Fly Me To The Moon – Johnny Punish

Johnny Punish covers this amazing song called „Fly Me to the Moon“. It was originally titled „In Other Words“; a song written in 1954 by Bart Howard. Kaye Ballard made the first recording of the song the year it was written. Frank Sinatra’s 1964 version was closely associated with the Apollo missions to the Moon.

In 1999, the Songwriters Hall of Fame honored „Fly Me to the Moon“ by inducting it as a „Towering Song“.

In 1954, when he began to write the song that became „Fly Me to the Moon“, 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 response to a publisher’s request for a simpler song, Bart Howard wrote a cabaret ballad[5] which he titled „In Other Words“. 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.“

He used his position as a piano accompanist and presenter at the Blue Angel cabaret venue to promote the song, and it was soon introduced in cabaret performances by Felicia Sanders.

The song was composed in 3/4 time but was changed to 4/4 by Quincy Jones in his arrangement.

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, which reached No. 20 in the Cashbox Album Charts.

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“.[36] 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.

By 1995, the song had been recorded more than 300 times.

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.

The Sinatra version was also used in the 2000 NASA-related fictional film Space Cowboys.