# A song in all leaves: Autumn Leaves is the ultimate nostalgic jazz song: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2022/12/08/a-song-in-all-leaves-autumn-leaves-is-the-ultimate-nostalgic-jazz-song-videos-photos/
- Published: 2022-12-08T00:02:08+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Like a warm coat: “Autumn Leaves” is the ultimate nostalgic jazz song. However,
the question of which of his many interpretations is the best is not so easy to 
answer.**

Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole? Edith Piaf or Juliette Greco? Miles Davis or Dave
Brubeck? Bob Dylan or Hannes Wader? In the end even Wolf Biermann? The question 
of which interpretation of “Autumn Leaves” is the best is not so easy to answer.
Especially since Keith Jarrett alone recorded five of them on CD. And which should
you prefer, the bluesy one from 2002 or the one with the highly dramatic introduction
from 1994? The straightforward, unsentimental one from 1996 or the one created ten
years earlier with the wonderfully floating ostinato at the end?

“Autumn Leaves” is a pretty resilient track, you’d have to be a really bad musician
to screw up this autumnal ballad. This may be due to the very straightforward opening
figure descending the G minor scale, or because the piece’s melancholic, end-of-
season mood sounds so familiar to everyone. A song that you can put on like a warm
coat.

Unlike most jazz standards, “Autumn Leaves” is based on a French text, the poem “
Les feuilles mortes” by Jacques Prévert, and is composed by French (originally Hungarian)
musician Joseph Kosma. Whereby Kosma took over the melody almost one to one, namely–
it seems weird, but it is like that – from a marching song of the Red Army: “White
Army, Black Baron”.

Music video: “Les feuilles mortes” by Edith PiafVideo: Youtube, Image: picture alliance/
Mary Evans Picture Library
 Four years later, the English version was written by
Johnny Mercer, a successful songwriter who penned, among other things, the lyrics
to Henry Mancini’s “Moon River”. Does Prévert’s poem speak of how time separates
lovers and how the sea erases the common trace (“Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s’aiment/
Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit / Et la mer efface sur le sable / Les pas des
amants désunis”), so Mercer, in whom not time but human will is to blame for the
separation of the lovers, concentrates in three short stanzas entirely on the seasonal
motif: “Since you went away / The days grow long / And soon I’ll hear / Old winter’s
song”.

![Autumn Leaves E minor version - Play along - C version - YouTube](https://i0.wp.
com/i.ytimg.com/vi/gaAhy-tGZlE/maxresdefault.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

But of course French singers like Edith Piaf sang the English version and American
singers like Iggy Pop, wonderfully absurd, the French version. There wasn’t a singer
of any repute who didn’t have the piece in their program in the 1950s and 1960s,
and there was hardly a jam session that didn’t use the catchy chord progression.

Some standard recordings of this standard were also made in those years. In particular,
the version recorded in 1958 by Miles Davis together with Cannonball Adderley, with
its modal introduction already pointing to the legendary “Kind of Blue” album from
1959, seems carved in stone today. What trumpet tone could be a better match for“
Autumn Leaves” than the master’s apparently chilled and yet subliminally glowing
hot one? Chet Baker’s, some will now say – but that touches on questions of faith.

With “Autumn Leaves” you run a little risk of drifting towards bar jazz. Especially
with singers like Nina Simone or Dee Dee Bridgewater, wonderful as they are, you
can see the clichéd cigarette smoke curling over the cocktails.

With “Autumn Leaves” you run a little risk of drifting towards bar jazz. Especially
with singers like Nina Simone or Dee Dee Bridgewater, wonderful as they are, you
can see the clichéd cigarette smoke curling over the cocktails.

Just as the piece anticipates its own fate: if it is about nostalgic feelings, about
the transience of love, one listens to it today with nostalgia and thinks of musical
times that seem long gone. It’s like a photo album in which the pictures are slowly
fading, but you still look at them again and again. Unfortunately, no more new pictures
will be added.

Apparently “Autumn Leaves” is not suitable for giving expression to the present,
finding a contemporary expression, as if the melody could not be translated into
a contemporary sound language. None of those who shape contemporary jazz who would
have taken on the piece up to now, no Ingrid Laubrock, no Kris Davis, no Makaya 
McCraven, no Mary Halvorson, no Kaja Draksler. Only drummer Tyshawn Sorey recorded
a small piano trio homage with pianist Aaron Diehl. But it doesn’t go beyond Bill
Evans’ classic recording or Keith Jarrett’s versions. So there’s nothing left but
to sentimentally surrender to the red-gold-shining beauty of this autumn song, and
that’s perhaps best done with Jacky Terrasson’s very French piano solo version, 
happily whirling up the leaves.

![Edith Piaf sang „Les feuilles mortes“, Yves Montand auch - hier sieht man die 
beiden in dem Film „Etoile sans lumiere“ (dt: „Chanson der Liebe“, 1946)](https://
i0.wp.com/media0.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/446698768/1.8460518/format_top1_breit/edith-
piaf-sang-les-feuilles.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

### _Related_