Sunday Song Lyric:

I began the Sunday Song Lyrics with a song by one of America’s greatest, if most short-lived, songwriters: Hank Williams. Though I enjoy posting more contemporary rock lyrics, it’s about time I post a lyric from another one of America’s greatest songwriters: Edward Kennedy Ellington — better known as “Duke.” As with Williams, there are many songs from which to choose. Ellington wrote, or co-wrote, some of my favorite songs, including Solitude and I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good), many of which were popularized by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald. This week, however, I’ve decided on another Duke Ellington classic, co-written with Irving Gordon and Irving Mills, Prelude to a Kiss:

If you hear
A song in blue
Like a flower crying
For the dew
That was my heart serenading you
My prelude to a kiss

If you hear a song that grows
From my tender sentimental woes
That was my heart trying to compose
A prelude to a kiss

Though it’s just a simple melody
With nothing fancy
Nothing much
You could turn it to a symphony
A Shubert tune with a Gershwin touch

Oh how my love song gently cries
For the tenderness within your eyes
My love is a prelude that never dies
A prelude to a kiss