Misty was not born as a love song with lyrics. Erroll Garner recorded it on piano in 1954. Words were later set to the melody, before Johnny Mathis brought it to a new audience in 1959. Tracing this journey lets us hear a familiar tune differently.
Piano before voice
Erroll Garner’s official chronology places the recording of Misty at a Mercury session in Chicago in July 1954. The pianist, born in Pittsburgh in 1921, had developed his playing by ear and built a career that went beyond the usual confines of jazz clubs.
An instrumental melody can give the performer great freedom to breathe. When it becomes a song, the words also give it a character and a situation. The transition from one to the other does not simply replace an instrument with a voice: it shifts the listener’s attention.
Johnny Burke, then Johnny Mathis
The JazzStandards entry on Misty distinguishes Garner’s composition, the addition of lyrics by Johnny Burke in 1955, and the popularisation of Johnny Mathis’s sung version in 1959.
The tune then continues to circulate among singers and instrumentalists. That is one of the functions of a standard: to provide shared material that musicians can revisit with their own choices of tempo, accompaniment and phrasing. Recognising the tune does not prevent us from discovering a performance.
A birth surrounded by stories
The story of inspiration striking on a plane is often repeated. JazzStandards recounts several versions, which do not place the scene in exactly the same way. It is therefore better to keep this anecdote as a story passed down, rather than add a window, weather or a journey presented as certain.
One documented landmark is that Misty was associated in 1971 with Play Misty for Me, Clint Eastwood’s first feature film as a director. Cinema further extended the life of the piece.
To rediscover it, you can compare Garner’s instrumental version with the one sung by Mathis. The comparison invites us to follow the same melodic line in two forms, without turning their difference into a ranking. Misty’s story also lies in its ability to remain recognisable while changing voice.
Illustrative photograph: Puikstekend / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. This piano does not represent Erroll Garner’s instrument.
