All of You

Cole Porter wrote this for his last Broadway show and jazz musicians have played it ever since. The All of You chords and the backing track here can be taken at any tempo and moved to any key.

Who wrote "All of You"

Words and music are Cole Porter's, written in 1954 for Silk Stockings, which opened on Broadway the following year and was the last musical he wrote for the stage. Don Ameche sang it in the show. Mel Tormé recorded it first, in 1954 with an orchestra directed by George Cates, before the production opened. The lyric is a Porter catalogue — a list of the parts of a person, delivered with the double meaning he could never quite leave alone. It remains under copyright.

Recordings that made it a standard

• Mel Tormé, single (1954) — the first version on record, made before the show opened. Sung as a light swing number, which is how Porter wrote it.
• Miles Davis, 'Round About Midnight (1957) — the recording that made it a jazz piece. Davis takes the melody almost without decoration over a rhythm section that keeps stopping and starting, and the arrangement he used here became the standard way of playing it.
• Miles Davis, My Funny Valentine (1965) — the same tune live at Lincoln Center in February 1964, with George Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Seven years on from the studio version and far freer with the form. Worth hearing against the 1957 reading.
• Bill Evans — Evans returned to it throughout his career, and his trio readings show how much the harmony gives back when the tempo comes down.