Here's That Rainy Day is a ballad composed by Jimmy Van Heusen with lyrics by Johnny Burke, published in 1953. It was written for the Broadway musical Carnival in Flanders, where it was introduced by Dolores Gray, though the show closed after only six performances. Despite the musical's failure, the song endured and gradually became one of the most respected standards in the Great American Songbook. The melody is notably complex and demanding, requiring careful navigation of the underlying harmony. Composer Alec Wilder described it as a very difficult song that almost demands its harmony's presence for a singer not to get lost in the intricate melodic line, while praising its great weight and authority. The harmony begins with a sense of harmonic ambiguity, evolving through the song toward realization and resolution, mirroring the lyric's theme of heartbreak and wistful reflection. Burke's lyric is restrained in its use of rhyme, employing only four rhyming words spaced eight bars apart, prioritizing emotional poignancy over cleverness. Though virtually unknown to jazz musicians in the 1950s, the song gained wider recognition after Frank Sinatra's influential recordings helped establish it in the jazz repertoire. It has since been interpreted by a wide range of artists including Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, and Ella Fitzgerald, each finding new dimensions in its sophisticated construction.
