"I Ain't Got Nobody" (sometimes referred to as "I'm So Sad and Lonely" or "I Ain't Got Nobody Much") is a popular song and copyrighted in 1915. It was first recorded by Marion Harris, and became a perennial standard, recorded many times over the following generations, in styles ranging from pop to jazz to country music.
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"I Ain't Got Nobody" is a ii-V-I composed in F major, that features a chromatic walkdown to the ii chord from the tonic in the A section, and then a typical resolution to the V (Dominant) chord. The B section is bluesy.
Attribution
The song performed by The Jazzmania Quintette in a 1928 Vitaphone Varieties short
There are competing claims to the copyright, and thus who composed it is not clearly known. [1]
Two copyrights from 1911 are attributed to Clarence Brandon and Billy Smythe,[2] both St. Louis musicians.[3] If true, this would be the first version of the words and music to "I Ain't Got Nobody".[4] They claimed they published it that same year.[2]
Chicago and Saint Louis ragtime pianist and blues composer Charles Warfield (1878–1955) claimed to have originally written the song[1] and a copyright dated April 1914 attributes Warfield as the composer,[5] David Young as the lyricist, and Marie Lucas as the arranger.[6] This song is titled "I Ain't Got Nobody and Nobody Cares for Me".
A copyright entry from 1916 under a shorter title attributes the composition to Davy Peyton and Spencer Williams, and the lyrics to publisher Roger Graham.[3][2] Also in 1916, Frank K. Root & Co., a Chicago publisher, acquired the Craig & Co. copyright, and later that year also acquired the Warfield-Young copyright.[5][4]
"I Ain't Got Nobody" is best known in a form first recorded by Louis Prima in 1956,[7] where it was paired in a medley with another old standard, "Just a Gigolo". Prima started pairing the songs in 1945 and the idea was revisited in the popular arrangement in a new, jive-and-jumping style, created by Sam Butera for Prima's 1950s Las Vegas stage show. The success of that act gained Prima a recording deal with Capitol Records, which aimed to capture on record the atmosphere of his shows. The first album, titled The Wildest! and released in November 1956, opened with "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody", which then became Prima's signature number and helped relaunch his career. Butera is noted for his raucous playing style, his off-color humor, and the innuendo in his lyrics.
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