Ray Noble, who wrote “Goodnight Sweetheart” in 1931, was an English band leader who became a success in the United States and went on to become a radio host and to play the role of comic Englishmen in Hollywood films. When he arrived in the U.S. in 1934, Glenn Miller helped him put together an orchestra which played at the Rainbow Room in New York City and appeared in several Hollywood films in the late 1930s and early ‘40s. Noble was also a songwriter who gave us the words and music to several lovely jazz standards: “The Very Thought of You” (1934) which was his theme song, “The Touch of Your Lips” (1936), “Cherokee” (1938), and “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You” (1938).

In American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950, Alec Wilder calls “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You” “stylish throughout” and considers it Noble’s best song. “It is a smooth, direct, slightly rhythmic ballad of no great range and unmistakably a song of its time, the late thirties. It makes a move in the second half of the B section (the design is A-B-A-C/A) into the key of A major from the parent key of F major, which adds that dash of color needed in a song of so direct and unpushy a nature. It is a song with both sophistication and a flavor of the past.”

“I Hadn’t Anyone Till You” charted twice in 1938. Noble’s version with his orchestra and vocalist Tony Martin reached number four over a 12-week period. The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra took it to number 10 over five weeks.

The lyric celebrates the joy of finding love at last:

I hadn’t anyone
Till you
I was a lonely one
Till you
I used to lie awake and wonder
If there could be
A someone in this wide world
Just made for me

“I Hadn’t Anyone Till You” was popularized the Dorsey recording and became a major hit of the swing era. It has maintained steady popularity throughout the decades. Ella Fitagerald recorded it in 1949 and again in 1960. Billie Holiday recorded an intimate version with Jimmy Rowles on piano in 1955, the same year that trombonist Jimmy Cleveland recorded the tune, and Frank Sinatra performed a lush arrangement by Don Costa in 1961. It has also been recorded by pianist Thelonious Monk, guitarist George Van Eps, vocalists Annie Ross and Carol Sloane, vibraphonist Cal Tjader, trumpeter Shorty Rogers, and, since 2000, by saxophonist Harry Allen, pianist Eddie Higgins, and guitarist John Pizzarelli.