My One And Only Love

Guy Wood composed the melody for this postwar ballad around 1947, originally publishing it as "Music from Beyond the Moon" with lyrics by Jack Lawrence. Its defining feature is a soaring melody that ascends over an octave in the opening phrase, with unusually wide intervals that give it an expansive romantic character. Those same intervals proved a stumbling block: lyricists who heard Wood play the tune dismissed it as too rangey and uncommercial, and early recordings by Vic Damone, Tony Martin, and Jack Fina under the original title all failed to chart. The song might have disappeared entirely had publisher Robert Mellin not quietly written new lyrics matching the melody's demanding syllable structure, retitling it "My One and Only Love" around 1952. Wood only discovered Mellin's contribution after Frank Sinatra recorded it for Capitol in May 1953, with a Nelson Riddle arrangement featuring Skeets Herfurt on alto saxophone. That recording, issued as a B-side to "I've Got the World on a String," finally established the song. A former saxophonist in English dance bands who also worked at Paramount Pictures, Wood wrote other popular songs including "Till Then" and "Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy," but critic Benny Green singled out this melody as one of the finest postwar ballads. John Coltrane's 1957 reading for Prestige helped cement its place in the jazz repertoire. In the AllSolos catalog, tenor saxophonists Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Hank Mobley, Michael Brecker, and Eric Alexander each bring distinct approaches to its wide-ranging melody.