Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone is a 1930 song with music by Sam H. Stept and lyrics by Sidney Clare. Bee Palmer is also credited as co-composer on the original publication. The lyric is an admonishment between parting lovers, in which the singer asks the other to speak nicely of her or not at all.
The original recording was made by Ernie Golden and His Orchestra on 27 January 1931 and released as the single “Hello Beautiful”. Early hit versions that year were by Gene Austin and Bert Lown, and Ethel Waters recorded the song for Columbia in February 1931. Later recordings include those by Doris Day (1951), the Mills Brothers with Tommy Dorsey (1951), Billie Holiday (1956), Frank Sinatra (1961), Ella Fitzgerald with Count Basie (1979) and Willie Nelson (1993). The song is a jazz and swing standard with a 1930s dance-band and vocal tradition.
