Блюз в ночи: История одной песни (1941)

the song
1941 song by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer

"Blues in the Night" is a popular blues song which has become a pop standard and is generally considered to be part of the Great American Songbook. The music was written by Harold Arlen, the lyrics by Johnny Mercer, for a 1941 film begun with the working title Hot Nocturne, but finally released as Blues in the Night. The song is sung in the film by William Gillespie. After the song was composed and the lyrics were written, African American baritone William Gillespie (1908–1968) was hired to perform the song in the jail cell for the film. In his review of the film, critic Howard Thompson of The New York Times argued that Gillespie's "superbly chanted" version of the Arlen–Mercer song transformed the motion picture and arguably "nailed the film down for posterity."

In 1942, "Blues in the Night" was one of nine songs nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Observers expected that either "Blues in the Night" or "Chattanooga Choo Choo" would win, so that when "The Last Time I Saw Paris" actually won, neither its composer, Jerome Kern, nor lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II, was present at the ceremony. Kern was so upset at winning with a song that had not been specifically written for a motion picture and that had been published and recorded before the film came out that he petitioned the Motion Picture Academy to change the rules. Since then, a nominated song has to have been written specifically for the motion picture in which it is performed.

Composer Alec Wilder said of this song, Blues in the Night' is certainly a landmark in the evolution of American popular music, lyrically as well as musically."

The song was frequently quoted by composer Carl Stalling in his musical scores for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for Warner Bros. studios in the 1940s and 1950s. The then recent hit song is sung incessantly by Daffy Duck in the ironically titled 1942 cartoon My Favorite Duck, in which Porky Pig is tormented by the duck while on a camping trip. Porky's preferred number in that cartoon is "On Moonlight Bay". At one point, Porky unconsciously starts to sing "My Mama Done Tol' Me," then stops, looks into the camera with a "Harumph!" and returns to "Moonlight Bay". Additionally, the musical riff "my mama done tol' me" is used to identify a black duck from 'South' Germany in the 1942 Looney Tunes cartoon The Ducktators, and the song is featured prominently (with revised lyrics) in the 1943 Merrie Melody cartoon Fifth Column Mouse as well as in Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. In the 1942 cartoon, Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, Bugs Bunny half mutters the song, changing the lyrics to, "My mamma done told me, a buzzard is two faced " The melody is also heard in Porky Pig's Feat, Early to Bet, The Hypo Chondri Cat, and others. Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, would occasionally sing the beginning of the song on the Jack Benny radio program. In the short lived 1979 sitcom The Last Resort, Stephanie Faracy emphatically sang it while kneading bread dough. In the Duck Dodgers season 2 episode, "Talent Show a Go Go," the song is sung by the show's main antagonist Queen Tyr'ahnee, the Martian Queen. In The Simpsons Season 26 episode, "The Musk Who Fell to Earth," lines from the song are sung by Carl during a flashback montage.