"I'm a Fool to Want You" was created in 1951 by Frank Sinatra, Joel Herron and Jack Wolf. It was created during the temultuous affair that involved both Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra. The affair was at first squashed by studio heads at MGM and Sinatra's managers but became big headlines when Sinatra left his first wife for Ava. Ava Gardner, at that time, was one of the most perfectly beautiful women in Hollywood at that time. The Sinatra-Gardner affair was doomed almost at the start with MGM studio heads sending Gardner to locations shoots in Africa and Europe in order to break-up the twosome. This resulted in passionately angry scenes between Gardner and Sinatra which resulted in a near suicide attempt by Sinatra in 1951 when he co-wrote "I'm a Fool to Want You." The first recording session for this song came in 1951 and was done in one take with Axel Stordahl (Sinatra's accompanist at that time) arranging and conducting the orchestra. So intense were the emotions that night that after the recording was done, Sinatra was so overcome with the grief in his own life, left the studio and never returned, disappearing into the night. This recording from May 1, 1957 with Gordon Jenkins is just as devastating as the first with Jenkins' Tchaikovsky-like strings tearing at the melodic line gently but inevitably. Surely this is a masterpiece of the first order.