It Was a Very Good Year: Difference between revisions

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"It Was a Very Good Year" is a song composed by Ervin Drake in 1961 and originally recorded by Bob Shane with the Kingston Trio.^[1][2] It was subsequently made famous by Frank Sinatra's version in D minor,^[3] which won the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance, Male in 1966. Gordon Jenkins was awarded Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) for the Sinatra version. This single peaked at #28 on the U.S. pop chart and became Sinatra's first #1 single on the Easy Listening charts.^[4] That version can be found on Sinatra's 1965 album September of My Years, and was featured in The Sopranos season two opener, "Guy Walks into a Psychiatrist's Office...". A live, stripped-down performance is included on his Sinatra at the Sands album.

The nostalgic ^[5], melancholic song ^{[6] [7]} recounts the type of girls with whom the singer had relationships at various years in his life: when he was 17, "small-town girls on the village green"; at 21, "city girls who lived up the stair"; at 35, "blue-blooded girls of independent means". Each of these years he calls "very good". In the song's final verse, the singer reflects that he is older, and in the autumn of his years, and he thinks back on his entire life "as vintage wine". All of these romances were sweet to him, like a wine from a very good (i.e., vintage) year.

Ervin Drake's inspiration to write the song was his then wife-to-be, Edith Vincent Bermaine. She was a showgirl, whom he had dated, and eventually married twenty years after the song was written.^[8]

• The Kingston Trio introduced the song on their album Goin' Places (1961). This is the recording that influenced Frank Sinatra to want to record his own version.^[2][9]
• Lonnie Donegan released it as a 45 rpm single on Pye Records, in 1963.
• Frank Sinatra on his September of My Years album (1965) and a stripped-down performance on his Sinatra at the Sands live album (1966)
• British pop star Robbie Williams recorded a version for his album Swing When You're Winning (2001), in duet with Sinatra's original vocals. The instrumental track was also sampled from Sinatra's original recording.

• In 1971, Michael Jackson sang a parody of this song in a skit with Diana Ross during the television special Diana!, which aired on the ABC-TV network.^[10]
• Frank Sinatra's version of the song was featured in the Spike Lee film Jungle Fever (1991).^[11]
• In a 1993 episode of The Simpsons ("Duffless"), Homer sings a parody of this song entitled "I Drank Some Very Good Beer", recounting the first beer he ever purchased (with a fake ID; his name was Brian McGee) and he "stayed up listening to Queen."^[12]
• In 2005, They Might Be Giants parodied this song on their first podcast.^[13]
• Alain Resnais used the Sinatra recording over the closing credits of his film You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (2012).
• Mel Torme hosted a 1971 summer television show named It Was a Very Good Year, using the song as opening and closing theme music.

• List of number-one adult contemporary singles of 1966 (U.S.)

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