Columbia 8815
Producer: Robert Mersey
Track listing: Falling in Love with Love/ I Left My Heart in San Francisco / You Are My Sunshine / What Kind of Fool Am I? / When You’re Smiling / Days of Wine and Roses / It’s a Most Unusual Day / My Coloring Book / Can’t Get Used to Losing You / I Really Don’t Want to Know / Exactly Like You / May Each Day
May 4, 1963
16 weeks: 11 weeks stereo, 15 weeks mono, 1 week combined chart
In the late ’50s, crooner Andy Williams had scored a number of top 10 singles, including the Number One hit “Butterfly,” but it wasn’t until 1962 that Williams broke into the top 10 of the album chart. That year the singer’s Moon River & Other Great Movie Themes, which included Williams’s take of the Henry Mancini-Johnny Mercer classic, reached number three.
With his star rising, Williams was tapped by NBC for his own musical variety show. During the summer of 1958 and 1959, Williams had hosted one-off TV specials on ABC and CBS, respectively, but this marked the first time he would host a regular-season series.
However, the weekly exposure didn’t automatically translate into increased popularity. Warm and Willing, Williams’s 1962 follow-up to Moon River peaked at number 16. Undaunted, Williams opted to record yet another Mancini/Mercer number, “Days of Wine and Roses,” which was written for the film of the same name starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. At the same time, Williams recorded the Doc Pomus-Mort Shuman song, “Can’t Get Used to Losing You.” Both songs charted, with the later climbing all the way to number two, while “Days of Wine and Roses” made number 26.
With the success of the two-sided single, executives at Columbia persuaded Williams to fill out an album showcasing both hits, along with several of the songs he performed on his TV show. Yet the recordings weren’t taken directly from the show itself, despite the fact that Williams regularly sang live, and with a live orchestra, in front of the TV cameras.
“The quality of TV audio at that time wasn’t as high as the quality of recordings you could make in a studio,” Williams says. “So I had to go into the recording studio and redo them, but we used the same arrangements we used on the show.” The recorded version of “You Are My Sunshine,” however, was markedly different from the one that appeared on the album. “On my television show, I did it originally with Peggy Lee and George Gobel,” Williams says.
Days of Wine and Roses, which was subtitled And Other TV Requests, turned out to be a blockbuster for Williams. “It sold so well because every week I would sing these songs on my show,” he says. “The fact that you could see these songs performed live on TV and then go out and buy the album definitely helped sales.”
Days of Wine and Roses topped the mono album chart in its third week on the chart. A week later, on May 11, 1963, it rose to the stereo summit and earned its place in history as the last album to top the separate mono and stereo charts. On August 17, Billboard combined the stereo and mono lists into one chart, the Top LP’s. Days of Wine and Roses remained at Number One for one week on the new chart before making way for Little Stevie Wonder/The 12 Year Old Genius.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of May 4, 1963
1. Days of Wine and Roses, Andy Williams
2. West Side Story, Soundtrack
3. Songs I Sing on the Jackie Gleason Show, Frank Fontaine
4. Moving, Peter, Paul & Mary
5. The Kingston Trio, # 16 The Kingston Trio