With an orchestral backing and a rich, gravelly vocal from Louis Armstrong, "What A Wonderful World" sounds like a standard from the 1940s, but the song was recorded and released in 1967, the same year "
Daydream Believer" and "
Light My Fire" were big hits. Armstrong, a titan in the world of jazz who started recording in 1923, broadened his appeal in the 1950s and 1960s by appearing on various TV shows and covering songs like "
Blueberry Hill" and "
Mack The Knife." In 1964, he had a #1 US hit with "
Hello, Dolly!," knocking The Beatles from the top spot during Beatlemania. By the time he recorded "What A Wonderful World," he was 66 years old and near the end of his career; he died in 1971 of heart failure at 69.
One of the most optimistic and uplifting songs ever conceived, "What A Wonderful World" was written by Bob Thiele and George Weiss. Thiele was a producer for ABC Records, which had recently signed Armstrong. He was steeped in jazz, having worked on songs for the likes of John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan and Dizzy Gillespie. Weiss was a songwriter who helped create the hit version of "
The Lion Sleeps Tonight."
The song is about appreciating the beauty of our surroundings. Armstrong really connected with it and delivered a very convincing vocal. Armstrong married his wife Lucille in 1942 and soon after, the couple moved into the Corona neighborhood of Queens, New York, where they were still living when he recorded the song in 1967. According to the
Louis Armstrong House museum, he drew from life in that neighborhood as inspiration for his vocal. "I saw three generations come up on that block," he said. "They're all with their children, grandchildren, they come back to see Uncle Satchmo and Aunt Lucille. That's why I can say, 'I hear babies cry, I watch them grow, they'll learn much more then I'll never know.' And I can look at all them kids's faces. And I got pictures of them when they was five, six and seven years old. So when they hand me this 'Wonderful World,' I didn't look no further, that was it."
Armstrong brought the same kind of joy to his trumpet playing. "I just think about all my happy days and memories and the notes come out," he said.
Louis Armstrong is probably the most famous trumpet player in history, but he didn't play his signature instrument on this song. During live performances he would hold his trumpet but not play it.
"What A Wonderful World" runs just 2:17, repeating the chorus ("And I think to myself what a wonderful world") after just two lines of verse. The short running time was typical of pop songs of the era; the more compact tunes were favored by radio stations because they could play more of them.
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The song was recorded in Las Vegas on April 16, 1967 after Armstrong played a midnight show at the Tropicana. It was recorded live with the orchestra at a session that took place at United Recording Studio and lasted from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. Along with the odd hour, there were some other challenges as well. Artie Butler, who did the arrangement, recalled trains passing by in the middle of takes. Armstrong, who was likely exhausted, responded with alacrity. "I remember Louis and I laughing out loud till it hurt,"
Butler wrote. "We actually hung on to each other to keep from falling over from laughter."
In America, this song was little heard when it was first released in 1967. That's because Larry Newton, head of ABC Records, hated the song and refused to promote it. Newton was looking for an uptempo follow-up to Armstrong's hit "Hello, Dolly!" and the lilting "What A Wonderful World" was not what he had in mind. Various accounts have him showing up at the recording session and trying to stop it, only to be locked out of the studio.
So, the song was issued in America with little fanfare, but in the UK, where it was released on the HMV label, it got plenty of promotion and took off, reaching #1 in April 1968 and becoming the biggest-selling single of the year in that territory.
In America, Armstrong did his best to push the song, performing it at concerts and on TV appearances, but it stalled on the charts at #116 in August 1968. It was more appreciated 20 years later when it was used in the Robin Williams movie Good Morning, Vietnam. Re-released to coincide with the film, this time it charted at #32 and became the song modern listeners most associate with Armstrong.
The song's co-writer, George Weiss, said he wrote the tune specifically for Armstrong, but it was first offered to Tony Bennett, who turned it down. Bennett went on to cover the song several times, including a 2003 duet with k.d. lang.
"What A Wonderful World" became Louie Armstrong's signature song, but it doesn't represent the body of his work, which is defined by his contributions to jazz. It did help draw attention to his talents, giving him name recognition outside of the jazz community. Just as the song grew more popular as it aged, so did Armstrong's legacy; the 2001 Ken Burns series Jazz pegs him as one of the most important musicians in the genre.
In 2007 a cover by Katie Melua and Eva Cassidy was a #1 hit in the UK. It was an unusual duet, with Meluia's vocals spliced with those of the late Eva Cassidy. A charity single for the Red Cross, the single was only available in Tesco stores, so it was a surprise this version outsold the competition.
With the success of this cover, Cassidy became the 13th act to have a posthumous UK chart-topper. No other artist has had a larger gap between passing away and their debut posthumous UK #1, Cassidy having died of cancer on November 2, 1996, 11 years and one month ago before achieving peak position.
"What A Wonderful World" was also the last song Eva Cassidy performed in public. Heavily medicated from cancer treatment, she sang it at a tribute concert arranged for her on September 17, 1996 at The Bayou in Washington, D.C. Cassidy had just a modest fanbase, but she gained acclaim in the UK after her death when a BBC radio DJ started playing songs from her posthumous album Songbird. The album gained popularity and went to #1 in the UK, so when she appeared on the 2007 version of "What A Wonderful World" with Katie Melua, British listeners were familiar with her.
Joey Ramone covered this on his 2002 album Don't Worry About Me, released almost a year after his death. Ramone occasionally played the song live long before he recorded it. It expressed his optimistic view of the world, even as he was faced with death.
The use of the song in Good Morning, Vietnam is an anachronism. The film is set in 1965 and used in a scene where Robin Williams' character, the real-life American Forces Network DJ Adrian Cronauer, plays it for the American troops stationed in Vietnam. As the song plays, we see horrific images of the war, a stark contrast. The song, though, wasn't released until 1967.
The 66-year-old Armstrong became the oldest act to top the UK chart when "What A Wonderful World" reached #1 in 1968. Four years earlier, Satchmo had become the oldest artist to record a US #1 when "Hello, Dolly!" hit the top spot. Armstrong's record was broken in 2009 when the 68-years-and 9 months-old
Tom Jones was one of the artists on the Comic Relief cover of "
Islands in the Stream."
Inspired by the Natalie Cole's update of "
Unforgettable" where she duetted with her late father, Nat King Cole, using his vocals, the sax player Kenny G did a posthumous duet of "What A Wonderful World" with Louis Armstrong in 1999 for his covers album,
Classics In The Key Of G. This version is essentially Armstrong's original with Kenny G's added saxophone. In concert, he would play footage of Armstrong singing the song on a big screen.
Kenny G got permission from Armstrong's estate to make the recording, but still fell afoul of what he called the "jazz police" who felt he was defiling Armstrong's song. Pat Metheny was particularly vocal,
posting on Jazz Oasis: "With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music."
Do you associate this song with "
Over The Rainbow"? If you do, here's why:
The Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo'ole recorded "What A Wonderful World" in a medley with
Over The Rainbow for his 1993 album
Facing Forward. This version became very popular with time and was used in the films
Finding Forrester,
Meet Joe Black, and
50 First Dates, as well as in the television series
ER.
In 2001, Cliff Richard released his own melody of the two songs, reaching #11 in the UK.
Before going to #1 in the UK with her posthumous version of "What A Wonderful World," Eva Cassidy's biggest hit in that territory was her take on "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," which peaked at #42.
The country music star Roy Clark recorded this song for the 2002 album
When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You'd Hear. Cevin Soling, who was executive producer on the album, had The Oak Ridge Boys record "
Carry On Wayward Son" for the project, and their manager, Jim Halsey, suggested Clark. Soling
told Songfacts: "Johnny Cash was going to be on the record, and I was supposed to go to Jamaica to work with him. And that was one of the sad phone calls that I got... he had borrowed Elizabeth Barrett Browning's house there and was building a studio, so I was waiting for construction of the studio. He was going to do the Zombies' '
Time Of The Season,' and then shortly before I was supposed to go out there I got a call that he was too sick. Then I talked to Jim Halsey about it, and he goes, 'Well, if you're looking for that I can get Roy Clark.' So that was how the Roy Clark track came together. It was just thrown at me."
Paula Cole covered this on her 2021 album,
American Quilt. She
told Songfacts: "It is said that one of the composers of 'What A Wonderful World,' George David Weiss, wrote the song specifically for Louis Armstrong in the hope that it would bring people of all races together - and I think it does. At this time in our American history, we have recently endured some hellish years and I felt quite sad when I recorded the song. I think you can hear the sadness in my voice, and it gives the track a little pathos, which I like."
