I Love You Truly

"I Love You Truly"
1906 sheet music cover
Parlor song
Published	1901, 1906
Writer(s)	Carrie Jacobs-Bond

"I Love You Truly" is a parlor song written by Carrie Jacobs-Bond. Since its publication in 1901 it has been sung at weddings, recorded by numerous artists over many decades, and heard on film and television.

Carrie Jacobs-Bond began to write songs in 1894 to supplement the income of her husband, Frank Bond. When he died in 1895, she returned briefly to her hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, where "I Love You Truly" was written. She then moved to Chicago where she painted china and rented out rooms to make ends meet. There she continued to write songs and eventually sought to publish them herself. With the encouragement and assistance of friends, including a loan from contralto Jessie Bartlett Davis, in 1901 she published a sheet music collection of her compositions called Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose, one of which was "I Love You Truly". She published it again as a separate song in 1906, at the same time correcting an oversight and filing for copyright. It sold over a million copies, one of the earliest songs composed by a woman to achieve that distinction.

"I Love You Truly" was categorized as a "high-class ballad", a genre of the period applied to serious ballads that were suitable for cultured venues as opposed to vaudeville. It became a standard at wedding ceremonies. It also became a mainstay of barbershop harmony arrangers and singers.

Jacobs-Bond was invited to sing at the White House by three presidents, and each time sang "I Love You Truly".

The song was a hit record for Elsie Baker in 1912 (Victor B-12069). It has been recorded by numerous artists, including Sophie Braslau (1916), Dusolina Giannini (1926), Al Bowlly (1934), Bing Crosby (1934), Erskine Hawkins (1942), Helen Traubel (1946), Jeanette MacDonald (1947), a 1951 duet by Jo Stafford and Nelson Eddy, and Pat Boone in a 1962 duet with his wife Shirley. Jill Paquette DeZwaan covers the song on the soundtrack for the film The Song (2014).