Ben Oakland composed If I Love Again around 1934 with lyricist Jack Murray, producing one of the more distinctive ballads to emerge from the Tin Pan Alley era. The song was introduced by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra with vocalist Bob Lawrence, recorded on January 16, 1934, for Victor Records. Oakland, a classically trained pianist who had studied at the Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard), brought a sophisticated harmonic sensibility to popular songwriting, and this tune is a prime example. Its melody is notably disjunct, covering a wider vocal range than most pop songs of the period, which gives it an angular, searching quality that lends itself well to jazz improvisation. Original arrangements scored for saxophones, strings, harp, and piano survive in the New York Public Library's archives, reflecting the lush big band and studio orchestrations typical of Oakland's output. The song circulated steadily through the jazz repertoire from the 1930s into the late 1950s, attracting instrumental treatments from Cannonball Adderley on his 1958 Sharpshooters session for EmArcy and pianist George Wallington on his 1957 Verve album Variations. It resurfaced in a different context when Barbra Streisand performed it in the 1975 film Funny Lady, the sequel to Funny Girl, keeping it visible outside jazz circles. On the 1955 Study In Brown session, the tune's wide intervals and harmonic richness gave Clifford Brown and Harold Land substantial material to work with in a hard bop setting.
