"April Fooled Me" is a ballad composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics added posthumously by Dorothy Fields roughly a decade after Kern's death in 1945. Kern left the melody among several unused tunes in his estate, and his widow Eva later discovered the manuscripts, prompting Fields, a longtime Kern collaborator known for their joint work on "I Won't Dance" and "The Way You Look Tonight," to write words for three of these orphaned melodies, including this one. The result is a tender, introspective piece marked by Kern's characteristic lyrical melodic writing and subtle chromatic harmonies that lend the song a wistful, gently melancholic quality. Contemporary descriptions call it haunting and lovely, with Fields's lyrics carrying poetic undertones that evoke Chaucer and T.S. Eliot in their restrained imagery. The premiere recording appeared on George Byron's 1959 album Premiere Performance!, featuring orchestral arrangements and piano bridges by Andre Previn. Byron, who had married Kern's widow, was the singer Kern himself had earmarked to debut these songs. The tune has remained a deep cut in the Kern catalog, occasionally surfacing in tribute collections such as Henrietta Valor's Jerome Kern Revisited, but never entering the widely performed jazz standard repertoire. More recently, pianist Mark Limacher recorded a jazz-oriented interpretation on Caity Gyorgy's 2023 album You're Alike, You Two, bringing fresh attention to this overlooked gem from one of the Great American Songbook's foremost melodists.
