One for My Baby (and One More for the Road) is a pop torch song written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the 1943 movie The Sky's the Limit, and was first performed in the film by Fred Astaire. Arlen described it as a wandering fifty-eight bar tune that goes beyond the usual thirty-two bars and even changes key, giving it a metropolitan melancholic beauty. Published in 1943 by Edwin H Morris & Co, the tune became a standard and was popularized by Frank Sinatra, who recorded it several times from 1947 onward for various releases. Many artists have covered the song, including Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and Etta James, and it has appeared on numerous albums and live records. In film and television it has appeared in Road House (Ida Lupino, 1948), Macao (Jane Russell, 1952) and was famously performed by Bette Midler on The Tonight Show in 1992, a performance that won Midler an Emmy.
