Songwriters Hall of Fame

One of Broadway’s greatest torch singers, Ruth Etting was born on November 23, 1907 in David City, Nebraska.

She got her start in Chicago nightclubs and became a star as a featured vocalist in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927.

Among the over 60 charted recordings include the top ten hits ‘Lonesome and Sorry’ (#3, 1926), ‘But I Do, You Know I Do’ (#10, 1926), ‘Thinking of You’ (#5, 1927), ‘It All Depends on You’ (#8, 1927), “‘Deed I Do” (#2, 1927), ‘Sam, the Old Accordion Man’ (#5, 1927), ‘Hoosier Sweetheart’ (#10, 1927), ‘Wistful and Blue’ (#10, 1927), ‘(What Do We Do) On a Dew-Dew-Dewy Day’ (#4, 1927), ‘Shaking the Blues Away’ (#4, 1927), ‘I’m Nobody’s Baby’ (#9, 1927), ‘The Song is Ended (But the Melody Lingers On)’ (#7, 1927), ‘Back in Your Own Back Yard’ (#5, 1928), ‘When You’re With Somebody Else’ (#10, 1928), ‘Keep Sweeping Cobwebs Off the Moon’ (with Ted Lewis & His Band, #9, 1928), ‘Ramona’ (#10, 1928), ‘Happy Days and Lonely Nights’ (#9, 1928), ‘Love Me or Leave Me’ (#2, 1929), ‘I’ll Get By As Long As I Have You’ (#3, 1929), ‘Mean to Me’ (#3, 1929), ‘Ten Cents A Dance’ (#5, 1929), ‘Guilty’ (#4, 1931) and ‘Life is a Song’ (#1, 1935).

Ruth Etting died on September 24, 1978. In 1955, Doris Day starred in Etting’s biopic Love Me or Leave Me.