The Swingingest Record You’ll Ever Hear! Fly Me to the Moon, with Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

“Fly Me to the Moon” was a schmalzfest of a record that sounded like it was by Gordon Jenkins, but was actually composed by Bart Howard. It was the kind of kitsch—think “Unforgettable”—that paid the rent for Nat Cole, who had a big hit with it.

About ten years later, in what was the single greatest arrangement I’ve ever heard, a brilliant young black musician and chart-writer named Quincy Jones put the song through a magical, musical metamorphosis.

If Jones had devoted himself to music, he might have ended up the greatest arranger of them all. Alas, he was more interested in becoming a billionaire.
 

Fly Me to the Moon
By Bart Howard

Fly me to the moon,
Let me play among the stars,
Let me see what spring is like,
On Jupiter and Mars,
In other words, hold my hand,
In other words, baby, kiss me.

Fill my heart with song,
And let me sing for ever more,
You are all I long for,
All I worship and adore,
In other words, please be true,
In other words, I love you.

[Bridge]

Fill my heart with song,
Let me sing for ever more,
You are all I long for,
All I worship and adore,
In other words, please be true,
In other words…
In other words,
I … love … you.
 


 

Published on July 30, 2013 by Loizakos Loizou.
 

[Previously, in this series:

“Frank Sinatra: My Shining Hour (Video, from Trilogy: Past Present Future)”;

“Hear Frank Sinatra Sing Arlen & Mercer’s Come Rain or Shine”;

“Hear Frank Sinatra Sing the Quintessential Version of Harold Arlen & Johnny Mercer’s ‘One for My Baby (and One More, for the Road)’”;

“Hear Frank Sinatra Sing the Classic Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer Torch Song, ‘Blues in the Night’”;

“Frank Sinatra: Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s Stormy Weather (Video)”;

“Frank Sinatra Live! Medley of The Gal That Got Away and It Never Entered My Mind, Performed in 1980 at Carnegie Hall (Great Quality Video of a Grand Performance!)”;

“Frank Sinatra: Here's That Rainy Day (Jimmy Van Heusen/Johnny Burke)”;

“Frank Sinatra’s Revelatory, 1962 Performance of Kern and Fields’ The Way You Look Tonight”;

“Paul Robeson?! Hear Frank Sinatra Give the Definitive Interpretation of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Ol’ Man River (1963)”;

“The Greatest Song Ever Written? Hear Frank Sinatra Sing Rodgers & Hammerstein's Soliloquy”; and

“Hear Frank Sinatra Sing the Real ‘New York, New York,’ by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, from On the Town (1944/1949).”