"April in Paris" is a song with music by Vernon Duke and lyrics by Yip Harburg (E.Y. Harburg). It was written in 1932 for the Broadway revue Walk a Little Faster, which ran for one season in 1933. The original performance is credited to Evelyn Hoey, and the first hit recordings, by Freddy Martin and Henry King, came at the end of 1933. Alec Wilder called it a perfect theater song. A 1952 version by the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, inspired by the film April in Paris, made the Cashbox Top 50.
The best-known version is Count Basie's 1955 recording, which gave its title to his 1957 Verve album, produced by Norman Granz and arranged by Wild Bill Davis. It features a solo by Thad Jones based on "Pop Goes the Weasel" and a bridge played by Benny Powell. That recording is in the Grammy Hall of Fame, and a revised Basie arrangement was used in the 1974 film Blazing Saddles. German sources describe the song as part of the Great American Songbook that became a jazz standard after Basie. Among its many performers are Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Sarah Vaughan.
