sang the song in the eponymous film starring Ray Bolger. The film flopped, but it was followed by additional interpretations, almost simultaneously by the Sauter - Finegan Orchestra. 1955 played the Count Basie Orchestra the song in an arrangement by Wild Bill Davis, a; thus came Basie in the hit parade and took the song with which he came into the Grammy Hall of Fame, from now on as the theme song. The same arrangement was also used by Duke Ellington.

Among the many vocal versions, the middle of the 1950s emerged ( Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong, Gloria Lynne ), impresses in the interpretation of Sarah Vaughan. To date, numerous other versions, such as Bill Evans, Erroll Garner, Nina Simone, Stéphane Grappelli, Dinah Shore, Kurt Elling or Alex Chilton emerged.

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