I Love You was composed by Cole Porter in 1944 for the Broadway musical Mexican Hayride, with a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields. The song originated from a wager with actor Monty Woolley, who bet that Porter could not fashion a hit from such a banal title and deliberately cliched lyrics like "It's spring again, and birds on the wing again." Porter won the bet decisively, as the song became the show's only enduring popular number, topping Your Hit Parade three times. Bing Crosby's February 1944 recording spent five weeks at number one on the Billboard charts, and versions by Jo Stafford, Perry Como, and Tommy Tucker also charted that year. The melody is widely regarded as superior to the intentionally simple lyrics, featuring a smooth, flowing quality with a notable harmonic shift at measure thirteen that briefly unsettles the tonality before resolving. In jazz, the tune gained lasting significance through recordings by John Coltrane on his 1957 album Lush Life, performed with a piano-less trio of Earl May on bass and Art Taylor on drums, and by Bill Evans on his 1956 debut New Jazz Conceptions. Anita O'Day's 1959 rendition with Billy May provided an influential vocal interpretation of the challenging melody. The Coltrane version on Lush Life is featured on AllSolos.
