APOLLO 11

DATE: July 20, 1969

⊹ Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra (Pop)

Comment:

• Various sources note that Fly Me to the Moon was played by Aldrin when he stepped foot on the moon. One has Sinatra relaying the news to Jones while he was on holiday in Marbella. An alternative telling of the story, the cutest I can find, is from the New York Times published November 18, 1990, by Diane K. Shah: “MY NAME IS DR. ALDRIN,” THE man said. He had come up to Jones at a party in Sun Valley, Idaho, two, three years ago, a distinguished looking man in a white military jacket covered with medals. “We worked together before,” he added, “but we’ll talk about it later.” Mystified, Jones asked someone who the man was. “Why that’s Buzz Aldrin,” came the reply. Later, the astronaut came up to Jones again. He said that just as he was getting ready to step off the spacecraft, he reached back and took the cassette of “Fly Me to the Moon” that Jones had arranged and conducted for Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, and he played it. “The first music played on the moon,” Jones says. I freaked.” …The astronauts since Apollo 7 were equipped with a Sony TC-50 casette player for recording mission logs, but they also took mix-tapes with them to space. Fly Me to the Moon may very well have been the first human music played from an extraterrestrial surface.”