“Days of Wine & Roses” | Stories of Standards

Tune in to First Take with Lando and Chavis – weekdays from 6-9 am MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song all week long!

The 1962 movie “Days of Wine and Roses” was based on the 1958 teleplay “Playhouse 90: Days of Wine and Roses”. The title was excerpted from an 1896 Ernest Dowson poem (Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam, which roughly translates as “Life Is Too Short To Begin Long Hopes”). Andy Williams sang “Days of Wine and Roses” on the film’s songtrack, winning a gold record, while Mancini and Mercer won a Grammy for Song of the Year and Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Henry Mancini (1924-1994) won 20 Grammys, four Oscars and the Golden Globe Award. As a teenager he wrote arrangements which he sent to Benny Goodman, who encouraged him to continue. As one of the most successful film composers in the world and a popular concert conductor, he was greatly influential. The lyricist Gene Lees said that his scores “contained almost as many fully developed song melodies as a Broadway musical.” Mancini was working on a musical adaptation of “Victor/Victoria” at the time of his death in 1994.

Johnny Mercer (1909-1976) wrote lyrics to more than a thousand songs, wrote music for a number of Broadway shows and cofounded Capitol Records. “Moon River”, another Mancini-Mercer collaboration, was so highly regarded that the Georgia legislature changed the name of the Back River, which ran past Mercer’s house, to Moon River.