Louis Armstrong -
What A Wonderful World (1967)
"What a Wonderful World" is a pop ballad written by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss. It ...was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released in 1967 as a single, which topped the pop charts in the United Kingdom. The song was initially offered to Tony Bennett, who turned it down. Thereafter, it was offered to Louis Armstrong.
George Weiss recounts in the book Off the Record: Songwriters on Songwriting by Graham Nash that he wrote the song specifically for Louis Armstrong. Weiss was inspired by Armstrong's ability to bring people of different races together. The song was not initially a hit in the United States, where it sold fewer than 1,000 copies because ABC Records head Larry Newton did not like the song and therefore did not promote it, but was a major success in the United Kingdom, reaching number one on the UK Singles Chart. In the US, the song hit No. 116 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Chart. It was also the biggest-selling single of 1968 in the UK where it was among the last pop singles issued by HMV Records before becoming an exclusive classical musiclabel. The song made Louis Armstrong the oldest male to top the UK Singles Chart, at sixty-six years and ten months old. Armstrong's record was broken in 2009 when a cover version of "Islands in the Stream" recorded for Comic Relief—which included the 68-year-old Tom Jones—reached number one in that chart. Tony Bennett did go on to cover "What A Wonderful World" several times, as in 2003 with k.d. lang, paying homage to Bennett's friend Armstrong.