All our friends keep knocking at the door
They’ve asked me out a hundred times or more
But all I say is, "Leave me in the gloom"
And here I stay within my lonely room
‘Cause...
I don’t want to walk without you, Baby
Walk without my arm about you, Baby
I thought the day you left me behind
I’d take a stroll and get you right off my mind
But now I find that
I don’t want to walk without the sunshine
Why’d you have to turn off all that sunshine?
Oh, Baby, please come back or you’ll break my heart for me
‘Cause I don’t want to walk without you
No, siree
The number one selling recording
in America was by Harry James and His Orchestra. Other leading
recordings included Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, Glenn Miller, Helen
Forrest, and Jo Stafford.<br>Susan Loesser recalled the song's
origins in A Most Remarkable Fella:
My father met Jule Styne in 1940. At their first session at Republic,
Jule played my father the tune to "I Don't Want to Walk Without You,
Baby," a song he had been working on with another lyricist. "I play
about eight bars of it, and he says, 'Sh! Don't ever play that around
here again. We'll take it to Paramount and write it over there.'" Which
they did.
After it became a hit, Loesser received a visit from a fellow
songwriter: "Irving Berlin came in today and spent a solid hour telling
me that 'Walk' is the best song he ever heard. I was flattered. He
played and sang it over, bar by bar, explaining why it's the best song he ever
heard. I was flattered like crazy, then. Maybe he'll take an ad in Variety
about it."
Jule Styne: Frank Loesser was
the one who recognized I had great talent, and he told me how it goes.
He said, "When you write songs, it's a horrendous thing for a composer
who writes a tune and has to wait till the lyric's finished. Have
patience, don't nudge a lyric writer, you'll have less. For five weeks
I went to his house every day after the studio, we're both at
Paramount, he got me to Paramount. He asked for me to be his
lyric writer. I was at Republic. I asked for him first at Republic. And
he hated me [for bringing him to a lesser studio]. He said to me, "You
don't understand, all the big movies they have, they give to Johnny
Mercer, and I get loaned out to Republic and stuff. But I like you. I'm
gonna write [Sis Hopkins] in
four days, but you won't hand it in for three weeks 'cause I'll be in
Florida. You have to learn to fake it. It's part of the game, you
just make up excuses." He says, "Play me something." I play,
[what would become "I Don't Want to Walk Without You."] He says, "Shhh!
Quitet! Never play that song anyplace. I'm taking it to Paramountt and
we'll write it there. Every day I went to his house. This was the day
before cassettes, the piano player sat at the piano and played it over
and over, must have played it 24 times every day. One day he called me
up and said, "You want to meet me someplace for lunch? 'Cause at lunch
I'm gonna tell you the lyrics to your song." A pancake place on
Hollywood Boulevard. No dummy lyrics. He doesn't write dummy lyrics. He
writes his mind. He sang me the whole song from memory.
