Strangers in the Night

“Strangers in the Night” (1966) A Grammy-winning hit, this romantic ballad exudes Sinatra’s signature suaveness. With its memorable melody and Sinatra’s smooth vocals, “Strangers in the Night” has become synonymous with timeless love songs.”Strangers in the Night” is a song composed by Bert Kaempfert with English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder. Kaempfert originally used it under the title “Beddy Bye” as part of the instrumental score for the movie A Man Could Get Killed.[1] The song was made famous in 1966 by Frank Sinatra. Sinatra’s recording of the song reached No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the Easy Listening chart, and it was also simultaneously a No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart The success of the song led to the release of the album Strangers in the Night which included the title song. This release became Sinatra’s most commercially successful album. 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. The song was originally an instrumental theme tune from the soundtrack of the film A Man Could Get Killed written by German composer Bert Kaempfert. Part of the melody could be heard in the orchestral title song of the film as well as the end credits. Music publisher Hal Fine played some tracks from the film to Frank Sinatra’s producer Jimmy Bowen, and Bowen indicated that Sinatra would record the theme tune titled “Beddy Bye” if lyrics were written for the song, and that the title needed to be changed. The writing of the lyrics, however, took a few months. Two sets of lyrics were produced but both were rejected. Lyrics were then added by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder, which were accepted.[6] To write the lyrics, Singleton and Snyder took cue from the film where the principal actors James Garner and Melina Mercouri exchanged glances at a bar and became lovers by the end of the film. Snyder suggested that he also had a hand in writing the music, and that he, Singleton and Kaempfert spent two weeks perfecting the song. The song was said originally to have been sung by Melina Mercouri, who thought that a man’s vocals would better suit the melody and therefore declined to sing it.