Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond (August 11, 1862 – December 28, 1946) was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter who composed some 175[1] pieces of popular music from the 1890s through the early 1940s.

[4] A 2009 August 29 NPR documentary on Jacobs-Bond emphasized "I Love You Truly" together with "Just Awearyin' for You" and "A Perfect Day" as her three great hits.

They lived in Iron River, Michigan, where she was a homemaker and supplemented the family income with painted ceramics, piano lessons, and her musical compositions.

[2] She lived among miners and loggers for several years and when the economy of the iron mining area collapsed, Frank had no money.

Selling ceramics, running a rooming house, and writing songs did not produce enough money to pay her bills.

[10]After achieving some success with her composing, Jacobs-Bond moved with her son to Chicago to be closer to music publishers.

[2] For several years while living in Chicago, most of her songs never made the transition from manuscript to being published, so she had to raise money by singing them at social gathering and concerts.

[15] She is buried in the "Court of Honor" at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

[citation needed] Former U.S. President Herbert Hoover wrote in her epitaph: "Beloved composer of 'I Love You Truly' .

who met widowhood, conquered hardship, and achieved fame by composing and singing her simple romantic melodies.

[2] She began writing music in the late 1880s when encouraged by her husband to "put down on paper some of the songs that were continually running through my mind.

"[4] After her return from Iron River, Michigan, and the death of her second husband, she took up residence at 402 East Milwaukee Street, Janesville, Wisconsin, where she wrote the song "I Love You Truly".

Jacobs-Bond had second thoughts, so she went to the telephone at the corner drugstore and called opera star Jessie Bartlett Davis, even though they had never met.

Jacobs-Bond hoped that Davis would make the song as popular as she had "Oh Promise Me" (by Reginald De Koven and Clement Scott) in 1898.

[10] After moving to Chicago, Jacobs-Bond slowly gathered a following by singing in small recitals in local homes.

[17] The success of Seven Songs allowed Jacobs-Bond to expand her publishing company, known as the Bond Shop, which she had originally opened with her son in her apartment in Janesville.

[citation needed] In 1910 she published "A Perfect Day", for which 25 million copies of the sheet music were sold.

[20] She was invited again to Washington to perform at a White House State Dinner given by President Harding for the Members of the Supreme Court on February 2, 1922.

[21] Carrie Jacobs-Bond was the most successful woman composer of her day, by some reports earning more than $1 million in royalties from her music before the end of 1910.

Composer Rolande Maxwell Young later revised and updated some of Jacobs-Bond's songs for Boston Music Co. Jacobs-Bond's life and lyrics serve as testimony to her resilience in overcoming hardships[24] such as poverty, her father's early death, her divorce, her second husband's death, and her son's suicide in 1932 while listening to "A Perfect Day" on the phonograph.