“Autumn Leaves” is a song by Joseph Kosma, with French lyrics by Jacques Prévert, written in 1945 and published in 1946 as “Les Feuilles mortes” (“The Dead Leaves”). It grew out of instrumental music Kosma composed for Roland Petit's ballet Le Rendez-vous (1945), for which Prévert wrote the storyline. Marcel Carné used the song in the film Les Portes de la nuit (1946), where Yves Montand and Irène Joachim hum it. Montand's 1949 Columbia recording was the first major commercial recording and sold a million copies within five years. Cora Vaucaire, Juliette Gréco and Dalida also recorded it.
Johnny Mercer wrote English lyrics in 1950, a shorter two-verse text rather than a literal translation, and Jo Stafford made the first English recording that July. Roger Williams's 1955 instrumental reached No. 1 in the United States. Later versions by Nat King Cole, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra and Eva Cassidy followed. The song has the form AABC and is mostly played in G minor, though its original key is A minor. Its harmony rests on ii-V-I sequences, which make it a teaching standard for jazz beginners and a jazz standard.
