All Alone is a popular waltz ballad written by Irving Berlin and published in 1924. It was first performed in 1923 by John Steel and Ruth Thomas, and later introduced in the Music Box Revue of 1924-25 with Grace Moore and Oscar Shaw, who sang it from opposite ends of the stage with telephones. The song quickly became a standard, with 1925 recordings by artists such as Al Jolson, John McCormack, Paul Whiteman, Cliff Edwards, Abe Lyman, and Lewis James. It has since appeared on many albums including Frank Sinatra’s All Alone (1962), Thelonious Monk’s Thelonious Himself (1957), Julie London’s Lonely Girl (1956), Sarah Vaughan’s Sassy Swings Again (1967), Bing Crosby’s Treasury - The Songs I Love (1968), and Doris Day’s The Love Album (1967). The tune has also shown up in film and television, for example in The Plastic Age (1925) with Donald Keith, and in the Mickey Mouse short The Gorilla Mystery (1930) where Minnie Mouse sings it. All Alone remains a melancholy, timeless piece in the Great American Songbook, frequently covered and arranged in both vocal and instrumental versions.
