"BLUES IN THE NIGHT" AN ARLEN & JOHNNY MERCER CLASSIC

" Blues In The Night" An Arlen & Johnny Mercer Classic:  It is impossible for me to restrain myself from going over the top in extolling the virtues of this song. So I won't.
Written for the 1942 Warner's film " Blues in the Night" , Arlen and Mercer created a near perfect marriage of music and words. Both men were deeply immersed in jazz and blues idioms and Mercer's southern background helped him fashion such highly original and genuine folk expressions. Arlen wanted to write a true blues number for the film and after studying W.C Handy's " A Treasury of the Blues", he began to play with various possible themes. Suddenly. as he later recalled, " I got this little notion and the fires went up and the whole thing poured out ! " He rushed to play the song for Mercer who jotted down several possible lyric ideas. Arlen felt that the first important twelve bars " didn't hang together." After looking through some four pages of Mercer's sketches, he was attracted to  several lines Mercer had written but which were not included in the song. Arlen suggested that those lyrics start off the piece.

                      My mama done tol' me, when I was in kneepants,
                      My mama done tol' me son !
                      A woman'll sweet talk, and give ya the big eye,
                      But when the sweet talkin's done,
                      A woman's a two-face,
                      A worrisome thing who;ll leave ya 't sing
                      The blues in the night.
" Blues in the Night" has an  unusual structure with a series of twelve and eight bar phrases between two sections where two measures are to be whistled ( using a musical theme introduced at the beginning of the song.) Alec Wilder was particularly fond of Mercer's " indigenous, salty, earthy, regional placename lines."
So impressed were the Warner executives that they scrapped the initial title " New Orleans Blues" and the movie became " Blues in the Night."
Sometimes, an original and truly artistic song can also become a popular " hit" song. That was the case with this Arlen/Mercer collaboration prompting a number of big ands like Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Harry James ro record the song. In February of 1942, the song reached number One on the Hit Parade.
  Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddlle combined to create a memorable version of this song in their wonderful album recording " Only The Lonely."  Sinatra adopts a rueful and restrained interpretation matched by Riddle's own arrangement which does not shout but quietly conveys the sorrowful nature inherent in the music and the lyrics. The whistling motif is included and may have been done by Sinatra himself.
There is also a version to be sung by a female in which Ella Fitzgerald laments the fact that it's a man who is the one who will " Leave you to sing, the blues in the night."  Her version is more angry and intense and quite improvisational as befitting her historically strong jazz inclinations. Ultimately, it seems that either a man or a woman can leave you to sing "The Blues in the Night."

SINATRA LINK:
                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Uakf7Fjek

FITZGERALD LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niOkDUnyBnA