Tunes on Tuesday: You and the Night and the Music

Why this tune?

In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month in the US, this week’s tune is a tribute to one of the many Jewish American composers who helped create the body of work we know as the “Great American Songbook,” source of many of the jazz standards we still play today.

Arthur Schwartz, and his longtime collaborator Howard Dietz wrote “You and the Night and the Music” for a moderately successful 1934 Broadway show “Revenge With Music,” based on a Spanish folk tale about seduction. Dietz’s lyrics are appropriate for that theme, describing the “you” of the song as “setting my being completely on fire.”

The song made its way to the jazz world like so many other classic show tunes of that era. By the mid-1950s it was already established as an instrumental jazz standard, thanks to fine recordings from Tal Farlow, Hampton Hawes and many others. It’s a popular call in jam sessions, at least jam sessions I play in, and it’s usually part of my setlist on any gig.

Schwartz and Dietz contributed many other songs to the jazz canon including “Alone
Together,” “Dancing In The Dark” and “Haunted Heart.” Barbara Papendorp and I play another fun Schwartz/Dietz song “Rhode Island is Famous For You,” which Blossom Dearie recorded.

Tunes On Tuesday Reel

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Tal Farlow

Hampton Hawes