hypersongs

You Don't Know What Love Is

The 1941 standard that opens Blue Light 'til Dawn.
Cassandra Wilson, from Blue Light 'til Dawn (1993)

Gene de Paul wrote the music and Don Raye the lyrics in 1941, for the Abbott and Costello film Keep 'Em Flying, sung by Carol Bruce and cut before release; it was reused in Behind the Eight Ball (1942) with Bruce. It became a jazz standard after Miles Davis's 1954 version, and has been recorded by Ella Fitzgerald (1941), Louis Armstrong (1942), Chet Baker, Dinah Washington and Anita O'Day (1955), Sonny Rollins on Saxophone Colossus (1956), Marvin Gaye (1961), John Coltrane on Ballads (1962), Ahmad Jamal and Eric Dolphy, and Chrissie Hynde in 2019.

Wilson's version opens her 1993 album at 6:05, with Ross on guitar and Burnham on violin, as Compulsive Reader hears it, describing it as sensual and sleepy. A search summary of an Analog Planet article says it was recorded somewhere other than Sear Sound; we could not verify which studio. We found no Wilson comment on the song. Setlist.fm holds 171 Cassandra Wilson setlists, and she said in 2013 that her shows often include material from the album; we have no count for this song, and no chart, video or sample data.

Sources

  1. You Don't Know What Love Is, Wikipedia
  2. Blue Light 'til Dawn, Wikipedia
  3. Cassandra Wilson, Blue Light 'til Dawn, Compulsive Reader (2009-06-05)
  4. Cassandra Wilson obituary, uDiscover