Who recorded it first
Fly Me to the Moon
Not a Frank Sinatra original — a 1954 Kaye Ballard single for Decca
Frank Sinatra’s swaggering Count Basie recording is so total a possession of this song that most people assume he made it first. He didn’t. Bart Howard wrote it in 1954 under the title “In Other Words,” and the first commercial recording was Kaye Ballard’s, issued by Decca in April 1954 as the B-side of her single “Lazy Afternoon.” Sinatra’s version came in 1964, on the Reprise album It Might as Well Be Swing.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Issued by Decca Records (catalogue 29114) in April 1954 as the B-side of Kaye Ballard’s single “Lazy Afternoon,” a song from The Golden Apple, the Broadway show she was starring in. It carried the song’s original title, “In Other Words.”
Charted Did not chart. It was a B-side, reviewed but not promoted — Billboard’s 8 May 1954 notice called it a love song sung with feeling by Miss Ballard, and that was largely that.
Hear Kaye Ballard, “In Other Words” — the April 1954 Decca original, transferred from the 78. archive.org · Not a fan upload: this is the Internet Archive’s 78rpm / George Blood, L.P. preservation collection, a direct transfer of the physical Decca 29114 disc with matrix number W86143T3A logged in the item metadata. Its running time of 137.6 seconds matches the 134-second length MusicBrainz records for the recording on the 1954 “In Other Words / Lazy Afternoon” single, the small excess being 78 lead-in and run-out — so this is the 1954 record, not a later re-recording.Following the record
The Wikipedia article on the song ↗ dates Bart Howard’s composition to 1954 under the title “In Other Words,” names Kaye Ballard’s Decca release of April 1954 as the first commercial recording, and cites a Billboard review of 8 May 1954.
The Songwriters Hall of Fame profile ↗ independently describes Ballard’s Decca record as the first commercial recording and traces the 1963 title change to Peggy Lee.
The physical disc survives: the Internet Archive’s preservation transfer of Decca 29114 ↗ logs the label, catalogue number, April 1954 date and matrix number W86143T3A.
In 2026 the Library of Congress added the recording to the National Recording Registry, listed as “Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)” — Kaye Ballard (1954) ↗.
Fly Me to the Moon — origins, title change and cover historyKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
Right song, wrong originator
Sinatra’s 1964 recording is so dominant that it is routinely treated as the song’s point of origin. The record itself is a decade older, and came out under a different title.
Frank Sinatra
His Reprise recording with the Count Basie Orchestra, arranged by Quincy Jones, appeared on It Might as Well Be Swing in August 1964. It is the version almost everyone means — but it is not the first.
Kaye Ballard
Ballard made the first commercial recording, issued by Decca (29114) in April 1954 as the B-side of “Lazy Afternoon,” under the song’s original title “In Other Words.” Billboard reviewed it on 8 May 1954.
Bart Howard
Howard wrote words and music in 1954 while working as MC and intermission pianist at New York’s Blue Angel, where Ballard was a familiar performer. Neither Ballard nor Sinatra had a hand in writing it.
Peggy Lee
Lee recorded the song in 1960 and performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show, then persuaded Howard to make “Fly Me to the Moon” the official title in 1963 — before Sinatra ever recorded it.
Written by Bart Howard in 1954 as “In Other Words”; first recorded by Kaye Ballard, Decca, April 1954; made famous by Frank Sinatra in 1964.
Context
How a B-side became a Sinatra song
The original is not obscure because it was bad. Ballard’s Decca record is a straight, unhurried cabaret ballad in 3/4 — roughly two and a quarter minutes of it — and it did exactly what a B-side was built to do in 1954, which is sit quietly behind the A-side and be forgotten. The A-side, “Lazy Afternoon,” was the commercial proposition; it came from the Broadway show Ballard was starring in.
What eclipsed it was not Sinatra directly but a chain of interpreters. Peggy Lee sang it on her 1960 album Pretty Eyes and on The Ed Sullivan Show, and it was Lee who persuaded Howard to change the title officially in 1963. Joe Harnell’s bossa nova instrumental was the song’s first genuine chart hit, reaching No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1963 and winning a Grammy. Only after all that did Sinatra, Basie and Quincy Jones arrive and put a lid on the matter.
The chronology, step by step
- 1954 — Bart Howard writes the song as “In Other Words.”
- April 1954 — Kaye Ballard’s recording is issued by Decca (catalogue 29114) as the B-side of “Lazy Afternoon.” Billboard reviews it on 8 May 1954.
- 1960 — Peggy Lee records it for her album Pretty Eyes and later performs it on The Ed Sullivan Show.
- 1962–63 — Joe Harnell’s bossa nova instrumental reaches No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 23 February 1963 and wins a Grammy at the 5th Annual Grammy Awards.
- 1963 — at Peggy Lee’s urging, Howard officially retitles the song “Fly Me to the Moon.”
- August 1964 — Frank Sinatra’s version appears on the Reprise album It Might as Well Be Swing, with the Count Basie Orchestra, arranged by Quincy Jones.
- 2026 — the Library of Congress adds Ballard’s 1954 single to the National Recording Registry.
A B-side did its job perfectly: nobody noticed it.