The songwriters behind Frank Sinatra’s great music

Top 10 songs written for Frank Sinatra and the stories behind the music.

1. My Way (1968)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=85_YK-La0vk

Francis Albert Sinatra didn’t write the songs we know and love.

But Ol’ Blue Eyes was the songwriter’s greatest friend as he could take a tune and make it one of the most famous songs in the world.

Put it this way, singer and songwriter Paul Anka took a little-known and somewhat-uninspiring French ditty and turned it into possibly the best-known song in the world with a little help from the man simply known as “The Voice”.

Anka recalls: “I lived in France and heard this song on the radio called Comme D’Habitude. The original lyric was about a husband and wife, bad marriage ‘We get up in the morning and, as usual, I look at your armpit’. Very French!

“But I heard it another way in my head and it kept gnawing away at me.

“Then, in 1968, I’m performing in Florida, Frank’s filming a movie and we have dinner. He says he’s doing one more album then quitting. He always teased me about writing for him but he hated pop music, hated Presley, hated rock.

“But I went home to New York City and realised: ‘Frank is retiring, I want to write something’, so I took the French song and started to mould it into something different.

“I’m sat at a typewriter at 1am, a storm outside and wondered what Frank would say if he was writing this.

“I thought: ‘And now, the end is near…’ and it wrote itself. I completed it in four hours.

“Three months later, Frank called me from the studio, put the phone near the speaker and played it to me. I started to cry.”

2. The Best Is Yet To Come (1964)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=42IWC7TZJdo

This was actually written for Frank’s big rival, Tony Bennett, but it was Sinatra who made it a hit by including it on his 1964 album It Might As Well Be Swing.

It was actually the last song Sinatra sang in public, on February 25, 1995, and the words “The Best Is Yet To Come” are carved on his tombstone.

3. It Was A Very Good Year (1965)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JVZETBC38o4

My personal favourite, this wouldn’t have been a hit had Frank not missed out the middle part of the song.

Ervin Drake wrote the story of a man’s life told in wine terms, and says: “I had no idea he’d recorded it at the time but years later, I got to know Frank really well.

“One night, we’re sat together in Vegas at the Sands and I asked him why he never sang the middle part I’d written. He said: ‘What middle part?’

“I said: ‘The Elizabethan nonsense syllables that went ‘Hi-lura-lie hi-lura-lura-lie’m and he said: ‘Buddy, you’re so lucky I didn’t see them ’cause with me it would have come out ‘Hi-shooby-do, hi-shooby-scooby do!’.”

4. I Get A Kick Outta You (1953)

This Cole Porter number had been around for 20 years before Frank recorded it in 1953, and he did two versions.

The lyrics had already been altered to take out a reference to Mrs Lindbergh after her toddler was kidnapped and killed, when it was chosen for the Hollywood musical Anything Goes.

Tinseltown’s Production Code meant the line “Some get a kick from cocaine” had to go, so Porter tweaked it to “Some like the perfume in Spain”.

Frank recorded both versions and even added his own twist to another when he sang “Some like the bop-type refrain”.

5. Fly Me To The Moon (1964)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aSPbwXUq9vM

This was originally called In Other Words but when Peggy Lee performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show, it became better known by its opening words.

Ten years after it was first recorded, Frank’s 1964 version turned the jazz standard into an up-tempo swing tune.

It was played on the Apollo 10 mission that orbited the moon, and then became the first music played on the moon when Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin brought out a portable cassette player after stepping onto the lunar surface.

A slow and solemn version was also sung at the memorial service for that mission’s commander, Neil Armstrong.

6. Strangers In The Night (1966)

Frank’s version of German bandleader Bert Kaempfert’s song earned him a Grammy, was No 1 on both sides of the Atlantic and was the title track of his most- commercially-successful album.

Yet he absolutely despised it, calling it: “The worst God-damned song that I have ever heard.”

But it gave us something special. Sinatra’s ad-libbed closing “dooby-dooby-doo” gave the creator of cartoon dog Scooby-Doo the inspiration for his name.

7. Nancy (With The Laughing Face) (1963)

People often assume this song, with lyrics by Sgt Bilko star Phil Silvers, was written specifically for Frank’s daughter Nancy’s birthday.

In fact, co-writer Jimmy Van Heusen wrote it for his other partner’s wife, Bessie, but they changed it to suit whoever was the birthday girl at a particular party.

When they sang it at Nancy Sinatra’s party, her dad broke down and cried thinking it was written for her.

8. Nice ’n’ Easy (1960)

Lew Spence ran this by Frank during a break in filming Ocean’s Eleven and he originally threw it in the bin.

Spence’s co-writer Marilyn Bergman says: “A call had gone out that the Sinatra people were looking for a song for Frank, the title song for an album of lightly-swinging love songs.

“Every writer in Hollywood submitted something, and luckily we got the call.

“Writing for Frank Sinatra was like writing for a character in a play, you knew exactly the language, the look, the attitude everything.”

9. All The Way (1957)

One of Sinatra’s main writers was Sammy Cahn, who says: “Sinatra recorded 87 of my songs, some three times.

“When he sings ‘It’s such a lovely day’, he makes the word ‘lovely’ sound lovely. Ninety-nine singers out of 100 wouldn’t sing it that way.

“He gives words full meaning and that’s why he’s Sinatra.”

10. I’ll Never Smile Again (1940)

The record that kicked off one of the greatest showbiz careers the world will ever see.

It was recorded in 1940 by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, with vocals provided by Frank Sinatra and The Pied Pipers.

It stayed at No 1 for 12 weeks and ensured the club singer from Hoboken, New Jersey, would become the bobbysoxers’ favourite. Sinatramania was born.