"All by Myself": song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"All by Myself"

Written for and introduced by

"All by Myself" was created independently, i.e. was not created as part of the score for a show or movie. Such songs are often called Tin Pan Alley songs. The song was introduced by Charles King at the Palace Theater, New York, first recorded by Ted Lewis reaching number one on the popular music charts on October 21, 1921. Soon after it was included as part of "An Interview with Irving Berlin" at the conclusion of the first Music Box Revue, 1921, in which it was performed by Berlin himself. (Kimball and Emmet, p. 222).

Use in Major Stage Productions and Movies

Movie: Blue Skies—1946 with Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby and Joan Caulfield, featuring 32 songs by Irving Berlin including "All by Myself."

Here is "All By Myself" from the 1946 movie Blue Skies Soundtrack
performed by Bing Crosby and Joan Caulfield
(Caulfield dubbed by Betty Russell) --

Early Recordings That Made the Charts (with year and chart #)

Ted Lewis, 1921, (1); Frank Crumit, 1921 (5); Aileen Stanley, 1921 (5); Benny Kreuger, 1921 (6); Vaughan Deleath, 1921 (13); Ben Selvin, 1921 (14).

Source: Joel Whitburn, Pop Memories, 1890-1954, Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research Inc., 1986.
For later recordings, visit our Record Cabinet.

Laurence Bergreen suggests the motive for writing "All by Myself," "All Alone" and "What'll I Do?" during the early Twenties went deeper than Berlin's business sense, a sense which told him, "Songs do well if they are based on one of these ideas: first, home; second, love; third, self-pity"; or even than the frustrations of his budding romance with Ellin Mackay. Bergreen attributes his motivation, at least in part, to a gray cloud in the sky of an otherwise "golden" time—namely that his mother, "his last link to his childhood," was seriously ill and dying. To this gnawing sadness is added the series of unfulfilling, short-lived relationships before he met Mackay. All of this left a profound mark on the composer and evoked the feelings of 'loneliness and melancholy' revealed in these songs—songs he came to call, his 'sob-ballads'."

Whether the composer was motivated by business sense or his melancholy, the song was an immense popular success, selling "during a period of seventy-four weeks 1,053,493 copies of sheet music, 161,650 piano rolls, and 1,225,083 records."

Philip Furia and Michael Lasser,
America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley, New York: Routledge, 2006.

It was not lost on Berlin that "All by Myself" represented a turning point in the music business, at least for him, because "All by Myself" sold more copies of phonograph records than it did of sheet music, which had never happened to him before. Philip Furia and Michael Lasser attribute this to a cultural shift:

Beginning in 1910, phonograph recordings vied with the piano as the source of home entertainment, and by the 1920s, a new medium, radio, was presenting songs aimed at the solitary listener, rather than at the group sing-along around the family piano. Americans wanted a different kind of song, something more personal and intimate that spoke to the many young women who were moving from small towns to large cities. . . ."

Berlin recognized the shift "and decided that what the public wanted were what he called 'sob ballads,' intimate romantic songs of sadness and yearning."

Alex Wilder uses "All by Myself" as an example of a ballad as opposed to a theater song, even though it was written for the theater. His "distinction between the two types of songs lies in both lyric and music. A theater lyric usually is more subtle, more sophisticated, and predicated on a more discerning audience." Wilder makes the point that "Berlin is one of the very few writers who has managed to function with distinction in both areas." In "All by Myself" Berlin managed to create a distinguished work, even though it is, for Wilder, "an easygoing, unsophisticated, down-to-earth, semi-cliché song."

"Berlin outdid all other [Tin Pan] Alley songwriters in saying " I love you" within the AABA formula; in the 1920's he wrote so many artfully simple romantic laments, from "All by Myself" to "How about Me," that Cole Porter dubbed the entire genre the 'Berlin Ballad.'"

Philip Furia exemplifies how Berlin invests his lyric with imagery fine enough to take, in Porter's words, the "Berlin Ballad" or in Berlin's own words the "sob-ballad" and raise it onto a loftier plain than such names might imply.

In "All by Myself," Berlin "takes the simple catch-phrase of the title and lifts it out its ordinary context as a child's boast ('I did it all by myself') into a literal scene, as barren and simplified as the language that describes it:

I sit alone with a table and a chair so unhappy there playing solitaire"

from Philip Furia, The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 55.

Click here to read a version of the lyrics for "All by Myself."
as sung by Ella Fitzgerald on the album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book.
(Ella sings the first verse and the chorus but omits Berlin's second verse.)

Here is the omitted Verse 2: My name and number are in the book, The one that hangs on a hook In almost every drug store; Why don't someone bother to look? My central tells me all day long, "Sorry, the number is wrong." Both Berlin's intentionally bad grammar ("Why don't someone") and the dated references--the telephone book hanging on a hook as well as her "central" (operator) are enough to make us understand why Ella in the Fifties and many other singers since have decided to skip the second verse. To hear the complete lyric sung, listen to Aileen Stanley's 1929 recording.

Arne, 10/12/2014: Bottom of the page, "el Divo" (I think that's their name, I can't look now or I'll lose this info I'm adding now) - they are singing the wrong "All By Myself"! It's the pop tune from the 70s, not the Berlin song!
Cafe Songbook response, 10/12/2014: The mistaken inclusion has been removed. Thanks for the correction.

• Aileen Stanley: bsgs98
• Bing Crosby and Joan Caulfield/Blue Skies: BingAndNelsonFan;
• Arne Fogel: oORachelOoo.

Notes

• Joel Whitburn, Pop Memories 1890-1954: The History of American Popular Music , 1986
• Aileen Stanley in her May 16, 1921 Victor recording of Berlin's "All By Myself"
• from Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer The Life of Irving Berlin , New York: Viking, 1990, p. 200, 202.
• from Philip Furia and Michael Lasser, America's Songs , New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 37.
• from Alec Wilder, American Popular Song The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 , New York: Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 101.
• The authoritative lyrics for "All by Myself" can be found in

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