"Stormy Monday Blues" is a jazz song first recorded in 1942 by Earl Hines and His Orchestra with Billy Eckstine on vocals. The song was a hit, reaching number one in Billboard magazine's "Harlem Hit Parade", making it Hines' only appearance in the charts.
"Stormy Monday Blues" is performed in the style of a slow blues that "starts with Hines' piano and a walking bass for the introduction". Billy Eckstine then enters with the vocal:
- It's gone and started rainin', I'm as lonesome as a man can be
- It's gone and started rainin', I'm as lonesome as a man can be
- 'Cause every time it rains, I realize what you mean to me
Of note, the lyrics "stormy" or "Monday" do not appear in the song. A trumpet solo by Maurice "Shorty" McConnell with big band backing is featured in the second half of the song.
The song has sometimes been confused with T-Bone Walker's 1947 song "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)", which is frequently shortened to "Stormy Monday" or "Stormy Monday Blues". When Eckstine later recorded "Stormy Monday Blues" in 1959 with Count Basie for their Basie/Eckstine Incorporated album, the song was credited to T-Bone Walker, even though Eckstine is a cowriter of the original.
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Famous quotes containing the words stormy, monday and/or blues:
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He hath awakened from the dream of life—
‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife.”
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“I have yfounde in myn astrologye,
As I have looked in the moone bright,
That now a Monday next, at quarter night,
Shal falle a rain, and that so wilde and wood,
That half so greet was nevere Noees flood.”
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“Holly Golightly: You know those days when you’ve got the mean reds?
Paul: The mean reds? You mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No, the blues are because you’re getting fat or maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of.”
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