"I'll Never Smile Again" is a 1939

1939 in music

-Events:*March 23 – Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2 is premiered by Zoltán Székely and the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Willem Mengelberg...

 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...

 written by Ruth Lowe

Ruth Lowe

Ruth Lowe was a Canadian pianist and songwriter. She wrote the song "I'll Never Smile Again" after her husband died during surgery...

.

The most successful and best known version of the song was recorded by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, with vocals provided by Frank Sinatra and The Pied Pipers

The Pied Pipers

The Pied Pipers were a popular singing group in the late 1930s and 1940s. Originally they consisted of eight members who had belonged to three separate groups: Jo Stafford from The Stafford Sisters, and seven male singers: John Huddleston, Hal Hopper, Chuck Lowry, Bud Hervey, George Tait, Woody...

. This recording was released as a Victor 78, 26628A, in 1940. This version stayed at number one for 12 weeks on Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

, from July 27 to October 12, 1940, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1982. Tommy Dorsey also recorded the song on V-Disc

V-Disc

V-Disc was a morale-boosting initiative involving the production of several series of recordings during the World War II era by special arrangement between the United States government and various private U.S. record companies. The records were produced for the use of United States military...

, V-Disc 582, also with Frank Sinatra on vocals. Glenn Miller

Glenn Miller

Alton Glenn Miller was an American jazz musician , arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands"...

 and His Orchestra also recorded a version of the song in 1940 on RCA Bluebird.

The Platters brought the song back to the top 40 in 1961. In 1965, Sinatra re-recorded the song for the double album A Man and His Music

A Man and His Music

A Man and His Music is a 1965 double album by Frank Sinatra. It provides a brief retrospective of Sinatra's musical career...

, complete with faithful reproduction of the celeste

Celeste

- People :* Celeste Holm , US actress* Madame Céleste , French dancer and actress* Celeste , American former pornographic actress* Dick Celeste , governor of Ohio from 1983 to 1991...

 and choral accompaniment which characterized the 1940 recording. It has been recorded by many other artists since, becoming a standard. Italian-American crossover artist covered this song on his 1967 RCA Victor album, From Sergio - With Love.

Sources

• Peter J. Levinson, Tommy Dorsey: Livin' in a Great Big Way: a Biography (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005) ISBN 978-0-306-81111-1
• Robert L. Stockdale, Tommy Dorsey: On The Side (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1995) ISBN 978-0-8108-2951-0