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.
It was made famous by Frank Sinatra's version in D minor, which won the Grammy Award for Best Male Vocal Performance in 1966 and became Sinatra's first number one Adult Contemporary single, also peaking at No. 28 on the Hot 100.
"It Was a Very Good Year" | ||||
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Single by Frank Sinatra | ||||
from the album September of My Years | ||||
B-side | "Moment to Moment" | |||
Released | December 1965 | |||
Recorded | 1965 | |||
Studio | United Western Recorders, United A | |||
Genre | Pop | |||
Length | 2:55 | |||
Label | Reprise | |||
Songwriter(s) | Ervin Drake | |||
Producer(s) | Sonny Burke | |||
Frank Sinatra singles chronology | ||||
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The nostalgic and melancholic song 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.
Drake composed the song in 1961 at the suggestion of record producer Artie Mogull, who told Drake that Bob Shane of The Kingston Trio needed a solo to include in the group's upcoming album Goin' Places. Drake wrote the song in less than a day, although he had been considering employing the metaphor of life as a vintage wine in a lyric for several years prior.
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.
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