Vincent Miller Youmans' 1929 musical Great Day was a failure, running for only 36 performances, but three of the musical's songs—"More Than You Know," "Without a Song," and the title song—eventually became successful when recorded by popular singers of the day. Without a doubt, the least likely of these recordings was by Lawrence Tibbett, a leading baritone with the Metropolitan Opera. Tibbett had already gone to Hollywood and made a movie musical in 1929, MGM's The Rogue Song. Tibbett returned in 1930 to make his second movie musical, The Prodigal. In the movie, Tibbett plays a cheerful hobo whose theme song is "Without a Song." In Tibbett's performance, the simple but effective song became a gargantuan anthem sung with the sort of stentorian grace that only an opera singer can bring to a popular song. And although popular singers from Frank Sinatra to Tony Bennett have reclaimed "Without a Song" for the great American songbook, operatic baritones still sometimes sing "Without a Song" as an encore.

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