“Mona Lisa” is a popular song written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston for the Paramount Pictures film Captain Carey, U.S.A. (1950). The title and lyrics refer to the renaissance portrait Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The song won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1950. The song’s first musical arrangement was in an orchestration by Nelson Riddle, and the orchestral backing was played by Les Baxter and his Orchestra. The recording was originally the B-side of “The Greatest Inventor Of Them All.” In an American Songwriter magazine interview, Jay Livingston recalled that the original advertisements for the record did not even mention “Mona Lisa”; only upon returning home from a publicity junket of numerous radio programs did the song become a hit. The cover version by Nat King Cole spent five weeks at number one on the Billboard singles chart in 1950. Cole’s version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1992. Cole recorded this song again in a stereo version (with Ralph Carmichael and his Orchestra) on March 30, 1961. Cole described this song as one of his favorites among his recordings.
Songs with Banjo from Harold Hagler
