Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Fly Me to the Moon

In this the golden age of Spotify, it's instructive and delightful to search on a great song and play through the covers. Alexi is working on a transcription of "Fly Me to the Moon" for solo violin, which made me curious. The Sinatra version is of course definitive. If you really expect to fly me to the moon, you better make it swing, and Frank made it swing. What's interesting is how many renditions get hung up on the clever melody and fall flat.

After Frank's, the best version is surely by the Oscar Peterson Trio, with Oscar channeling Bach from the get-go, and then going all blues, and then swinging pretty hard, and finally just showing off and ripping it for the last few choruses, with a great full stop:



The worst must surely be by Johnny Mathis. Great pop singer, but god did he butcher this one:



Among the versions that don't try to swing, the best is Sarah Vaughan's, because, well, Sarah Vaughan:



Also recommended, if you love that cheesy Hammond B3 sound (and admit, you do love it!), is Joey DeFrancesco's:



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