I first heard At Last as the B-side of Glenn Miller's I've Got a Girl in Kalamazoo. Despite being written by all-time greats Mack Gordon and Harry Warren and featured in the film Sun Valley Serenade (or was it Orchestra Wives?), it never registered with me.
Kalamazoo had Tex Beneke and The Modernaires whereas At Last had Ray Eberle - the worst of all the big band vocalists - no wonder Sinatra took his chance!
That was back in 1942. Move on 10 years and former Miller trumpet player Ray Anthony recorded a version with vocalist Tommy Mercer and the "Anthony Choir". Neither versions were jazz but the sheer magnificence of the choral arrangement of the latter was so far ahead of its time that it laid down the benchmark of what was and is good in popular music - then rock and roll came along and musicianship such as this was put on the scrapheap until ...
...Etta James got a hold of it and carved the definitive version in stone (or should that be rock?)
Whatever, this became the version of the song despite covers by Beyoncé and Celine Dion.
Sadly, we are far from reaching the At Last status - or maybe we are "...for here we are in Heaven ..."
Lance
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Some years ago. Lance, I did a wedding-type gig at (I think) The Inn On The Lake at Ullswater as a dep with a good, versatile, function band called Quay Change, from Lancaster. One of the tunes requested by the "happy" couple was "At Last". The drummer and bassist were around my age (borderline geriatric!) although the pianist and singer were only about 30-ish, but to my astonishment none of them had ever heard the Glenn Miller hit version of this beautiful song! On the other hand, I'm happy to say that I had managed to get through the best part of 60 years without ever hearing the Etta James travesty. So I played the tune with due deference as a ballad, and they sang and played it in the sub-Motown/Soul fashion that is familiar to most people today. I never got another dep with them, strangely...........
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