You Don't Know What Love Is

This article is about the song written by Gene de Paul. For the song by the White Stripes of the same name, see You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You're Told).

"You Don't Know What Love Is," a popular song of the Great American Songbook, has one the craziest histories of any song. It was written by Don Raye (lyrics) and Gene de Paul (music) for the Abbott and Costello 1941 Universal picture Keep 'Em Flying, in which it was sung by Carol Bruce. The number was deleted prior to release.

Universal ended putting the song into the Raye/dePaul score of one of its B musicals, the 60-minute Behind the Eight Ball (1942), starring the Ritz Brothers and re-teaming Carol Bruce and Dick Foran from "Keep 'Em Flying." Here, "You Don't Know What Love Is" was again sung by Carol Bruce, in her third and final film until the 1980's. (Like the also talented and beautiful Patricia Morison, Bruce would find her greatest success on Broadway.)

From such curious beginnings as an outtake in an A picture and an introduction in a B, both by the same singer, no one could have predicted that in later years the song would emerge as a masterpiece--a jazz standard to be recorded several hundreds of times, starting when Miles Davis and other jazz musicians began recording and playing the song in the 1950s.

The song also appears on the soundtrack to the film The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).

Notable recordings

• Chet Baker - Chet Baker Sings and Plays with Bud Shank, Russ Freeman & Strings (1955)
• Billy Eckstine - with the Earl Hines Orchestra 1941; with B.E.Orchestra 1945; with MGM Orchestra 1952
• George Benson - Tenderly (1989)
• Eva Cassidy and Chuck Brown - The Other Side (1992)
• June Tabor - Some Other Time (1989)
• John Coltrane - Ballads (1962)
• Marvin Gaye - The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye (1961)
• Chris Connor - Witchcraft (1959)
• Dick Haymes - The Complete Capitol Collection (2006)
• Billie Holiday - Lady in Satin (1958)
• Miki Howard - Can't Count Me Out (1997)
• Teddi King - In the Beginning, 1949-1954 (2000 compilation)
• Anita O'Day - An Evening With Anita O'Day (1956)
• Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus (1956)
• Cassandra Wilson - Blue Light 'til Dawn (1993)
• Booker Ervin - Heavy!!! (1966)
• Nina Simone - Nina Simone - Tribute to Billie Holiday (2008)
• Diamanda Galás - You Don't Know What Love Is (2009)