"Blue Velvet" is a popular song written and composed in 1950 by Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris. A top 20 hit for Tony Bennett in its original 1951 version, the song has since been re-recorded many times, with a 1963 version by Bobby Vinton reaching No. 1.

Songwriter Bernie Wayne was inspired to begin writing "Blue Velvet" on a 1951 visit to Richmond, Virginia where he stayed at the Jefferson Hotel. At a party at the hotel, Wayne continually caught sight of a female guest dressed in blue velvet with whom he would have a holiday romance.

The song's co-writer Bernie Wayne had pitched "Blue Velvet" to Columbia Records head A&R man Mitch Miller, who as soon as he'd heard the song's opening measure: "She wore blue velvet", had suggested giving the song to Tony Bennett. (Wayne's response: "Don't you want to hear the rest of the song?", caused Miller to opine: "Quit while you're ahead!") Recorded in a July 17, 1951 session with the Percy Faith orchestra and released September 21, 1951, Bennett's version peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard chart of "Records Most Played by Disc Jockeys", while reaching No. 18 on Billboard's chart of "Best Selling Pop Singles", and No. 18 on Billboard's chart of "Most Played Juke Box Records". Bennett's version of "Blue Velvet" made its album debut on a 1959 compilation LP that was also titled Blue Velvet. The single's B-side "Solitaire" was also a Top 20 hit.

"Blue Velvet" was expediently covered by Arthur Prysock—whose version although recorded a week after Bennett's evidently was the first version released, in August 1951—Bill Farrell, and Norman Kaye (a solo act who was also a member of the Mary Kaye Trio): the Cash Box Top 50 singles chart ranked Bennett's version and the three covers in tandem, with a peak position of No. 12 attained on the chart dated December 1, 1951. Cash Box also ranked Bennett's version as high as No. 11 on its chart of "The Nation's Top 10 Juke Box Tunes"."

The New York Times music journalist Stephen Holden would vaunt "Blue Velvet" as one of the four tracks which defined the first phase of Bennett's recording career: according to Holden "Blue Velvet" along with "Because of You" (1951), "Cold, Cold Heart" (1951), and "Stranger in Paradise" (1953), "stand as the gorgeous final flowering of the high-romantic style invented in the 1940s by Sinatra [with] arranger Axel Stordahl. Pure and throbbing, ...Bennett's voice adds a semi-operatic heft to Sinatra's more intimate crooning style. Male pop singing since [the mid-1950s] has never been [so] unabashedly sweet." In 1957 Bennett would begin a longstanding working relationship with jazz pianist Ralph Sharon who Bennett would recall advised him: "If you keep singing...sweet saccharine songs like 'Blue Velvet' sooner or later...you're going to stop selling [records]" and with his 1957 album The Beat of My Heart - produced and conducted by Sharon - Bennett had launched a new musical persona as an intensely intimate song stylist.

A live version of "Blue Velvet" was featured on the 1962 concert album Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall, with the selection being included on The Good Life, a 1963 EP release in the UK. Bennett dueted with k.d. lang on a remake of "Blue Velvet" for his 2011 album Duets II, while Bennett's 2012 album Viva Duets featured Bennett duetting on "Blue Velvet" with Maria Gadú, who sang her part in Portuguese. ("Blue Velvet" was a bonus cut on an edition of Viva Duets sold exclusively through Target.)

In 1955, the Clovers released a version of the song through Atlantic Records as a single. The song was initially recorded, produced, and released when the R&B group was still composed of John "Buddy" Bailey (lead singer), Billy Mitchell, Matthew McQuater, Harold Lucas, Harold Winley, and Bill Harris. Various members of the group left, died, or were replaced, although the group as a whole still performed the song regardless of whom its members were. The single reached No. 14 on Billboard's Rhythm & Blues Records chart of "Best Sellers in Stores". In 1956, the Clovers released the song on their eponymous album.

The first version of "Blue Velvet" to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 during the rock 'n' roll era was recorded and released by the Statues, a Nashville-based doo-wop trio consisting of Buzz Cason, Hugh Jarrett, and Richard Williams. In 1959 Cason and Williams, members of local rockabilly band the Casuals, had been invited by Jarrett, a former member of the Jordanaires and later a disc jockey at WLAC, to join him - along with veteran background singer and composer Marijohn Wilkin - to form a vocal chorale who would back artists recording in Nashville; the three male members of the chorale were signed to Liberty Records by label founder Al Bennett, who had Snuff Garrett - in his apparent debut as a producer - record the trio in three sessions at the Bradley Studios at the end of November or the beginning of December 1959.