All The Things You Are

Written by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II in 1938 for the Broadway musical Very Warm for May, this song was the final collaboration between two of the American songbook's most important partnerships. The show itself, directed by Vincente Minnelli, was a commercial failure that closed after just 59 performances, yet the song outlived it to become one of the most performed standards in jazz. Kern reportedly considered its harmonic complexity too difficult for mass appeal. The composition moves through several key centers with semitone modulations at the end of each A section and an enharmonic pivot in the bridge, giving it a restless, ascending quality unusual for popular songs of the era. The original score was lost for decades and not reconstructed until 1984 by John McGlinn with the Boston Pops. Eddie Duchin and His Orchestra made the first recording in October 1939, and versions by Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw soon followed as the song topped charts into 1940. Coleman Hawkins recorded an influential septet version in 1944 that reframed the tune as a vehicle for improvisation rather than dancing. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker took it further in 1945, adding a Rachmaninoff-inspired introduction and altered harmonies that became standard practice. Parker later recorded it under the title Bird of Paradise in 1947, cementing its status as an essential proving ground for bebop musicians and generations of improvisers since.