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Strangers in the night
The music was written by Ivo Robic for a music festival in Split, Croatia. Robic later sang it also in German - "Fremde in der Nacht" - and in Croatian - "Stranci u Noci". A thorough adaptation and an arrangement of the piece was done for Sinatra's version by Bert Kaempfert, who is usually credited with writing the music. The English lyrics were written by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder. Ernie Freeman, musical director of Sinatra's Reprise label, arranged and conducted the music for the single "Strangers in the night".
Nelson Riddle, who had worked with Sinatra as bandleader, arranger and orchestrator since 1953, worked on the rest of the songs on the "Strangers in the night" album. The collection of Riddle-arranged songs was intended to expand on the success of the title track. This was a fitting end to a long and successful partnership as this was the last album the pair would work on together.
The album marked Frank Sinatra's return to #1 in the album charts. " Strangers in the Night" has been certified platinum for 1 million copies sold in the U.S. It is the only "regular" Sinatra album to achieve this mark. Other albums also achieved this distinction but they were compilation albums. wikipedia |
| The guitar arrangement |
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I picked up a bad photocopy of this arrangement from the studio of a classical guitar teacher in Singapore in 1975. He had a collection of pieces arranged neatly in a rack for his students. He invited me to take a few so I did. The sheet music doesn't tell me much about who published this arrangement. All I know is that it came from a Japanese compilation book of simple student pieces.
I like simple arrangements. This one presents it's own challenges. It makes me feel unworthy because I never managed to master moving the third finger of the left hand from the G bass to the C bass notes so it sounded smooth. I left out some of these transitions altogether to keep it simple. |
