All The Things You Are
Long-time readers know my complex relationship with the Jerome Kerns/Oscar Hammerstein piece from Very Warm For May. As fate would have it, I heard an outstanding rendition of it last week, so I thought I'd follow up with a non-outstanding rendition of my own.
Marcello's Chophouse will not live in my memory as a place where outstanding steaks are served. It didn't help that I'd had a massive lunch at the famous "Dog House" just a few hours before. With that said, there was a pretty solid pair of old cats playing music up at the front of the house and they acceded to my request for "All The Things You Are". And they just killed it. I was so happy.
I should point out that this song exists in the public imagination in two separate and distinct forms. There's the original vocal, which can be done with the opening section from the play, or without, as seen here:
That version has exactly one fan under eighty years of age: me. Nobody sings this song any more. You'll search in vain on YouTube for any vocal variant recorded past 1960 or so. Sinatra was the last guy to do it.
Then there's "All The Things" as a bop tune:
Or as a post-bop tune:
As an instrumental, it's had tremendous staying power. It's thematically complex and it's a genuine standard. When I told my brother that I wanted to call the tune at an open jam recently, he was all for it... until I explained that I wanted to sing it. Then he laughed. "Nobody sings that song."
So what you see above is me trying to redress that, by singing the complete original version. It's a cold read from the Real Book, as you can see by my eyes flicking up for every change, but there you go. All the things you are. One of my favorites, from Buck's in Louisville to Marcello's in Albuquerque, and everywhere in between, the siren song of romance, yearning, longing. All those things it is.