A Perfect Day Instrumental rendition done by the McKee Trio, 1915
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"A Perfect Day" (first line "When you come to the end of a perfect day") is a parlor song written by Carrie Jacobs-Bond (1862-1946) in 1909 at the Mission Inn, Riverside, California.^[1] Jacobs-Bond wrote the lyrics after watching the sun set over Mount Rubidoux from her 4th-floor room. She came up with the tune 3 months later while touring the Mojave Desert.^[2] For many years the Mission Inn played "A Perfect Day" on its carillon at the end of each day.^[3] The facts of publication and the sheet music (including notes and lyrics) are available on the internet as part of the Johns Hopkins University Peabody Institute music collection.^[4]

[edit] Popularity

"A Perfect Day" was phenomenally successful when first published in 1910.^[5] Eight million copies of the sheet music and five million recordings sold within a year;^[6] 25 million copies of the sheet music sold during Jacobs-Bond's lifetime, and many millions of recordings circulated as various artists did the song on the fast-growing means of audio duplication.^[7] It was her most-requested number when Jacobs-Bond entertained the soldiers at U.S. Army camps in Europe during World War I. The popularity of "A Perfect Day" became so rampant that even Jacobs-Bond indicated in her autobiography that she had "tired" of hearing it. Along with "Just Awearyin' for You"^[8] and "I Love You Truly"—both published in 1901 as part of the collection Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose) and other works—"A Perfect Day" augmented Jacobs-Bond's career as the first woman who made a living from composing.^[9]

[edit] Artists

Besides the plaintive 1915 McKee Trio instrumental rendition linked in this article, "A Perfect Day" has been recorded by numerous artists from various backgrounds, including David Bispham,^[10] Evan Williams, Clara Butt,^[11] Nelson Eddy, Italian-American Rosa Ponselle,^[12] Blue Mountains Trio,^[13] Virgil Fox (organ only),^[14] Peggy Balensuela (singer) and William Hughes (piano),^[15] African American Paul Robeson, Swedish American Alan Lindquest, Englishman John McHugh, Austria's Richard Tauber, Australia's Judith Durham, The Fureys (Ireland),^[16] Germany's Annah Graefe,^[17] Scotland's Moira Anderson,^[18] and English baritone Sir Thomas Allen accompanied by Scottish Malcolm Martineau.^[19] On the screen accompanied by Barbara Stanwyck at the piano, Sterling Holloway sang "A Perfect Day" in the 1940 feature film Remember the Night.^[20]

[edit] Character

"A Perfect Day" exemplifies the sentimentality popular in the late Victorian and post-Victorian era but has risen above such a sequestered view by nuances of studied reflection which, combined with the chord progressions of Jacobs-Bond's tune, have borne its appeal across time and cultural boundaries. "A Perfect Day" persists as an elegy using the analogy of the end of day as the end of life.^[21]

In 1932, at Lake Arrowhead, California, with "A Perfect Day" playing on a phonograph, Jacobs-Bond's only child, Frederic Jacobs Smith, committed suicide.^[22]

[edit] Notes