I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry

"I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry" was written by composer Jule Styne with lyrics by Sammy Cahn in 1944 for the revue Glad to See You, a vehicle for film star Jane Withers that folded during out-of-town tryouts in Boston and never reached Broadway. Despite the show's failure, this torch ballad survived to become one of the most recorded songs from the Styne-Cahn partnership. The earliest commercial recordings appeared in quick succession: Harry James with vocalist Kitty Kallen cut it for Columbia in 1945, followed by Frank Sinatra with arranger Axel Stordahl in 1946. Sinatra would return to the song in 1958 on his celebrated album Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, delivering a reading widely regarded as definitive. The melody's stepwise motion and chromatic passing tones lend it an introspective, quietly aching quality well suited to its theme of romantic resignation. Sammy Cahn's lyric, built around the conceit of hanging one's tears on a clothesline to dry, achieves a blend of domestic imagery and emotional rawness that has attracted interpreters across genres. Cannonball Adderley reimagined it as an uptempo hard bop vehicle on Cannonball Takes Charge in 1959, while Ray Charles brought gospel inflections to his 1964 version on Sweet and Sour Tears. Sarah Vaughan, Linda Ronstadt, Keith Jarrett, and Rosemary Clooney have all recorded notable interpretations, each finding new dimensions in a song that continues to reward both vocalists and instrumentalists.