Body and Soul (song)

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"Body and Soul" is the title of a popular song written in 1930 by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton and Johnny Green. It was introduced in the revue Three's A Crowd by Libby Holman and used as a soundtrack theme in the 1947 film named for the song.

The song became a jazz standard, with hundreds of versions performed and recorded by dozens of artists. By far the most famous of these is the take recorded by Coleman Hawkins and His Orchestra on October 11, 1939 at their only recording session for Bluebird, a subsidiary of RCA Victor. Hawkins' solo on this take is considered to be "one of the finest examples of pure, spontaneous creative artistry in the history of jazz."^{[citation needed]} It was one of the first straight jazz records to become a commercial hit. This was unusual, as the song's melody is never directly stated in the recording; Hawkins improvised on the tune's chord progression for almost the entire take. In 2004, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.