"Love Me or Leave Me" is a popular song with music by Walter Donaldson and lyrics by Gus Kahn, written in 1928 and introduced in the Broadway musical comedy Whoopee!, which opened in December of that year. Ruth Etting's performance was so popular that she was also given the song in the play Simple Simon, which opened in February 1930. Her original recording, made for Columbia Records in December 1928, was the biggest seller of its time and reached number two on the charts in 1929. That year, Guy Lombardo's Royal Canadians, with Carmen Lombardo on vocals, and Leo Reisman's orchestra also recorded it.
Bing Crosby recorded it in 1947, and Decca released that version in 1951. The 1955 biopic Love Me or Leave Me, with Doris Day as Etting, took the song's title, and Day's recording was a major hit, while Sammy Davis Jr. and Lena Horne also charted that year. Nina Simone's version on her debut album Little Girl Blue (1958) includes a solo in the style of J.S. Bach's Inventions, and Ella Fitzgerald's 1962 version with Nelson Riddle won a Grammy in 1963. Widely taken up by jazz and swing musicians, the song is a vaudeville-era popular standard.
