Vernon Duke’s composition was written for the 1934 show Thumbs Up! and introduced by J. Harold Murray. Thirteen years later it rose to number 27 on the pop charts thanks to a fine vocal version by Frank Sinatra.
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Composer Vernon Duke wrote three pieces for Thumbs Up!: a dance number for Hal Le Roy to tap to, a tango for J. Harold Murray, and the finale, “Autumn in New York.” Only the latter remained in the show which opened on December 27, 1934, and closed five months later. In his autobiography Passport to Paris Duke described the show as “a decent, average revue [that] received decent, average notices.”
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Duke wrote “Autumn in New York” while vacationing in Westport, Connecticut. Again from his autobiography he discusses the “premier” of the tune: “Both the long ‘conversational’ verse and the constantly modulating refrain contained not a particle of what the Harms (publishing company) moguls called ‘popular appeal’; the song was a genuine emotional outburst and, possibly, this genuineness accounted for its subsequent standard status. I played it at one or two Westport get-togethers and found the listeners retreating to the bar in the middle of the verse.”
It’s this very same verse that composer Alec Wilder, in his book American Popular Song, The Great Innovators 1900-1950, praises. “The verse may be the most ambitious I’ve ever seen. It begins simply enough, but halfway through it’s almost as if the other musical side of the man couldn’t be silent and the rest of the verse was finished by Dukelsky.” Here Wilder is alluding to composer Vernon Duke’s “other” life as a composer of extended works. Wilder continues: “It’s extremely difficult and very lush. But I find it very interesting, and I approve of its experimental nature. After all, it’s in the verse that the writer should be freer, for in practical terms it’s the chorus that’s being sold or promoted.”
But then again, perhaps the problem with the song was that it was too far ahead of its time in 1934. The big bands of Harry James and Charlie Spivak played the tune on radio broadcasts in 1944, and there was a 1946 recording made for Musicraft Records by vocalist Louanne Hogan. But it wasn’t until 1947 with recordings by vocalists Jo Stafford and Frank Sinatra that the tune made any kind of splash.
Duke’s lyrics to the verse could easily be the message from a post card: “It’s time to end my lonely holiday, and bid the country a hasty farewell.” He goes on to mention returning to a Manhattan hotel “on the 27th floor, looking down on the city I hate and adore!” The lyrics of the chorus are a joy, filled with picturesque writing: “glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel” and in the second chorus “jaded roues and gay divorcees, who lunch at the Ritz,” all of which explain why New York in autumn is so special.
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