They Didn't Believe Me

First introduced in the 1914 musical The Girl from Utah it was one of five numbers added to the show by Kern and Reynolds for its Broadway debut at the Knickerbocker Theatre on August 14, 1914.

The show had originated in Britain, but impresario Charles Frohman had felt it needed additional material to enliven its U.S. run.

The song, with four beats to a bar, departed from the customary waltz-rhythms of European influence and fitted the new American passion for modern dances such as the fox-trot.

Theatre historian John Kenrick writes that, until this point, the majority of love songs had relied on flowery vocabulary to express romantic sentiments.

Artists who have recorded it include Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby,[3] George Sanders, Dinah Washington, Jeanette MacDonald, Johnny Mercer, Charlie Parker, Elvis Costello, Stan Kenton, Bill Frisell, Peter Stampfel, Bud Powell, Edward Woodward, Harry Belafonte, Leontyne Price and Marian McPartland.