Written in 1918 by black vaudeville duo Turner Layton and Henry Creamer, the bestselling American record of 1919 belongs to the category that Quincy Jones calls “the beg”. A jilted lover begs a partner of “many years” to stay and warns: “After you’ve gone and left me cryin’/ After you’ve gone there’s no denyin’/You’ll feel blue, you’ll feel sad/ You’ll miss the dearest pal you’ve ever had.” The song’s killer combination of jaunty melody and mounting drama ensures it has been covered at least twice per decade ever since.
Although Layton and Creamer probably recorded their own version, the hit was cut by Marion Harris and released as a shellac 10in disc in October 1918. Although Edison had invented the phonograph in 1877, recorded music only began to sound decent around 1900. The technology became increasingly efficient and affordable over the next 20 years. Edison’s original wax cylinders were replaced by discs made from the tough resin secreted by the female lac bug in the forests of Asia. During the first world war a portable phonograph had been invented to keep the troops happy and by 1919 the US record industry was worth $150m, with Americans buying more than 25m 78 rpm discs per year. Early charts were published irregularly but “After You’ve Gone” was one of the most popular songs of 1919 and a bestseller over the New Year period.
Music was now increasingly consumed alone: ideal for those wallowing in the misery of being dumped, like the singer of “After You’ve Gone”. Social commentators feared that this new trend was creating a lazy and narcissistic new generation of passive listeners. “Mental muscles become flabby through lack of exercise,” wrote one commentator, Alice Clark Cook, in Musical America magazine in 1916, worrying that brains would be reduced to “a complete and comfortable vacuum”.
But instrument sales soared too. Between 1890 and 1900 the number of pianos in American homes increased more than five times as fast as the population. Students of the new jazz and blues could repeat, pause and slow down recordings to perfect their technique.
The racism of the period saw “coon songs” performed by white singers. Those recorded by black artists were “race records”. Little is known about Marion Harris: a white woman who “sang blues so well that people hearing her records sometimes thought that the singer was coloured”, according to WC Handy, “father of the blues”. Though she sounds inhibited by the technology — like most early recording artists — her trombone of a voice blares and slides through “After You’ve Gone”, scooping up its full range of self-pity and spite.
It was covered by two other singers in 1919 but the launch of commercial radio in 1920 saw a crash in record sales and the song wasn’t recorded again until 1927, when Bessie Smith — much looser at the mike — gave it a glorious, growling, swinging soul.
Notable subsequent versions include: Louis Armstrong in 1929 (complete with marvellous, gargling scat); Art Tatum in 1934 (dizzyingly futuristic); Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli in 1936 (smokin’ hot!); Dinah Washington in 1958 (floor-pacing percussion, vocal phrases snapped unforgivingly shut); Helen Shapiro in 1961 (oddly peppy); and Nina Simone in 1974 (impeccably resigned).
The song has appeared on both big and small screens since the turn of the millennium. American folk singer Loudon Wainwright III’s knowing, Dixieland recording added vintage appeal to the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s 2004 Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator, while English jazz-popper Jamie Cullum turned in a perky version as the theme for a 2007-08 BBC sitcom named after the song. Most recently, it appeared — a century after it was written — on the 2018 debut album by rising Californian jazz singer Arianna Neikrug.
“It was the tune that sealed my win at the 2015 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition,” Neikrug told me. “Instead of approaching the lyrics with heartbreak, I sing them with the spark and gusto that I believe the singer feels when telling her ex-lover how this break-up will come to haunt him/her in the time to come.”
Things didn’t end well for Marion Harris. She scored three more number one singles before relocating to London where, rumour has it, the Prince of Wales became a fan of her sets at the Café de Paris. But the home she shared with her third husband was destroyed by a German V1 rocket in 1944, triggering a “neurological disorder”. Harris was seeking treatment in New York later that year when she fell asleep, holding a lit cigarette and died alone in the hotel room she set ablaze. She was — probably — 48.
We’re keen to hear from our readers. Do you have a favourite version of ‘After You’ve Gone’? Let us know in the comments below
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s
Music credits: Retrospective; Sounds of the World; AudioSonic Music; TP4 Music; So Good Music; Bella Donna; Nagel Heyer Records; Blooming Jazz Records; Concord Jazz
Picture credit: Edward Steichen/Conde Nast via Getty Images