"Careless Love" is a traditional

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 song

Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

 of obscure origins.

Blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 versions are popular; the lyrics change from version to version, but usually speak of the heartbreak brought on by "careless love." Frequently, the narrator threatens to kill his or her wayward lover.

Love, oh love, oh careless love,

You fly to my head like wine,

You've ruined the life of many a poor girl,

and you nearly wrecked this life of mine

"Careless Love" was one of the best known pieces in the repertory of the Buddy Bolden

Buddy Bolden

Charles "Buddy" Bolden was an African American cornetist and is regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of rag-time music which later came to be known as jazz.- Life :...

 band in New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...

 at the very start of the 20th century, and has remained a jazz standard

Jazz standard

Jazz standards are musical compositions which are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be...

 and blues standard

Blues standard

A blues standard is a blues song that is widely known, performed, and recorded by blues artists. The following list identifies blues standards and some of the blues artists that have recorded them...

. Hundreds of recordings have been made in folk, blues, jazz, country, and pop styles; some of the more notable versions include those by Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...

, Marilyn Lee, Ottilie Patterson

Ottilie Patterson

Ottilie Patterson was a Northern Irish blues singer best known for her performances and recordings with the Chris Barber Jazz Band in the late 1950s and early 1960s.-Biography:...

, Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger

Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...

, and George Lewis

George Lewis (clarinetist)

George Lewis was an American jazz clarinetist who achieved his greatest fame and influence in the later decades of his life.-Ancestry:...

. Big Joe Turner

Big Joe Turner

Big Joe Turner was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to the songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him." Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and...

 recorded it several times over his long career. Fats Domino

Fats Domino

Antoine Dominique "Fats" Domino, Jr. is an American R&B and rock and roll pianist and singer-songwriter. He was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Creole was his first language....

 made a recording of it in 1951, and it has also been sung by Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

, Entrance

Entrance (musician)

The Entrance Band is a band started by Guy Blakeslee . Their style of music has been described as psychedelic rock or stoner rock....

, Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

, Lonnie Johnson

Lonnie Johnson

Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos...

, Blind Boy Fuller

Blind Boy Fuller

Blind Boy Fuller was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.-Life and career:Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,...

, Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....

, Leadbelly

Leadbelly

Huddie William Ledbetter was an iconic American folk and blues musician, notable for his strong vocals, his virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the songbook of folk standards he introduced....

, Odetta

Odetta

Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals...

, Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...

, Siouxsie Sioux

Siouxsie Sioux

Siouxsie Sioux is an English singer-songwriter. She is best known as the lead singer of the critically acclaimed rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees and of its splinter group The Creatures . The Banshees produced eleven studio albums and a string of hit singles including "Hong Kong Garden",...

, Joan Baez

Joan Baez

Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....

, Ray Charles

Ray Charles

Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...

, Dr. John

Dr. John

Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr. , better known by the stage name Dr. John , is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist, whose music combines blues, pop, jazz as well as Zydeco, boogie woogie and rock and roll.Active as a session musician since the late 1950s, he came to wider...

, Madeleine Peyroux

Madeleine Peyroux

Madeleine Peyroux is an American jazz singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Peyroux is noted for her vocal style, which has been compared to that of Billie Holiday....

, Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

, Bill Monroe

Bill Monroe

William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...

 and Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash

John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

, Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...

, Skip James

Skip James

Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

 and Harry Connick Jr.

The song's melody also is used in other blues songs, notably "A bunch of thyme" and Moon Mullican

Moon Mullican

Aubrey Wilson Mullican , known as Moon Mullican, was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and pianist. However, he also sang and played jazz, rock 'n' roll and the blues...

's "Worries on my mind". Elements of the Bessie Smith version's melody show up in Jerry Lee Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...

's 1956 version of "Crazy Arms

Crazy Arms

"Crazy Arms" is an American country song recorded by Ray Price. The song, released in May 1956, went on to become a hit that year and a honky-tonk standard. It was Price's first number one hit. The song was written by Ralph Mooney and Charles Seals...

" as well.

W. C. Handy's "Loveless Love"

W. C. Handy's song "Loveless Love" uses the familiar melody of "Careless Love". The lyrics compare loveless love to synthetic goods and artificial food:

Oh love oh love oh loveless love

Has set our heart on goal-less goals

From milkless milk and silkless silk

We are growing used to soul-less souls

Such grafting times we never saw

That’s why we have a pure food law

In everything we find a flaw

Even love oh love oh loveless love

Handy's composition tells a love story, rather than the original story line of a tragic death. The death referenced in the older song was the son of a Kentucky governor."

W.C. Handy copyrighted "Careless Love" in 1926. Copyright Handy Brothers Music Co.

In popular culture

In the sitcom Melissa & Joey

Melissa & Joey

Melissa & Joey is an ABC Family original television series starring Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence. It first aired on ABC Family on August 17, 2010...

, "Careless Love" is Mel Burke's favorite song.