I'll Be Seeing You

"I'll Be Seeing You" is a sentimental ballad composed by Sammy Fain with lyrics by Irving Kahal, written for the 1938 Broadway musical Right This Way. The show was a commercial disaster, closing after just 15 performances, and Fain later joked that audiences kept asking "Where's the exit?" -- a wry play on the show's title. Kahal never witnessed the song's eventual success, dying of a heart attack in 1939 at the age of 38, only a year after its composition. The tune languished in relative obscurity until World War II, when its themes of longing and separation transformed it into an unofficial anthem for soldiers and their loved ones on both sides of the Atlantic. Bing Crosby's 1944 recording reached number one, while Billie Holiday's version from the same year, though it failed to chart at the time, has since become widely regarded as a definitive interpretation. Musicologist Deryck Cooke noted a striking resemblance between the melody's opening lines and a passage from the final movement of Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony, composed in 1896. The song has maintained a lasting presence in American culture, performed by Doc Severinsen on the final episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1992, and by Queen Latifah during the In Memoriam tribute at the 2009 Academy Awards. It remains a widely performed jazz standard, its melodic and harmonic foundation lending itself to interpretive approaches ranging from intimate vocal readings to adventurous instrumental explorations.