Bluesette

Thielemans wrote the music and Norman Gimbel added English lyrics. He first recorded it in 1962, whistling in unison with his guitar, an idea inspired by the bassist Slam Stewart, and it came out as a single on ABC-Paramount in 1963 with "The Mountain Whistler" on the B-side. The date of composition is 1961 by the NEA bio and 1962 by Wikipedia and jazz.com, and one source places the writing in Sweden. In a 2008 interview he said, I didn't write it; it happened to me, describing a blend of French musette and blues; he named it Blue-ette after a field flower, and a Swedish producer said put the s in there, that's the blues, ain't it. The royalties bought him a house in Yonkers, which he called his social security number. It is in B-flat major and in the Real Book.

Chet Atkins, Vikki Carr and Sarah Vaughan recorded it in 1964, Johnny Mathis in 1965, Tito Puente and the Four Tops in 1966, Ray Charles in 1970, Quincy Jones in 1975, and over one hundred artists in all. It was nominated for a Grammy for best instrumental theme in 1964, and a Radio 2 Belgium hall of fame inducted it in 2000. Setlist.fm lists it as his most-played song, 26 times; it opened all three of his Night of the Proms sets at Ahoy in Rotterdam from November 20 to 22, 2009, and it closes his 2005 Piano Jazz session with Marian McPartland. We could not date our upload.