Bart Howard Lounge

Howard's hometown, Burlington, and the Des Moines County Historical Society have been honoring their native son in a special way since 2009. Howard was born Howard Joseph Gustafson on June 1, 1915, into a musical family. His parents were Harry and Naomi Spiegel Gustafson, and "Howie" had a younger sister, Dorothy, or "Dot."

In liner notes for an album of Howard's songs, writer Rex Reed says: "His father was the town bootlegger and a ragtime pianist who paid for his son's piano lessons with Prohibition booze." Dot Lind, his sister, who remained in Burlington agreed with the description. She recalled the difficult years of the Depression, when the Gustafsons tried to help those less fortunate by keeping a large garden on their acreage. She said her sibling was "a fantastic, wonderful brother, very inventive and very talented."

Reed writes that Howard's parents gave him "a dollar to see 'The Desert Song,' and I went home and tried to write it all over again. I guess I was the only kid in town who wanted to be in show business."

Lind said her brother attended St. Patrick's School. But he left Burlington at age 16 to tour with a dance band.

Moving to Los Angeles in 1934, Howard worked as an accompanist while hoping to write music for movies.His fortune changed in 1937 with a move to New York City, where he made his debut at the famed Rainbow Room as accompanist for a comedian-impersonator named Elizabeth Talbot-Martin. More fortuitously, he met English singer Mabel Mercer. The next year, she was the first to sing one of his songs in New York - "If You Leave Paris," co-written with Ian Grant. During World War II, Howard served in the Army from 1941 to 1945, based at Camp Wheeler in Georgia, writing songs and shows for troops. The story goes that he met Noel Coward during an air raid at the Ritz Hotel in London. Returning to New York after the war, Howard found jobs playing at cabarets, and for four years accompanied Mercer at Tony's West Side nightclub. From the early 1950s to 1960, he was pianist and master of ceremonies at the Blue Angel, one of the hottest nightspots in New York.

This was Howard's most productive songwriting period. "Fly Me to the Moon" was originally titled "In Other Words."

"The song just fell out of me," he told the New York Times in 1988.It was introduced by singer Felicia Sanders in 1954 and first recorded by Kaye Ballard. But it was Peggy Lee's performance of the song on the Ed Sullivan television show in 1960 that introduced it to a national audience for the first time. Lee told Howard he should alter the title of the song because her fans kept referring to it as "Fly Me to the Moon." The song took on a life of its own and has been performed by every major singing artist through the years. Frank Sinatra recorded it in 1961 and kept it in his repertoire for the rest of his career.The song has been recorded by more than 300 artists in many languages - including Finnish.

"Fly Me to the Moon" became the unofficial song of 1969's moon landing and it is still performed for many space flights. Writer Liz Smith dubbed it "the theme song for the Space Age." It also appears in occasional films. Julie London's version can be heard in the garden party scene in "Bridget Jones's Diary" (2001).

When musical fashions changed and the Beatles were looming large, Howard withdrew from the scene in 1960, saddened that intimate nightclubs and elegant supper clubs catering to cafe society were closing. His style of sophisticated music was fading in popularity. Howard retreated to his home, a renovated blacksmith's shop in North Salem, N.Y., on the Titicus River. He was content to live and entertain there as well as at homes in Palm Beach, Fla., and in France.

Bob McCannon of Burlington, a friend of Howard's for 40 years, said the composer felt vulnerable and saddened that his songs were not as appreciated as he would have liked.

In 1996, McCannon asked Howard to help support the Heritage Trust of Burlington, and he returned to his hometown for a fundraiser, the Bart Howard Tribute, featuring singer KT Sullivan. On Oct. 13, 1996, Howard appeared with Sullivan as she performed his songs at the Rainbow Room. It is the CD of this performance for which Reed wrote the insightful liner notes. Howard, in good voice at 80, sings "Young Just Once" and - with still nimble fingers - accompanies Sullivan in one number. At 88, Howard died on Feb. 21, 2004, at a nursing home in Carmel, N.Y., of complications from a stroke. He and his companion of 58 years, Thomas Fowler, are buried in a northern Texas cemetery.