"Misty" is a romantic jazz ballad composed by Erroll Garner in 1954, with lyrics added by Johnny Burke the following year. Garner, a self-taught pianist who could not read or write music, reportedly conceived the melody during a flight after glimpsing a rainbow through mist amid a thunderstorm, humming it and air-keyboarding on his knees until he could work it out at a piano. The original instrumental recording appeared on Garner's album Contrasts, featuring his trio with Wyatt Ruther on bass and Fats Heard on drums. The composition uses a 32-bar AABC form built on a lush, flowing melody over harmonically inventive chord progressions that blend swing-era warmth with impressionistic touches reminiscent of Debussy and Ravel. Among its distinctive harmonic features is a deceptive resolution that sidesteps an expected ii-V cadence, creating an unexpected emotional turn before resolving back to the tonic. Burke's lyrics, added in 1955 at the suggestion of pianist Herb Mesick, opened the tune to vocalists and helped it reach wider audiences. Johnny Mathis's 1959 recording on the album Heavenly became a signature hit, reaching No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Misty" went on to become one of ASCAP's most-performed standards of the twentieth century, recorded extensively across jazz, pop, and other genres by artists including Sarah Vaughan, Dexter Gordon, and Ray Stevens, whose 1975 bluegrass rendition won a Grammy for Best Arrangement.
