Yesterdays

Words & Music by Otto Harbach & Jerome Kern
Recorded by Jo Stafford* on V-disk, 1944
Featured in the 1935 film "Roberta"


Em     B7   Em     B7
Yesterdays, yesterdays,

Em     B+      Em7     Em6     C         B7
Days I knew as happy, sweet sequestered days.

Am7    B7    Em    CM7/6
Olden days, golden days,

F       G7      G7/6/5      C
Days of mad ro - mance and love.

 B7       Em        B7    Em       B7
Then gay youth was mine, truth was mine,

Em     B+       Em7     Em6        C         B7
Joyous free and flaming life, forsooth, was mine.

Am7   B7   G    CM7/6
Sad am I, glad am  I

F7    G7               C  B7     Em
For today I'm dreaming of Yesterdays.

*Leo Reisman scored a #3 hit with this tune in 1933 -- its only trip to the higher reaches of the charts -- but I'm crediting Stafford here because hers in the version from which I transcribed.

For you youngsters, V-disks were recordings made during WWII specifically for servicemen, and not released to the general public -- which makes it hard to pin down an exact recording date, so the 1944 date shown on the indexes to this site is somewhat speculative, though I've had it conformed from knowledgeable sources. It's ironic to me that this song was released in this fashion, because the principle behind V-disks was to boost morale...and this is about as melancholy a song as you'll ever hear anywhere.

The lyric and guitar chord transcriptions on this site are the work of The Guitarguy and are intended for private study, research, or educational purposes only. Individual transcriptions are inspired by and and based upon the recorded versions cited, but are not necessarily exact replications of those recorded versions.