Henry Mancini composed the music and Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for Days of Wine and Roses in 1962, creating the title song for Blake Edwards' film about alcoholism starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Both described the writing process as remarkably swift: Mancini recalled in his autobiography that the melody just came, it rolled out, while Mercer said he could not get the words down fast enough. The title derives from a nineteenth-century poem by Ernest Dowson called Vitae Summa Brevis, whose imagery of days of wine and roses emerging from a misty dream lent the composition its elegiac quality. The theme opens memorably on solo French horn, establishing a sophisticated character that anchors Mancini's entire film score, where the melody reappears in varied guises from spare guitar solo to string elegy to distorted fragments punctuated by dramatic stinger chords. Mercer's lyric is a study in economy, consisting of just two complex sentences across two stanzas, allowing melody and harmony to carry the emotional weight. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, marking the second consecutive Oscar for the Mancini-Mercer partnership after Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's. It also earned Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1964. Andy Williams' vocal recording reached number twenty-six on the charts while Mancini's instrumental version peaked at thirty-three. The composition quickly entered the jazz repertoire, where its sophisticated harmonic language and poignant melody have sustained continuous reinterpretation for over six decades.
