It was written by Calvin Carter and James "Pookie" Hudson in 1951, and was first recorded by The Spaniels in 1953.
[19] It was also recorded in 1954 by country music duo Johnnie & Jack,[20] whose version reached No.
4 on Billboard's "Country & Western Records" chart "Most Played in Juke Boxes",[22] No.
4 on Cash Box's chart of "The Ten Folk and Western Disk Jockeys Played Most This Week",[24] and No.
8 on the Cash Box Top 50, in a tandem ranking of the McGuire Sisters, Sunny Gale, the Spaniels, Johnnie & Jack, Ella Mae Morse, and Gloria Mann & Carter Rays' versions, with the McGuire Sisters and Sunny Gale's versions marked as bestsellers,[28] while reaching No.
7 on Cash Box's chart of "The Ten Records Disk Jockeys Played Most This Week", in a tandem ranking of the McGuire Sisters and Sunny Gale's versions.
8 on Billboard's "Honor Roll of Hits", with the McGuire Sisters, the Spaniels, and Sunny Gale's versions listed as best sellers.
[31] The Spaniels re-recorded the song in 1969 for Buddah Records; however, the title was shown as "Goodnight Sweetheart" and the songwriting misattributed to Ray Noble, Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Rudy Vallee, implying they covered the 1930s standard.
For many years, Dick Biondi played the song at the end of every show on Chicago's 94.7 WLS-FM.
[34] The Johnnie & Jack version was used by NTV in Tokyo, Japan from 2000 to 2001 when the broadcasting in a day ended and not having the NNN24.