If I Were a Bell is a song composed by Frank Loesser for his 1950 Broadway musical Guys and Dolls. In the show, it is sung by the character Sarah Brown after a night out in Havana with the gambler Sky Masterson, expressing her sudden, giddy realization of romantic feelings through a series of playful metaphors. Isabel Bigley originated the role on Broadway, and early pop recordings by Bing Crosby with Patty Andrews and Doris Day helped establish the song outside the theater. The melody is bright, charming, and rhythmically buoyant, lending itself naturally to swinging jazz interpretations that carry the tune well beyond its theatrical origins. The song's transition into the jazz repertoire was cemented by the Miles Davis Quintet's recording on Relaxin' with The Miles Davis Quintet, taped in 1956 for Prestige Records, with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Davis's version, taken at a medium-up tempo with his characteristically spare trumpet phrasing, became definitive for jazz musicians and established the tune as a standard called regularly at jam sessions. Other notable recordings include versions by Ella Fitzgerald, Blossom Dearie, Dinah Washington, and Sarah Vaughan with Count Basie. Loesser's score for Guys and Dolls is widely regarded as one of the finest in American musical theater, and If I Were a Bell stands among its most enduring individual numbers, equally at home on the stage and in a jazz club.
