[3][7] The plot of Blum's operetta was reportedly trite and underwhelming: "Jake, a shoe factory worker who is fired for union organizing activity is in love with the owner's daughter, Hene.

[3] When I Would If I Could closed after one season, Secunda attempted to sell the publishing rights of the song, even taking a plane to California to promote it to popular entertainer Eddie Cantor who demurred saying: "I can't use it.

"[4][9] In dire financial straits, Secunda sold the rights in 1937 to the Kammen Brothers Music Company for a mere US $30 (equivalent to $636 in 2023), a modest sum which he split with his partner Jacobs.

[4][13] Upon seeing the enthusiastic audience response to the song, Cahn urged his employer to buy the rights so that he and frequent collaborator Saul Chaplin could rewrite the composition with English lyrics and alter the rhythm to be more typical of swing music.

[12] A competing origin story claims that bandleader Vic Schoen discovered Secunda's and Jacobs' catchy tune "in a collection of folk songs in a small shop in the lobby of a Yiddish theater on Second Avenue.

[19] In December 1937, artists such as Belle Baker, Kate Smith,[20] Benny Goodman (with Martha Tilton and Ziggy Elman),[21] Ella Fitzgerald,[22] the Barry Sisters,[3] and Rudy Vallée,[17] had all put out competing recordings.

[23] By the end of 1938—a mere year later—Guy Lombardo,[24] Greta Keller,[25] Mieczyslaw Fogg,[26] Slim Gaillard,[27] Zarah Leander,[28] Willie "The Lion" Smith,[17] Eddie Rosner,[29] Adrian Rollini,[30] Tommy Dorsey,[31] and others had all recorded the song.

[3] According to contemporary journalist Michael Mok, the song was likewise immensely popular among the German diaspora in America where pro-Nazi sympathizers in Yorkville ale-houses often chorused the tune under the mistaken impression that it was "a Goebbels-approved" ballad.

[3] Later during World War II, an unusual exception to this ban occurred: Noticing that radio audiences wished to hear American jazz, the Nazis decided to exploit such music for their propaganda efforts.

[34] Accordingly, Charlie and his Orchestra—a Nazi-sponsored German propaganda swing ensemble derisively nicknamed "Goebbels' band"—recorded a state-approved anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik version of "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön.

[36][37] This Nazi propaganda version of the song was entitled "Anthem of the International Brotherhood of Bolsheviks" and has been credited by scholar Élise Petit with increasing anti-Semitic sentiment amid the Holocaust.

", was performed by top Polish crooners of the pre-war era, Adam Aston, Albert Harris and Mieczysław Fogg, and by less known artists, such as Henryk Wróblewski and Edward Zayenda.

In 1943, a Russian-language song with the same melody was produced entitled "Baron von der Pshik" ("Барон фон дер Пшик");[39] presumably to avoid paying royalties, this version was falsely credited to a Soviet songwriter.