Carrie Jacobs-Bond

Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond (August 11, 1862 – December 28, 1946) was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter who composed some 175 pieces of popular music from the 1890s through the early 1940s - wikipedia

Carrie Jacobs-Bond, Who's who among the women of California - wikimedia.org

She is perhaps best remembered for writing the parlor song I Love You Truly, becoming the first woman to sell one million copies of a song. An enduring favorite as a wedding song, it first appeared in her 1901 collection Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose, along with "Just Awearyin' for You", which was also widely recorded.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/ElsieBaker-ILoveYouTruly.ogg The 1912 Elsie Baker recording of the w:Carrie Jacobs-Bond song I Love You Truly.

Carrie Jacobs-Bond studied piano with area teachers while a child. A performer named Blind Tom Wiggins toured the country, instantly memorizing any song played to him and then playing it back. After his part of the program, young Jacobs was prodded to go to the piano. She awed the crowd by playing back Blind Tom's song.

She began writing music in the late 1880s when encouraged by her husband to "put down on paper some of the songs that were continually running through my mind."

After her return from Iron River, Michigan, and the death of her second husband, she took up residence at 402 East Milwaukee Street, Janesville, Wisconsin, where she wrote the song "I Love You Truly".

Within a few years, Jacobs-Bond performed for Theodore Roosevelt, gave a recital in England (with Enrico Caruso), and a series of recitals in New York City.

Former U.S. President Herbert Hoover wrote in her epitaph:

Beloved composer of 'I Love You Truly' . . . and a hundred other heart songs that express the loves and longings, sadness and gladness of all people everywhere . . . who met widowhood, conquered hardship, and achieved fame by composing and singing her simple romantic melodies. She was America’s gallant lady of song.

The Los Angeles City Council honored her as "one of America’s greatest women."

Carrie Jacobs-Bond was the most successful woman composer of her day, by some reports earning more than $1 million in royalties from her music before the end of 1910. In 1941, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs cited Jacobs-Bond for her contributions to the progress of women during the 20th century - songwritershalloffame

Jacobs-Bond's life and lyrics serve as testimony to her resilience in overcoming hardships such as poverty, her father's early death, her divorce, her second husband's death, and her son's suicide in 1932 while listening to "A Perfect Day" on the phonograph.