“‘A Foggy Day’ has been described as ‘beautiful,’ ‘easy-going,’ ‘atmospheric,’ and, interestingly, ‘timeless,’ considering the brothers are said to have written the song in less than an hour.” - JW

AKA A Foggy Day in London Town Rank 88 Music George Gershwin Lyrics Ira Gershwin   Fred Astaire introduced “A Foggy Day” in the 1937, RKO musical, A Damsel in Distress. Later that year his recording of the song would rise to number three on the pop charts. “Things Are Looking Up” and “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” two other songs from the Gershwin score, were also charting hits, with the latter rising to number one. “A Foggy Day” was on the charts again early in 1938 when Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, with vocalist Kay Weber, saw their version rise to number 16.     More on Fred Astaire     Chart information used by permission from Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories 1890-1954   Based on a P.G. Wodehouse novel, published in 1919 A Damsel in Distress had proven itself a popular commodity years before George Gershwin had a notion of making it into a musical comedy. It had already been made into a 1920 silent film and then graced the stage as a play in 1928. Gershwin’s attraction to the book was understandable. The central figure in the novel is a character named George who, though successful as a composer, is unsuccessful at finding the right woman to marry. It is intriguing to consider that even though the book predates the RKO movie by eighteen years, it is conceivable that the fictional George contained elements of (the real) George Gershwin’s personality. Ohio State Professor John Mueller, co-author of the hit musical A Foggy Day (Shaw Festival, Ontario Canada), writes in his background notes, “As it happens, George Gershwin had been a rehearsal pianist for Miss 1917, a musical Kern and Wodehouse had worked on, and the promising young composer may have been in mind when the whimsical novelist got around to dubbing his American songwriter-hero.”     More on George Gershwin       More on Ira Gershwin   The casting for A Damsel in Distress did not go smoothly. RKO was forced to find another partner for Fred Astaire when, after seven movies together, Ginger Rogers demanded a break from musicals. With Joan Fontaine replacing Rogers, the movie company attempted to compensate by including the comedy team of George Burns and Gracie Allen. While audiences were disappointed with the break in tradition, they were thrilled with the superb Gershwin score.

More information on this tune... Allen Forte The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924-1950: A Study in Musical Design Princeton University Press Hardcover: 336 pages (Author/educator Forte devotes four pages to the history of the song and an anlysis of its musical content.) Ira Gershwin Lyrics on Several Occasions Limelight Editions Paperback: 424 pages (The lyricist himself gives an anecdotal history of the song and discusses his lyric.) See the Reading and Research page for this tune for additional references. - Jeremy Wilson

This section suggests definitive or otherwise significant recordings that will help jazz students get acquainted with “A Foggy Day.” These recordings have been selected from the Jazz History and CD Recommendations sections.

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Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s 1956 recording of “A Foggy Day” (Ella and Louis) stands out as one of the great vocal renditions of the tune. Among instrumental versions, the swinging 1956 performance by Red Garland’s trio (A Garland of Red) is a classic example of the tune as a hard-swinging number. Meanwhile, the tune’s applicability as an up-tempo vehicle is well-demonstrated on Art Tatum’s recording from the same year along with the clarinet of Buddy DeFranco (The Tatum Group Masterpieces, Vol. 7).

Noah Baerman - Jazz Pianist and Educator

Ira Gershwin’s beguiling verse almost paraphrases the chorus. Both verse and chorus open with gloom and then transition to an uplifting close. The verse suspends the answer, however, leaving the chorus to explain what transformed the foggy day into “the luckiest day I’ve known.” While the verse is not always included on vocal recordings, it can be heard by Ella Fitzgerald (The Complete Songbooks - George and Ira Gershwin), Louis Armstrong (Ella and Louis), Chris Connor (Chris Connor Sings The George Gershwin Almanac of Song), and Rosemary Clooney (Dedicated to Nelson).

Critical analyses of “A Foggy Day” rarely fail to comment on the simplicity of the song and George Gershwin’s use of repeated notes. William Zinsser, in Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs, says that “the song is calm and mature, wise in its understatement” and that it takes its emotion from “repetitive clusters and melodic jumps.”

George Gershwin’s use of repeated notes is widely recognized and found in many of his songs including “Oh, Lady Be Good!” (1924), “That Certain Feeling” (1925), “Someone to Watch Over Me” (1926), and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” (1937). In Wayne Schneider’s The Gershwin Style: New Looks at the Music of George Gershwin, contributor C. Andre Barbera says, “[Repeated notes] build melodic tension while emphasizing rhythm and holding the door open for harmonic ingenuity…the ear is simply drawn to the harmonic progressions.” The opportunity to showcase harmonic ingenuity makes these songs compelling to many jazz musicians. And shifting the complexity to the bass line increases the likelihood the song will be a hit because more artists can sing it.

Gershwin wasn’t the first or the last to use the repeated notes device. Examples are common, ranging from Chopin’s “Prelude in E minor” to Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye” (1944). In the October, 1998, issue of Atlantic Monthly, David Schiff points out in his article “Misunderstanding Gershwin” that “Gershwin may have taken some of his most distinctive musical touches from Chopin’s ‘Prelude in E minor’…Chopin’s melody emphasizes numerous repetitions of the same pitch…Each time a note is repeated, the harmony under it changes…making the melodic notes sound ever more intense.”

- JW

Musical analysis of “A Foggy Day”
Original Key	F major
Form	A – B –A – C
Tonality	Major throughout
Movement	Repeated notes, followed by an upward skip or an upward leap;  arpeggiated descent with step-wise embellishment.
Comments     (assumed background)
Harmonically speaking, this is one of Gershwin’s “slicker” compositions. “A” and the second half of “B” are based on the I – VI7 – II7 – V7 progression (similar to “I Got Rhythm” as well as the first four measures of “Just You, Just Me” and “Sweet Lorraine”). In fact, the harmonic progression of the first twelve measures is virtually identical to “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off.” However, many of the important melodic pitches fall on color notes and chord extensions (maj7, b9, b5, 11 and 13) to give this otherwise simple tune a very sophisticated tonality.
K. J. McElrath - Musicologist for JazzStandards.com

Clarinetist and band leader Artie Shaw loved numbers written by top songwriters like George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter. Always looking ahead, Shaw assembled a killer big band following World War II that included jazz great Roy Eldridge on trumpet and young lions Barney Kessel on guitar and Dodo Marmorosa on piano. As jazz became more complex during the beginnings of the bebop era, Shaw quickly embraced the style, and elements of it crept into his playing, as evidenced on his record of “A Foggy Day,” which also has solos by Eldridge, Kessel and Marmorosa.

Chris Tyle - Jazz Musician and Historian

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Artie Shaw Artie Shaw: 1945 Classics 1277

“A Foggy Day” was included in these films:

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• A Damsel in Distress (1937, Fred Astaire)
• An American in Paris (1951, Oscar Levant, piano, not used in film)

This section shows the jazz standards written by the same writing team.

George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin
Year	Rank	Title
1924	18	“The Man I Love”
1924	22	“Oh, Lady Be Good!”
1930	24	“Embraceable You”
1930	54	“But Not for Me”
1938	57	“Love Is Here to Stay”
1930	73	“I Got Rhythm”
1926	77	“Someone to Watch Over Me”
1937	86	“They Can't Take That Away from Me”
1937	88	“A Foggy Day”
1927	98	“'S Wonderful!”
1937	158	“Nice Work If You Can Get It”
1937	201	“Love Walked In”
1927	213	“How Long Has This Been Going On?”
1929	320	“Strike Up the Band”
1924	329	“Fascinating Rhythm”
1929	381	“Soon”
1931	419	“Who Cares? (So Long As You Care for Me)”
1935	420	“It Ain't Necessarily So”
1930	487	“I've Got a Crush on You”
1936	766	“Let's Call the Whole Thing Off”
1936	927	“They All Laughed”
1926	983	“Maybe”

George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward
Year	Rank	Title
1935	270	“I Loves You Porgy”
1935	539	“Bess, You Is My Woman Now”

George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and Gus Kahn
Year	Rank	Title
1929	189	“Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)”

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