Lush Life Sheet Music Nat King Cole

Lyrics Lush Life Nat king Cole

Lush Life

I used to visit all the very gay places
Those come what may places
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life
To get the feel of life
From jazz and cocktails

The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces
With distingué traces
That used to be there, you could see where they’d been washed away
By too many through the day
Twelve o’clock tales

Then you came along with your siren of song
To tempt me to madness
I thought for a while that your poignant smile
Was tinged with the sadness
of a great love for me

Ah yes, I was wrong
Again
I was wrong

Life is lonely again
And only last year
Everything seemed so sure
Now life is awful again
A troughful of hearts
Could only be a bore

A week in Paris will ease the bite of it
All I care is to smile in spite of it

I’ll forget you, I will
While yet you are still
Burning inside my brain

Romance is mush
Stifling those who strive
I’ll live a lush life
In some small dive

And there I’ll be
While I rot
With the rest of those
Whose lives are lonely, too

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“Lush Life’” is a jazz standard with lyrics and music written by Billy Strayhorn from 1933 to 1938. However, the song was only performed privately by Strayhorn until he and vocalist Kay Davis performed it on November 13, 1948, with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. It is usually performed in the key of D-flat major.

The song’s lyrics describe the author’s weariness of the night life after a failed romance, wasting time with “jazz and cocktails” at “come-what-may places” and in the company of girls with “sad and sullen gray faces/withdistingué traces”. Strayhorn was only 16 when he wrote the majority of the song, which was to become his signature composition (along with “Take the ‘A’ Train”).

One of the most notable recordings of “Lush Life” was by Nat King Cole.

Nat king Cole Sheet Music
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