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Night and Day (song)

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(Redirected from Night And Day (song)) 1932 song by Cole Porter This article is about the song by Cole Porter. For other songs, see Night and Day § Songs.

"Night and Day"
Single by Fred Astaire with Leo Reisman and His Orchestra
B-sideI've Got You On My Mind
PublishedNovember 18, 1932 (1932-11-18) by Harms, Inc., New York
ReleasedJanuary 13, 1933 (1933-01-13)
RecordedNovember 22, 1932 (1932-11-22) take 2
StudioRCA Victor 24th Street, New York City
Venueboth sides from the Broadway musical, "The Gay Divorce"
GenrePopular Music, Musical theatre
Length3:28
LabelVictor 24193
Songwriter(s)Cole Porter

"Night and Day" is a popular song by Cole Porter that was written for the 1932 musical Gay Divorce. It is perhaps Porter's most popular contribution to the Great American Songbook and has been recorded by dozens of musicians. NPR says "within three months of the show's opening, more than 30 artists had recorded the song."

Fred Astaire introduced "Night and Day" on November 29, 1932, when Gay Divorce opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

The song was so associated with Porter that when Hollywood filmed his life story in 1946, with Cary Grant, the movie was entitled Night and Day.

Fred Astaire recordings

A week before the musical Gay Divorce opened in November 1932, Astaire gathered with Leo Reisman and His Orchestra at Victor’s Gramercy Recording Studio in Manhattan to make a record of two Cole Porter compositions, "Night and Day" backed with "I've Got You on My Mind". All was done under the dark shadow cast by the 1929 Stock Market Crash, which had spawned the Great Depression, the worst economic disaster in American history. In just over two years, record industry revenues had fallen from $100 million to $6 million, driving all but three companies (RCA Victor, American Record Corporation (ARC) and Columbia) out of business. The single was released as Victor 24193 on January 13, 1933, and it went on to become the top selling record of the year, with 22,811 copies sold.

On May 23, 1933, Astaire recorded it again (due to anti-trust concerns) for Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd., which was now a part of Electric and Musical Industries (EMI). It was released in the United Kingdom in October on Columbia DB 1215, backed with "After You Who?", another Porter composition. Reisman, under contract to RCA Victor, was unable to accompany Astaire on this record. It can be distinguished from the US version because it is fifteen seconds shorter (3:10).

Another Fred Astaire version in circulation is from the soundtrack of the 1934 motion picture, The Gay Divorcee, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. After the film opened on October 19, this version was released, and has appeared on record albums over the years. It is almost five minutes long, and Astaire sings and dances for the duration. Astaire is accompanied by Max Steiner and the RKO Radio Studio Orchestra.

The next release was recorded in December 1952, and released the following year in a four LP set called The Astaire Story, which provided an overview of songs Astaire had performed during his career. The musicians included Oscar Peterson and all the songs were fresh recordings. This version of "Night and Day" was over five minutes long.

Inspiration for the song

There are several accounts about the song's origin. One mentions that Porter was inspired by an Islamic prayer when he visited Morocco. Another account says he was inspired by the Moorish architecture of the Alcazar Hotel in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Others mention that he was inspired by a mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, having visited Ravenna during his honeymoon trip to Italy.

Song structure

The construction of "Night and Day" is unusual for a hit song of the 1930s. Most popular tunes then featured 32-bar choruses, divided into four 8-bar sections, usually with an AABA musical structure, the B section representing the bridge.

Porter's song, on the other hand, has a chorus of 48 bars, divided into six sections of eight bars—ABABCB—with section C representing the bridge.

Harmonic structure

"Night and Day" has unusual chord changes (the underlying harmony).

The tune begins with a pedal (repeated) dominant with a major seventh chord built on the flattened sixth of the key, which then resolves to the dominant seventh in the next bar. If performed in the key of B♭, the first chord is therefore G♭ major seventh, with an F (the major seventh above the harmonic root) in the melody, before resolving to F7 and eventually B♭ maj7.

This section repeats and is followed by a descending harmonic sequence starting with a -7♭5 (half diminished seventh chord or Ø) built on the augmented fourth of the key, and descending by semitones—with changes in the chord quality—to the supertonic minor seventh, which forms the beginning of a more standard II-V-I progression. In B♭, this sequence begins with an EØ, followed by an E♭-7, D-7 and D♭ dim, before resolving onto C-7 (the supertonic minor seventh) and cadencing onto B♭.

The bridge is also unusual, with an immediate, fleeting and often (depending on the version) unprepared key change up a minor third, before an equally transient and unexpected return to the key centre. In B♭, the bridge begins with a D♭ major seventh, then moves back to B♭ with a B♭ major seventh chord. This repeats, and is followed by a recapitulation of the second section outlined above.

The vocal verse is also unusual in that most of the melody consists entirely of a single note repeated 35 times —the same dominant pedal, that begins the body of the song—with rather inconclusive and unusual harmonies underneath.

Astaire and Rogers dance in The Gay Divorcee

Fred Astaire as Guy Holden and Ginger Rogers as Mimi Glossop.

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire danced to "Night and Day" in the 1934 film The Gay Divorcee. It was their first romantic dance duet in film and their first dance together in leading roles. Dance critic Alastair Macaulay wrote that this movie, and this dance number in particular, created one of the archetypes of romance, and that cinema "has never had another couple who enshrined romantic love so definitively in terms of dance." Film critic David Denby called "Night and Day" "Cole Porter's greatest song" and the Astaire–Rogers dance duet a vision of the sublime.

Other notable recordings

Popular culture

References

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