"All My Tomorrows": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"All My Tomorrows"

Other songs written for A Hole in the Head currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook: none.

During the presidential campaign of 1959, Sinatra had become friendly with the Kennedys and he introduced Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen to them. Someone in the family asked the songwriters if they had a song that they could use for JFK's theme for the campaign. Cahn said, "We sure have a title." And writing in his autobiography explained he and Van Heusen had "just finished a song called "High Hopes" for the movie A Hole in the Head. Cahn rewrote the lyric for Kennedy and it became the theme for the campaign (Sammy Cahn, I Should Care, pp 187-88, hardcover Ed.) The song, with its original lyric, went on to win the Oscar for best song that year, but many have agreed since that it wasn't even the best song in the movie. In fact Chris Ingham writes, that although Sinatra's version of "High Hopes" in the film, sung to the young boy character (Sinatra's son in the film, played by Eddie Hodges, was "sweet," "the best thing about the movie, however, is Cahn and Van Heusen's theme song "All My Tomorrows" sung by Sinatra over the opening titles" (Ingham, p. 309).

In his biography of Van Heusen, Christopher Coppula suggests the irony that the popular success of "High Hopes" in a sense "crushed," in the short term, the "other song" in the film "All My Tomorrows." But over time the truth would eventually win out:

In A Hole in the Head it cannot be doubted that its companion song "All My Tomorrows" was superior to "High Hopes." It is a tender, lyrical ballad with cleverly optimistic lyrics by Cahn. In those lyrics Cahn effectively crystallized the message that Capra seemed to convey in all of his films. -- things might be bad today but they will get better [tomorrow], and I will be there with you ( Coppula , p. 440) .

Frank Sinatra and Eddie Hodges perform "High Hopes" in the 1959 movie A Hole in the Head .

Frank Sinatra sings the 1960 JFK campaign song using the original
Jimmy Van Heusen melody from the song "High Hopes"
with a new lyric by Sammy Cahn written at the request of the Kennedys

To hear a recording of the original Sinatra recording of "All My Tomorrows,"
recorded by Sinatra in 1958 with Nelson Riddle conductor and arranger, listen in the Cafe Songbook Record/Video Cabinet, this page or in The Lyrics Lounge below.

Read the lyrics for "All My Tomorrows" as sung by Frank Sinatra on his original 1958 Capitol singles recording streamed on the video below from the 1958 album All the Way, on which it made its first album appearance:

The lyric as transcribed on the YouTube video above does not show the song structure. Our presentation of that structure below makes it easier to see the AABA format, where stanzas one, two and four are A sections and stanza three is the "B" section or bridge . Taken together they constitute the refrain sometimes known as the chorus . In fact Cahn typically used the term chorus to refer to the entire refrain. The entire lyric typically includes a verse and a refrain. For "All My Tomorrows," Cahn did not write a verse. Our reformulation of the lyric may not be exactly the way Sammy Cahn originally wrote it out. Still, it's probably close. Virtually all lyricists of this period were very conscious of correct punctuation and poetic structure and Cahn was no exception. In our reformulation, we have used the rules of English punctuation as our guide. (Curiously, in the lyrics section of his autobiography, I Should Care , Cahn does not include "All My Tomorrows," so we currently have no authoritative source for exactly how he set things up.) (Click the links in the paragraphs above to read definitions of terms in the Cafe Songbook Glossary .) Today I may not have a thing at all Except for just a dream or two But I've got lots of things for tomorrow, And all my tomorrows belong to you. Right now it may not seem like spring at all. We're drifting and the laughs are few, But I've got rainbows planned for tomorrow, And all my tomorrows belong to you. No one knows better than I That luck keeps passing me by -- That's fate. But with you there at my side, I'll be turning the tide -- Just wait. As long as I've got arms that cling at all, It's you that I'll be clinging to, and all the dreams I dream beg or borrow, On some bright tomorrow, they'll all come true, And all my bright tomorrows belong to you. Sammy Cahn's excellence as a lyricist is demonstrated powerfully by how he can take a commonplace phrase that in a lesser writer's work would most likely seem tired and hackneyed and make it vital and evocative. Indeed his use of "at all," a phrase typical in everyday speech becomes poetic in his lyric for "All My Tomorrows." We first find it in a longer construction, "I may not have a thing at all," a slight variation on the oft used expression, " I don't have a thing at all" that many a creative writing teacher would mark up as vague and tired. But by the time we hear the emptiness of "today" contrasted to the fulsomeness of his imagined tomorrows, when he will have "lots of things" because all of his tomorrows "belong to you," we are buoyed up, even if falsely, by the image just as he is by the thought of a future with his love. The "at all" conceit continues throughout the lyric acting as a unifying element to the ear when heard and the eye when read: Right now their life together isn't like "spring at all ." They are "drifting and the laughs are few"; but not to worry, his dreams, "rainbows planned for tomorrow," which, unlike the luck that "keeps passing [him] by," will now come true. As long as he has "arms to cling at all " they will be clinging to her and all will be well. The foundation of his plan may be couched in a cliche typical of a romance novel, but Cahn's speaker's expression of it is certainly not. It is everyday language elegant in its simplicity used to wonderfully poetic effect. The couple may indeed be drifting onto the shoals of sentimentality, but Cahn's language never does. It is ennobling and saves the day -- if only for the sake of the song. JAC

• Rebecca Parris: Marla Kleman
• Barbara Fasano: Eric Comstock + Barbara Fasano
• Houston Person: THE - SMOOTHJAZZ - LOFT
• Sinatra (from the All the Way album -- with streamed lyrics: Sinatra Fan

Notes

• For a complete listing of songs used in the this movie, see IMDB Soundtrack .
• Sammy Cahn. I Should Care: The Sammy Cahn Story , New York: Arbor House, 1970.
• Chris Ingham. The Rough Guide to Frank Sinatra . London & New York: Rough Guides, 2005.
• Christopher A. Coppula Jimmy Van Heusen Swinging on a Star Nashville: Twin Creek Books, 2014
• original sheet music cover for "All My Tomorrows" (1959) available at Amazon

Cite this page: "All My Tomorrows": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/a/all_my_tomorrows.html