Blues In The Night.

This is a popular song which has become a pop standard. The music was written by Harold Arlen and the lyrics by Johnny Mercer for a 1941 film which began with the working title "Hot Nocturne", but was finally released as "Blues in the Night".
Alec Wilder said that this song "Was certainly a landmark in the evolution of American popular music, lyrically as well as musically".
Mercer being from the South realised that Arlen's notes were meant to be sung as a blues slide and that individual syllables would have made the song too formal and too racially white.
In 1941 "Blues in the Night" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
As a child I used to hear the words "My momma done tol' me" blasting from the wireless, but never really understood what they meant: Fifty years later I still don't!