Written by Hoagy Carmichael and Paul Francis Webster (1945)
Written for the 1945 film noir Johnny Angel starring George Raft. In the film, Hoagy Carmichael (playing a character improbably named Celestial O’Brien) sings the song himself. The lyric was by Paul Francis Webster, who had previous collaborated with Carmichael on ‘Baltimore Oriole’.
It’s a short song, at just 26 bars and no verse. In the key of C, it has a curious Eb over Db7 in bar three on the line ‘Sunday blue sky’ that interrupts an otherwise basic progression , and it strays pleasingly into E minor (rather than the relative minor) in the bridge.
The first cover versions didn’t appear until the 1950s. Irene Kral recorded it on her debut album, The Band And I from 1959. Nina Simone on the album ‘Forbidden Fruit’. Bob Dorough included it in the second volume of ‘Hoagy’s Children’, and more recently Annie Lennox included the song as the opening track on her 2014 ‘Nostalgia’ album.