Tonight, You Belong To Me: A Song History

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"Tonight You Belong To Me" is a popular love song with words by Billy Rose and music by Lee David, issued in New York by Mills Music in 1926.[1] Rose, born William Samuel Rosenberg in the Bronx in 1899, took up songwriting in the 1920s and later turned to theatrical production with shows such as Jumbo and Carmen Jones.[2] His partner on this song, Lee David, is credited as a composer or lyricist on more than a hundred records made between 1919 and 1947.[3]

Watercolor of figures on a waterfront at dusk, with a wide blue bay and distant hills.

Gifford Beal, Twilight, watercolor, 1925. Strollers by the water at twilight, painted in 1925, the year before the song was published; the watercolor has no connection to the song.

Irving Kaufman recorded it with an orchestra for Columbia on November 19, 1926, and the performance was issued on Harmony 301-H.[4] Victor followed with a dance-band version by the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra later that month and a piano solo by Pauline Alpert in January 1927.[3] Victor also recorded Gene Austin's vocal of December 1, 1926, accompanied by violin, cello, piano and celeste under Nathaniel Shilkret and issued on Victor 20371.[5]

Mills later reissued the sheet music with a picture of Frankie Laine and a reference to his Columbia record.[6] In 1956 a pair of young girls billed as Patience and Prudence turned it into one of that year's big sellers on the Liberty label.[7] A British edition of the music carried their photograph and tied it to their London release, and another American printing featured Lawrence Welk on the cover.[8][9] Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sang it in Carl Reiner's 1979 film The Jerk.[10] Dana Gruber arranges it for solo chromatic dulcimer in DAD tuning in Speakeasy And Tin Pan Alley Tunes For Chromatic Dulcimer, a collection of popular songs from the early 1900s published by Fingers Of Steel.[11]

Our book that contains the song "Tonight, You Belong To Me"

Sources

  1. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mills Music Library: "Tonight You Belong to Me" (Mills Music, 1926).
  2. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Billy Rose".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Lee David".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix 143128. To-night you belong to me / Irving Kaufman".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-36989. To-night you belong to me / Gene Austin".
  6. York University, Clara Thomas Archives (John Arpin Sheet Music Collection): "Tonight you belong to me" (Frankie Laine edition).
  7. Cash Box (October 27, 1956), via World Radio History.
  8. York University, Clara Thomas Archives (John Arpin Sheet Music Collection): "Tonight you belong to me" (Patience and Prudence edition).
  9. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mills Music Library: "Tonight you belong to me" (Double-A Music Corp., Lawrence Welk cover).
  10. AFI Catalog of Feature Films: "The Jerk (1979)".
  11. Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, Speakeasy And Tin Pan Alley Tunes For Chromatic Dulcimer".
  12. Image: Gifford Beal, Twilight, watercolor, 1925. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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