"Love for Sale" is a 1930 popular song by Cole Porter, who wrote both the music and the lyrics, and it is a jazz standard of the Great American Songbook. Kathryn Crawford introduced it in the Broadway musical The New Yorkers, which opened on December 8, 1930, and closed in May 1931 after 168 performances. The song follows an AABA chorus of 64 bars, followed by an eight-bar tag that is often dropped in performance. Its A section is in B-flat minor, modulating to B-flat major and back.
In 1930 a newspaper described the song as in bad taste, and radio stations avoided it. Porter moved the number in the musical to the Cotton Club in Harlem, where Elisabeth Welch sang it instead of Kathryn Crawford. Early recordings came from Libby Holman with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians (1931) and from the Jack Teagarden Orchestra with Kitty Kallen (1940). Later versions include vocal recordings by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Eartha Kitt and Mel Tormé, and instrumental ones by Sidney Bechet, Erroll Garner, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, Cannonball Adderley and Dexter Gordon. Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga recorded it for their 2021 album Love for Sale.
