Artist: Kaye Ballard
Author: Bart Howard
Label: Decca
Year: 1954
Musical star, famous enough to be featured in a Muppet Show episode of the first season. Tune possibly taken from the fuge of Toccata and Fugue in D minor by J.S. Bach.
Covers:
Portia Nelson [on solo album Let Me Love You; she was the author's muse]
Johnny Mathis [on his debut album, then still regarded as a jazz singer, the first time as Fly Me To The Moon]
Felicia Sanders [who introduced the song years before with the author in the Blue Angel Club in Manhattan]
Peggy Lee [who really popularized it as Fly Me To The Moon, also singing it in the Ed Sullivan Show; seemed to be a more logical title to her, people requested it as such; besides, the US space program took an enormous flight that year]
Joe Harnell [instrumental]
Connie Francis [in Italian and Spanish]
Frank Sinatra [with Count Basie and arranged by Quincy Jones, dropping the waltz time structure; version that literally got to the moon during the Apollo 11 mission]
Heidi Brühl [as Schiess mich doch zum Mond]
Genya Ravan [as Fly Me To The Moon]
Julien Clerc [as Volons vers la lune, duet with Véronique Sanson]
Willie Nelson [and again in '18]
Diana Krall [at the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 with the three astronauts present]
Gregory Porter [as Fly Me To The Moon, with Julie London's voice]
See also: Happy Heart and Let Me Love You.
If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)