#listeneveryday 23 Nov 2020
September Song first appeared in the 1938 Broadway musical Knickerbocker Holiday, which German composer Kurt Weill wrote with playwright Maxwell Anderson. The musical ran for about six months but as it was satirical and critical of Roosevelt's New Deal programme it soon found itself unwelcome on the Broadway stage.
As a jazz 'standard' September Song found more fame after it was recorded by Bing Crosby in 1943 and Frank Sinatra in 1946 as well as the original Walter Huston version being used in a 1950 film called September Affair.
Though originally it was sung from the perspective of an older man there are a number of versions by female singers, such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Weill's wife, Lotte Lenya.
I've gone one of Frank Sinatra's later recordings, made in 1965. Like another Weill song, Mack The Knife, the Sinatra version is very different from how the song appeared in its original context.
More to listen to
Walter Huston's original version of September Song
Mack The Knife - as made famous by Bobby Darin though it originally appeared in Weill and Bertold Brecht's production of The Threepenny Opera
Lotte Lenya's chilling version of September Song
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