"Indian Summer" is an American standard originally written as a piano piece by the prolific composer Victor Herbert.
[1] Dubin wrote his lyrics for the song in 1939, and in the same year Tommy Dorsey's orchestra had a number one hit with it on the Billboard singles chart.
Miller's version with vocalist Ray Eberle charted in 1940 for ten weeks, rising to number eight.
[3] Also in 1940, Sidney Bechet recorded one of the first jazz versions of the tune, performing it on soprano sax.
Perhaps some of "Indian Summer's" success as a jazz tune is that it "bears no European mark", being a "thirty-two measure song with the form of A-B-A-C. "The melody sings marvelously throughout without a single cliche or let down," composer and critic Alec Wilder wrote in American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (1972), despite admitting that he was generally no fan of Victor Herbert.