Imagine this if you will: Tony Bennett having a hit with the song, "What A Wonderful World."
The song could have been all his, but the man who made "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" a classic for generations turned the song down.
Yes -- turned it down!
Thankfully, the great Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, saw meaning in the record of hope with the song's co-writer, George David Weiss, saying that the song was really meant for Armstrong all along, mainly due to the New Orleans native's positivity and sunny outlook on life. After all, Armstrong spent his youth bouncing around homes his father, who abandoned he and his mother as a child, and his mother, who had to prostitute for money, lived in, as well as various family members, including his family.
Armstrong, who began working odd jobs as a little boy, understood the hardships of life. "What A Wonderful World" fit in for the man who always managed a smile on his face.
To show you the giving, kind man Armstrong was, he recorded this particular song and accepted just $250 for the recording, even as the lead artist for it. Why? He wanted to make sure the orchestra playing behind him got paid.
In 1967, the 66-year-old Armstrong recorded the tune and in early 1968, it was released in the United Kingdom. And no one expected what was to happen next: It shot to No. 1 in April 1968. Backed by his recording of "Cabaret," "What A Wonderful World" spent four solid weeks at No. 1 and became the No. 1 hit for the entire year of 1968 in England. Not bad for a 67-year-old man who became the oldest artist to score a No. 1 hit in the UK for 42 years (until 69-year-old Tom Jones helped out the folks for Comic Relief on a cover of the Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton hit "Islands In The Stream" in 2009).
Surely, an American icon like Armstrong would see his No. 1 song across the ocean be released here, right? Well, yes, but in the end, no. That's because Larry Newton, the head of Armstrong's label, ABC Records, did not like the song. It did get released, but did not have the promotional marketing behind it that would have made "What A Wonderful World" a sure-fire hit. Instead, it lagged at No. 116 on the Billboard Bubbling Under chart.
The song never got the due credit it deserved, even with Armstrong's vocals on it, the legendary jazz trumpeter and cornet player who in 1964 did the impossible at the time -- knocked the Beatles out of the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 in May 1964 with his version of "Hello Dolly," making him at 62 years old the oldest artist to have a No. 1 hit on that chart, a feat he still holds even to this day.
Armstrong went on recording albums and touring. In March 1971, he suffered a heart attack after performing a two-week engagement at the Waldorf-Astroia's Empire Room in New York City, which went against his doctor's advice to slow down. He was bed-ridden in the hospital until May, where he went to his home in the Corona section of Queens, New York. But on the morning of July 6, 1971, Armstrong suffered another heart attack in his sleep. He was one month short of his 70th birthday.
He was interred at Flushing Cemetery in the Flushing section of Queens, his honorary pallbearers at his funeral some real cool cats Armstrong befriended in his time as a jazz star: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Pearl Bailey, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Harry James, Ed Sullivan, David Frost, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Ella Fitzgerald and Johnny Carson. Longtime friend Fred Robbins gave the eulogy, Peggy Lee performed "The Lord's Prayer" and Al Hibbler sang the Armstrong classic "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen."
Armstrong's recording of "What A Wonderful World," though, carried on long after his passing. In 1978, the BBC used the track in the closing moments of the cult radio classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Three years later, it was used again in the television series of the same name.The positive nature of this particular song written by Thiele and Weiss, the latter who co-wrote the Tokens' 1961 chart-topper "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," remained into the 1980s. Then the recording got the break it was looking for all along in the U.S.
Producers Larry Brezner and Mark Johnson began putting together bits and pieces for a movie they were making about the life of disc jockey Adrian Cronauer's time working for the Armed Forces Radio Services, a story Cronauer had pitched nine years earlier, but was finally coming to fruition in a movie called Good Morning, Vietnam, starring funny man Robin Williams as the famed disc jockey, who was trying to make soldiers laugh and smile, while stuck in a crappy setting far, far from home for those fighting in the Vietnam War.
And it was during that time they discovered "What A Wonderful World." Getting the permission to put the song in the soundtrack, it turned out to be the cult hit from the movie of all the songs Williams' character spun on his turntables. The song found an outlet within the movie: scenes of Vietnam drenched in sunshine and blue skies and the people who were living there while the soldiers are riding through the neighborhoods those people occupy, while little boys and girls play as the song plays in the background with Cronauer emulating Armstrong's "Ohhhhh yeeeeah" at the end.
"What A Wonderful World" had its outlet to be a hit at long last a generation later thanks to director Barry Levinson's Oscar-nominated film. Re-released, "What A Wonderful World" found a second life and on February 20, 1988, it hit the Billboard Hot 100, debuting at No. 67. It bounced up to No. 58, then into the Top 50 at No. 46. After stopping off at No. 41, "What A Wonderful World" made The Great Satchmo a Top 40 artist one last time when it came in at No. 38, 19 years and 11 months after it was a No. 1 hit in England.
The good feeling of "What A Wonderful World" being a Top 40 hit was tempered, though. After jumping to No. 33 the next week, it moved up one more notch to No. 32, where it would peak for the week of April 2, 1988. That would be it as it dropped out of the Top 40 the next week.
Over the years, "What A Wonderful World" would continue to be played on easy listening radio (occasionally on '80s radio stations) and be re-recorded by a number of artists, including Roy Clark, Rod Stewart, Anne Murray, Joey Ramone and, yes, Tony Bennett, who turned the song down originally, but has recorded it a few times, most recently in 2003 in a duet with k.d. Lang. It became a No. 1 hit all over again in the UK in 2007 when an older version recorded by the late Eva Cassidy was sung over by Katie Melua topped the chart, helping raise money for the Red Cross.
It's also been used in other movies, such as 12 Monkeys, Madagascar, Head Over Heels, New Year's Eve, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Swing Girls and Back To The Sea.
"What A Wonderful World" is now recognized as a hit from the 1980s. And that's hard to believe considering the song was recorded in the 1960s and became a hit after the man who made it famous died in the early 1970s.
In reality, though, "What A Wonderful World" was a hit song for all ages.
Hard to believe, though, that Tony Bennett turned down such a song with such a message.
All it did, though, was add to the legend that was Louis Armstrong.
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