Advanced Guitar Player

Stella by Starlight is a popular jazz standard written by Victor Young and featured in The Uninvited - a 1944 film released by Paramount Pictures.

Stella By Starlight was originally played in the film as an instrumental theme song without lyrics - it was turned over to Ned Washington, who wrote the lyrics for it in 1946.

The title had to be incorporated into the lyrics, which resulted in its unusual placement: the phrase appears about three quarters of the way through the song, rather than at the beginning or the end.

"Stella by Starlight" is one of the most popular standards, ranked number 10 by the website jazzstandards.com.

Its May 1947 recording by Harry James and his orchestra reached the 21st place in the pop charts and two months later, the recording by Frank Sinatra with Axel Stordahl and his orchestra also rose to the 21st position.

Charlie Parker, playing alto saxophone, made the first jazz recording of the song in January 1952, which was shortly followed by another tenor sax version by Stan Getz (December 1952), a piano version by Bud Powell, and a rendition by the Stan Kenton Big Band, which featured bass trombonist George Roberts.

Instrumental versions were played by Miles Davis, which first appeared on 1958 Miles, Earl Grant and Dexter Gordon and vocal versions sung by Billy Eckstine, Dick Haymes, Ray Charles, Helen Reddy, Tony Bennet, Ella Fitzgerald, and many others.