The song of the day for Friday, February 14, 2014, Valentine’s Day, is “All For You.”

About This Song

Today’s song, “All For You,” is adapted from a Django Reinhardt song called “Nuages” with lyrics by Tony Bennett. Billboard magazine noted the song in an article about the album:

Bennett continues to challenge himself. In fact, for the first time in his career, the artist contributed his own lyrics to a song on his new album, “The Art of Romance.” The cut, “All for You,” is based on an instrumental jazz tune called “Nuages” written by Django Reinhardt and Jacques LaRue.

“I heard a nice trio playing it in Hawaii and went to the piano player and asked what tune it was,” Bennett recalls. “So I found the family who owned it and got permission to write the lyric, and it’s funny, but it just rolled out in an hour.”

A love song for Bennett’s companion Susan Crow, “All for You” keeps with the album title’s theme. He says it was also inspired by “all the great lyricists from the Golden Age — [Jerome] Kern and Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg and [Johnny] Mercer, of course.”

About This Version

“All For Love” is from Tony Bennett’s wonderful 2004 album The Art of Romance. This album is the album that made me the Tony Bennett fan that I am today: I literally listened to it, in its entirety, two or three times a day for week. The album is exactly what it says it is: the art of romance. The album has the arc of a romance: starting with first falling in love (“Close Enough For Love” and “All In Fun”) to deep love (“I Remember You” and “All For You”) and finally to the end of a beautiful affair (“Don’t Like Goodbyes” and “Gone With The Wind”). While any of the songs on the album is always worth a listen, listening to it from start to finish is a remarkable and beautiful exploration about the nature of romance.

The album was produced by Phil Ramone. This song was arranged and conducted by the noted composer and arranger Johnny Mandel (who wrote two of the songs on the album as well) and features the quartet of Lee Musiker (piano), Paul Langosch (bass), Gray Sargent (guitar) and Clayton Cameron (drums).

http://open.spotify.com/track/7BM3dTtWqRswr3wDYZnwXB
“All For You,” as well as the album The Art of Romance, is available from iTunes.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. And remember, nobody can sing a love song like Tony Bennett. He’s the best.