Fly Me to the Moon

In 1954, when "Fly Me to the Moon" was first presented to the public, Bart Howard had been pursuing a career in music for over 20 years. He played piano to accompany cabaret singers, but also wrote songs with Cole Porter, his idol, in mind. In the book Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret James Gavin noted that Howard wrote the song "in response to his publisher's plea for a simpler song: why did he have to write such grandiloquent lyrics? 'In Other Words' talked about the verbosity of poets who 'use many words to say a simple thing'; 'hold my hand,' 'Kiss me. In response, Howard wrote a cabaret ballad. A publisher tried to make him change some words from "fly me to the Moon" to "take me to the Moon," but Howard refused. Many years later Howard commented that "... it took me 20 years to find out how to write a song in 20 minutes." ==Early recordings==

circa late 1950s Kaye Ballard made the song's first commercial recording, released by Decca in April 1954. A brief review published on May 8, 1954, in Billboard said that "In Other Words" was "...a love song sung with feeling by Miss Ballard." This recording was released as the flipside of "Lazy Afternoon", which Kaye Ballard was currently performing as star of the stage show The Golden Apple. Over the next few years, jazz and cabaret singers released cover versions of "In Other Words" on EP or LP record albums, including Chris Connor, Johnny Mathis, Portia Nelson, and Nancy Wilson. Eydie Gormé sang the song on her 1958 album Eydie In Love (under the title "In Other Words"), which reached No. 20 in the Cashbox Album Charts. ==Subsequent recordings and uses==

In 1960, Peggy Lee released the song on the album Pretty Eyes, then made it more popular when she performed it in front of a large television audience on The Ed Sullivan Show. and in 1963 Peggy Lee convinced Bart Howard to make the name change official. and in Spanish as "". In 1962, Joe Harnell arranged and recorded an instrumental version in a bossa nova style. It was released as a single in late 1962. Harnell's version spent 13 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, reaching No. 14 on February 23, 1963, while reaching No. 4 on Billboards Middle-Road Singles chart. It reached No. 30 in Canada. Harnell's version was ranked No. 89 on Billboards end of year ranking "Top Records of 1963". Harnell's recording won him a Grammy Award at the 5th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Performance by an Orchestra – for Dancing. His version was included on his album Fly Me to the Moon and the Bossa Nova Pops released in early 1963, which reached No. 3 stereo album on the Billboard Top LPs chart. Frank Sinatra included the song on his 1964 album It Might as Well Be Swing, accompanied by Count Basie. The music for this album was arranged by Quincy Jones, who had worked with Count Basie a year earlier on the album This Time by Basie, which also included a version of "Fly Me to the Moon". Will Friedwald commented that "Jones boosted the tempo and put it into an even four/four" for Basie's version, but "when Sinatra decided to address it with the Basie/Jones combination they recharged it into a straight swinger... [which]...all but explodes with energy". Bart Howard estimated that by the time Frank Sinatra covered the song in 1964, more than 100 other versions had been recorded. Occasionally on the CBS series WKRP in Cincinnati, an instrumental sampling of "Fly Me To The Moon" was used as a doorbell melody during scenes taking place in the apartment of character Jennifer Marlowe. By 1995, the song had been recorded more than 300 times. The Claire cover version won the Planning Award of Heisei Anisong Grand Prize among the anime theme songs from 1989 to 1999, following its appearance in the end credits of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Richard Simmons's last words were a loose paraphrase of the song's lyrics. ==NASA association==

presents platinum copies of Frank Sinatra's album to Senator John Glenn and Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong Frank Sinatra's 1964 recording of "Fly Me to the Moon" became closely associated with NASA's Apollo space program. A copy of the song was played on a Sony TC-50 portable cassette player on the Apollo 10 mission which orbited the Moon, and also on Apollo 11 before the first landing on the Moon. The song's association with Apollo 11 was reprised many years later when Diana Krall sang it at the mission's 40th anniversary commemoration ceremony, and also for mission commander Neil Armstrong's memorial service in 2012. ==Certifications==

Frank Sinatra's version ==References==