This is not the 3-minute-plus stereo-era remake posted elsewhere, but Jo’s wartime performance from a 1944 radio broadcast that was distributed to service personnel around the world via V Disc #262.
Surprisingly and uncharacteristically, even though they were no longer under the AFM Recording Ban in 1944, Capitol Records did not release even one version of “I’ll Be Seeing You” into the commercial record market, not even while the song spent ten weeks atop the weekly “Your Hit Parade” radio countdowns. A Stafford-Weston arrangement similar to this one would certainly have sold well in the U.S., but at least our GI’s with access to V Discs and phonographs could enjoy it.

Composed for a failed 1938 stage musical, “I’ll Be Seeing You” lay mostly dormant until 1944 when America discovered it in a big way, turning it into one of WWII’s most memorable ballad hits. Bing’s version was the most successful, spending a month at #1 and half a year on Billboard’s record charts. Also posted is the 1940 Tommy Dorsey-Frank Sinatra recording, reissued to popular acclaim in’44.

Here is one of the most memorable of the 1942-44’Recording Ban’ record hits. It was back in February 1940, at only the second Sinatra session with his new boss Dorsey at Victor, that Frank recorded this version of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” The song was already two years old, had failed to gain an audience in 1938, and failed again in 1940. But in 1944 “I’ll Be Seeing You” became an anthem of sorts for those separated by the war, and Bing Crosby’s poignant new recording zoomed to the top. Unlike Bing’s Decca label, Victor Records had not yet settled with the AFM and was unable to produce a new competing version using union musicians. Thus came the reissue of this belatedly-famous 1940 Dorsey-Sinatra recording.

recorded February 8, 1940
It wasn’t until 1944 that the public took serious notice of this song and turned it into a huge wartime hit, but “I’ll Be Seeing You” dates back to a very short-lived 1938 Broadway musical called “Right This Way.” In 1940 the song was recorded by several artists, with one of those…the Dorsey-Sinatra version…enjoying belated success during the mid-40s revival. Other 1940 releases included Dick Todd, Henry King, and this listenable track by the Mitchell Ayres band.