Strangers in the Night

This article is about the song. For the album by Frank Sinatra, see Strangers in the Night (Frank Sinatra album). For the album by UFO, see Strangers in the Night (UFO album).

"Strangers In the Night"
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")
Label	Reprise
Writer	Bert Kaempfert, Charles Singleton, Eddie Snyder
Composer	Bert Kaempfert
Producer	Jimmy Bowen
Strangers in the Night track listing
"Strangers In the Night" (1) "Summer Wind" (2)
Music sample Strangers in the Night

"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.

Vocal improv

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 once, "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, 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]

Copyright issues

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 as 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.

Notes

1. ^ "Eddie Snyder obituary". The Daily Telegraph. 2011-03-31. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/8419821/Eddie-Snyder.html. Retrieved 2011-04-02. 
2. ^ Whitburn, Joel (1996). The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, 6th Edition (Billboard Publications)
3. ^ Where Scooby Doo Really Came From John Schafer, Music Hub, Culture.wnyc.org
4. ^ "Sinatra: The Life", Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, Inc., New York, 2005, p149.
5. ^ http://www.discogs.com Sergio Franchi

External links

• "Strangers in the Night" at MusicBrainz
• Teddy Harold & Jeremy http://www.45vinylvidivici.net/SEVENTIESARTISTES45%20(AM)/HAROLD%20TEDDY.htm

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