“A Beautiful Friendship” is a jazz standard with music by Donald Kahn and English lyrics by Stanley Styne. Ella Fitzgerald recorded it with an orchestra conducted by Buddy Bregman on 27 March 1956 for Verve Records. The recording was issued as a single (Verve 2012) with “Stay There” on the flip side and later appeared on the compilation Jukebox Ella: The Complete Verve Singles, Vol. 1. Billboard reviewed the single on 26 May 1956, calling it listenable and her smartest disc so far on the label. That summer the song also appeared on Billboard's list of tunes with the greatest radio and television audience. The recording was reissued in 1962 (Verve 10359), when Billboard described it as a lovely old ballad-standard. Later versions by Nat King Cole with George Shearing, Jack Jones (1967, with an easy listening arrangement), Tony Bennett, Carmen McRae, Shirley Horn and Rosemary Clooney are among the best known. The song is also known as “(The End of) A Beautiful Friendship”.
