SARAH VAUGHAN - BLACK COFFEE

BLACK COFFEE

SARAH VAUGHAN

SONGWRTTER: SONNY BURKE

COUNTRY: U.S.A.

ALBUM: BLACK COFFEE

LABEL: COLUMBIA RECORDS

GENRE: JAZZ

YEAR: 1949

"Black Coffee" is a song. The music was written by Sonny Burke (based on the 1938 piece "What's Your Story Morning Glory" composed by Mary Lou Williams), the lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. The song was published in 1948. Sarah Vaughan charted with this song in 1949 on Columbia.

Peggy Lee recorded the song on May 4, 1953 and it was included on her debut album Black Coffee.

It was included in the soundtrack for the 1960 Columbia Pictures feature Let No Man Write My Epitaph, recorded on Verve by Ella Fitzgerald, also in 1960. The version by Ella Fitzgerald was a favourite song of Polish Nobel Prize laureate Wisława Szymborska who chose it as the song to be performed at her funeral.

I'm feelin' mighty lonesome

Haven't slept a wink

I walk the floor and watch the door

And in between I drink

Black coffee

Love's a hand-me-down brew

I'll never know a Sunday in this weekday room

I'm talkin to the shadows

One o'clock till four

And Lord, how slow the moments go

When all I do is pour

Black coffee

Since the blues caught my eye

I'm hangin' out on Monday my Sunday dreams to dry

Now a man is born to go a-lovin'

And a woman's born to weep and fret

And stay at home and tend her oven

And down her past regrets

In coffee and cigarettes

I'm moanin' all the morning

Moanin' all the night

And in between it's nicotine

And not much heart to fight

Black coffee

Feelin' low as the ground

It's drivin' me crazy

This waitin' for my baby

To maybe come around

(Sarah Humming)