| "Strangers In the Night" | ||||||||
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| Song by Frank Sinatra from the album Strangers in the Night | ||||||||
| Released | 1966 | |||||||
| Recorded | April 11, 1966 | |||||||
| Genre | Traditional pop | |||||||
| Length | 2:35 (original album/single version, incorrectly listed as 2:25 in the original back cover) 2:44 (extended version from "Nothing But the Best") |
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| Label | Reprise | |||||||
| Writer | Bert Kaempfert, Charles Singleton, Eddie Snyder | |||||||
| Composer | Bert Kaempfert | |||||||
| Producer | Jimmy Bowen | |||||||
| Strangers in the Night track listing | ||||||||
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| "Strangers in the Night" | ||||
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| Single by Connie Francis | ||||
| A-side | Somewhere, My Love | |||
| Released | 1967 | |||
| Format | 7" single | |||
| Recorded | May 31, 1966 | |||
| Genre | Schlager music | |||
| Length | 3:01 (A-side) 3:08 (B-side) |
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| Label | MGM Records 61 148 | |||
| Writer(s) | Bert Kaempfert, Charles Singleton, Eddie Snyder | |||
| Producer | Tom Wilson | |||
| Connie Francis German singles chronology |
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"Strangers in the Night" is a popular song composed by Bert Kaempfert with English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder. It was originally created under the title Beddy Bye as part of the instrumental score for the movie A Man Could Get Killed. The song was made famous in 1966 by Frank Sinatra.[1]
Reaching number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the Easy Listening chart,[2] it was the title song for Sinatra's 1966 album Strangers in the Night, which would become his most commercially successful album. The song also reached number one on the UK Singles Chart.
Sinatra's recording won him the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, as well as a Grammy Award for Best Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist or Instrumentalist for Ernie Freeman at the Grammy Awards of 1967.
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One of the most memorable and recognizable features of the record is Sinatra's scat improvisation of the melody with the syllables "doo-be-doo-be-doo" as the song fades to the end. This inspired the name for the cartoon canine Scooby Doo.[3] Also the fading of the song was made too early, and many fans lament the fact that Sinatra's improvisation is cut off too soon. For the recently released CD Nothing But The Best, the song was remastered and the running time clocks in at 2:44, instead of the usual 2:35. The extra nine seconds is just a continuation of Sinatra's scat noises.
The track was recorded on April 11, 1966, one month before the rest of the album.
Sinatra despised the song, calling it at one time "a piece of shit," and "the worst fucking song that I have ever heard." [4] Understandably, he wasn't afraid to voice his disapproval for playing it live. In spite of his contempt for the song, for the first time in eleven years he had a number one song that topped the charts, and it remained there for fifteen weeks.
Italian-American tenor Sergio Franchi (among many others), covered the song on his 1967 RCA Victor album From Sergio - With Love.[5]
It is sometimes claimed that the Yugoslav-Croatian singer Ivo Robić was the original composer of Strangers in the Night, and sold the rights to Kaempfert after he entered it without success into a song contest in Yugoslavia. This can not be substantiated. Robić - often referred to as "Mr. Morgen" for his 1950s charts success with Morgen, which was created in collaboration with Bert Kaempfert - was rather the singer of the Yugoslav version of the song called Stranci u Noći. It was published in 1966 by the Yogoslav record company Jugoton under the serial number EPY-3779. On the label of the record "B. Kaempfert" and "M. Renota" are stated as authors, whereby Marija Renota is the creator of the Yugoslav lyrics. The original composition of Strangers was under the title Beddy Bye - referring to the lead character William Beddoes - as an instrumental for the score of the movie A Man Could Get Killed. The phrase Strangers in the Night was created after the composition, when the New York music publishers Roosevelt Music requested the lyricists Snyder and Singleton - then of fresh Spanish Eyes, composed by Kaempfert of Moon Over Naples fame - to put some text to the tune. Stranci u Noći is a literal translation of this phrase.
In 1967 French composer Michel Philippe-Gérard, more commonly known just as Philippe-Gérard established a claim, that the melody of Strangers was based on his composition Magic Tango, which was published in 1953 through Chappells in New York. Royalties from the song where thus frozen until a court in Paris ruled in 1971 against plagiarism and stated that many songs were based on similar constant factors.
"Strangers in the Night" was recorded by many other artists, among them[6] :
The prototype of this song is "Broken Guitar" by Avo Uvezian
| Preceded by "Paperback Writer" by The Beatles |
Billboard Hot 100 number-one single July 2, 1966 |
Succeeded by "Hanky Panky" by Tommy James and the Shondells |
| Preceded by "Band of Gold" by Mel Carter |
Billboard Easy Listening Singles number-one single (Frank Sinatra version) June 4, 1966 (7 weeks) |
Succeeded by "The Impossible Dream (The Quest)" by Jack Jones |
| Preceded by "Paint It, Black" by The Rolling Stones |
UK number-one single 2 June 1966 – 16 June 1966 |
Succeeded by "Paperback Writer" by The Beatles |
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