The song 'Les feuilles mortes' was written by popular French poet and songwriter Jacques Prévert on a melody by one Jospeh Kosma, a melody he had composed for a ballet called Le Rendez-vous in 1945.

French singer Yves Montand claimed to be the first interpreter of the song which is historically not correct.
He was preceded by one Cora Vaucaire, Jacques Douais was the first man to interpret the song.
Yves Montand's version is probably the first popular one and featured in a film called Les Portes de la nuit (eng. The doors of nighttime) in 1946. The film was based on the ballet mentioned earlier.

I couldn't find a video from Les portes de la nuit, but apparently Yves sang the song once again in an Italian movie from 1951 called Parigi è sempre Parigi.
Here you can see a clip from that movie:



Here's a remarkable version that starts out as a spoken word piece by Yves Montand, many decades later in the famous Parisian Olympia theatre:



As you might imagine, the song has been interpreted by a multitude of Frech singers.

Here you have a version by the popular french singer Juliette Gréco in her typical style - one that would probably never work for someone singing in English :



Cora Vaucaire, the lady who had the honour to record this song first, did a very touching version of it in 1999:


Recently the song was also recorded in French in a more modern fashion by punk-icon Iggy Pop for his album Preliminaires , which was inspired by the Michel Houellebecq novel La possibilité d'une île:



The text was translated by Johnny Mercer into English in 1949 and the song became known as 'Autumn leaves'. To help us go from 'Les feuilles mortes' to 'Autumn leaves', let's listen to the English version as recorded by one of the greatest monuments of French music, Edit Piaf - her English accent is remarkablygood for a French singer, I think, at least better than Iggy's French accent:


In the English, the song has also been interpreted by a great variety of singers.

Nat King Cole sang it in the 1956 movie Autumn leaves:


Disco-icon Grace Jones recorded it for her 1978 album Fame - mostly in French actually:


The Brithish electronic hip-hop group Coldcut recorded it in 1993 for their album Philosophy:


Their version yielded a number of remixes, here's the 'Irresistible force' remix:


But the english version might be best known as an instrumental jazz standard, recorded by some outstanding jazz players.

It's the first song on Cannonball Adderley's seminal 1958 Somethin' Else album, featuring Miles Davis and Art Blakey amongst other players. If you only know a handful of jazz tunes, this one should probably be one of them:


Roger Williams had a number one hit with this tune in 1955, making it the only strictly piano tune to make it to number one (it remained number one for four weeks):


One of my favourite players,Stan Getz, also recorded a beautiful version of it

Is this Satchmo?

Not enough vibrato for Bechet--sounds more like Pete Fountain.

I'm trying to find my favorite (Pam Bricker), but it looks like maybe it was deleted.

Yep, it didn't sound right for Bechet - just the French connection led me there. Otherwise I'd have thought Monty Sunshine (played for years with British trad jazz man - and founder of the British blues boom - Chris Barber), though it didn't really sound right for him either.