First, from an upstairs window looking across the valley. This is a fine time of year to live in the high desert at the foot of the Cascades.
Next, in the exquisite 1948 original adapted by Ralph Burns from a movement of his Summer Sequence suite for the Woody Herman Ochestra. This is the recording that sent young Stan Getz on his way to tenor saxophone fame. A YouTube contributor identified as ZOrkaz added the autumnal photographs.
If Johnny Mercer had written nothing but, “There’s a dance pavilion in the rain, all shuttered down, a winding country lane all russet brown,” he would be in the lyricist hall of fame for evocative imagery. Jo Stafford sang Mercer’s lyric with the perfection of simplicity. Her husband, Paul Weston, wrote the arrangement.
Stafford’s “Early Autumn” is in her collection The Big Band Sound, released on the Westons’ Corinthian label in 1993 and, happily, still available.
There is no evidence that Miley Cyrus was influenced by Jo Stafford.