All or Nothing at All

All or Nothing at All is a jazz standard ballad composed by Arthur Altman with lyrics by Jack Lawrence in 1939, during the height of the Tin Pan Alley era. Altman, who began his career as a violinist with the CBS Radio Orchestra before turning to songwriting, would go on to write approximately 400 songs over his lifetime, but this composition stands among his most enduring. The song was first recorded by Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra, followed shortly after by Frank Sinatra with Harry James and his Orchestra on August 31, 1939. That Sinatra recording initially made little commercial impact, but its fortunes reversed dramatically in 1943 when Columbia Records reissued it during the musicians' strike of 1942 to 1944. The reissue topped the Billboard charts, spent 21 weeks on the charts, sold over a million copies, and even reached number eight on the Harlem Hit Parade. This unexpected second life helped cement Sinatra's rising solo career and established the tune as a permanent fixture in the American songbook. Since then, it has been recorded on more than 180 albums by over 150 artists, attracting performers as varied as Count Basie, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, and Sarah Vaughan, a breadth of interpretation that speaks to the melody's adaptability across swing, bebop, and vocal jazz idioms alike.