I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plan is a classic Tin Pan Alley show tune published in 1929, with music by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Howard Dietz. It began life as a summer camp song called I Love to Lie Awake in Bed, with Schwartz’s melody set to Lorenz Hart’s lyrics while the pair worked at Brant Lake Camp in the Adirondacks. For the Broadway revue The Little Show in 1929, Dietz rewrote the lyrics and Clifton Webb introduced the ballad, which was nicknamed The Blue Pajama Song because of a line in the second refrain. The tune gained wide popularity in film and on records, with its first live performance by Clifton Webb on April 30, 1929 and the first recording by Rudy Vallée and His Connecticut Yankees in 1932. It has since become a jazz and pop standard, featured in films such as The Band Wagon (1953) with Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan, and released on numerous albums by artists including Bing Crosby (1954), Frank Sinatra (A Swingin’ Affair!, 1957), Julie London (Julie Is Her Name, Volume II, 1958), Tony Bennett with Count Basie (Basie Swings, Bennett Sings, 1959) and Bob Dylan (Triplicate, 2017).
