The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise is a popular ballad with music by Ernest Seitz, a Canadian-born concert pianist who composed it in 1918 under the pseudonym Raymond Roberts. The lyrics are by Gene Lockhart, a Canadian-born American actor. The song was introduced in the traveling play The Pierrot Players, in which Lockhart acted, and was published by Chappell & Co. in London on 24 January 1919. It is in the key of C. The earliest documented recordings date from 1921, by Edward Allen on Edison and John Steel on Victor. The most successful early version was an instrumental by Isham Jones and his Orchestra for Brunswick, released in October 1922, which reached number 2 in the United States.
Les Paul and Mary Ford later popularized the song, and their 1951 Capitol recording also reached number 2. Other notable recordings include versions by Fritz Kreisler, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Jack Teagarden and Willie Nelson. Stan Laurel plays the song in the film The Flying Deuces (1939). Written after World War I, it is usually treated as a jazz standard.
