Autumn Leaves is the English title for the 1945 French song Les Feuilles mortes, composed by Joseph Kosma with French lyrics by Jacques Prévert. The song was written in 1945 and published in 1947; in 1950 Johnny Mercer wrote the English lyrics, giving the piece its widely performed title. The best known early French recording was by Yves Montand in 1949, while the first English-language recording was Jo Stafford in July 1950 for Capitol Records. The tune has become a jazz standard and is typically performed as a chanson-jazz-pop piece, usually in a minor key, with a classic ii-V-I harmony and a circle-of-fifths progression iv7 - bVII7 - bIIImaj7 - bVImaj7 - iiø - V7 - i. A landmark instrumental version by Roger Williams reached number one in the US in 1955 from the album Autumn Leaves, and it remains the best selling piano record of all time. Since then it has been recorded thousands of times by jazz and pop artists and has appeared in films such as Gates of the Night.
