Perfidia (Tonight)

Words & Music by Alberto Dominguez
Recorded by Nat "King" Cole, 1943


G7   C  Am  Dm7
To you 

   G7                  C       Am Dm7
My heart cries out "Perfidia,"

    G7               C           Am
For I found you, the love of my life,

   Dm7      G7      E7
In somebody else's arms.


G7    C  Am  Dm7
Your eyes 

    G7           C       Am Dm7
Are echoing "Perfidia,"

    G7            C          Am
Forgetful of our promise of love,

        Dm7      G7         E7
You're sharing another's charms.


Bridge:


Dm            Dm7
With a sad lament, my dreams 

     F            Dm7        E7
Have faded like a broken melody;

           Dm                F
While the gods of love look down and laugh

    D             Dm7     Bb9     E7
At what romantic fools we mortals be.


G7   C  Am  Dm7
And now 

   G7               C       Am Dm7
I know my love was not for you

    G7               C           Am
And so I'll take it back with a sigh,

   Dm7     G7         C   Fdim   C
Perfidious one, good-bye.

This chart probably owes more to the Mel Torme version that it does to Cole's, but since I couldn't determine specifically when he recorded it, I opted instead to credit the other version that I used as a source. Thanks to a recent visitor, I have now confirmed that it was recorded by Torme with the Billy May Orchestra in 1969. I'd change the attribution to reflect that, but that would mean changing all three indexes just to keep things in line, and I'm too lazy to do that.

The lyric and guitar chord transcriptions on this site are the work of The Guitarguy and are intended for private study, research, or educational purposes only. Individual transcriptions are inspired by and and based upon the recorded versions cited, but are not necessarily exact replications of those recorded versions.